Okay, This Is Getting Ridiculous Now...

 Yesterday, I posted about a game I'd never heard of before but which I'd suddenly started playing, out of the blue. I was complaining about how I had so many ideas for posts, I didn't have time to write them all, so finding yet another game I felt like I had to mention wasn't helping. With hindsight, I might also have given some consideration to the impact adding another title would have on my already overburdened gaming schedule itself. 

But, hey, what's one more game, right? I'm officially retired now. That means I have two more days in each week to do anything I want, on top of the five I already had. (Yeah, right...) Why not play more games?

Still, there are limits to how many I can meaningfully shoe-horn into to my rota (That's a rota I don't actually have because I am really not a rota kind of person, I feel honor-bound to point out). At time of writing yesterday, DC: Dark Legion had just become either the eighth or the eleventh game in my "Currently Playing" list, depending how realistic I was being. How many more could there be?

So, then I saw this at MassivelyOP. Dragon Nest Classic. Longtime readers may remember my repeated runs at Dragon Nest in its myriad forms, too many of those posts being about the trials and tribulations of finding a version that would let me play it. 

The first mention of the game on the blog - or at least the earliest I added a label for it - was way back in 2011 in a post entitled "Are You Still Playing That Old Thing?" It was a list of all the MMOs I was either playing or thinking about playing or had decided never to play. There are two dozen of them. I don't appeared to have learned much about time management in the last decade and a half.

Or maybe I have. I mean, I'm down to half that now...

Back then I said "Thought about logging in. Couldn't remember my account or password details. Couldn't be bothered to look them up. Didn't log in." I believe I would have been talking about the first version of the game I played, which probably pre-dated the blog entirely. That version was just called Dragon Nest.

In the years after, the game changed publishers, regions and names several times. Sometimes it would let me make an account, sometimes it wouldn't. From memory, I think I had another run at the original game on a different account, then I played Dragon Age Origins for a bit and later Dragon Age Mobile. That may or may not have been the same game as Dragon Nest M, which I also played.

And then there was Dragon Nest 2: Evolution, which I'd forgotten all about, even though I was playing as recently as 2023. I was enjoying it a lot according to my posts. No memory of why I stopped except that I think I had to play it through Google Play and that extra layer always acts as a drag anchor after the initial excitement of getting to play something new wears off. I'd go go back for another look but it's too late now. DN2:E closed down last year.

There's no killing Dragon Nest for good, though. It regenerates like Dr. Who, coming back in a different form each time. Except this one's a throwback instead of an evolution. 

 

Dragon Nest Classic is supposed to be the original game, the same as it was when I first played it, except for some quality of life improvements. There's a Level Cap of 32 and not all the classes and sub-classes are in yet. I'm assuming after that, if there's sufficient interest, later content will be added in the same order as it appeared in the game the first time around.

Of course, as soon as I heard about it, I had to go check it out. And it was already there, waiting for me. Kudos to MOP for bringing it to my attention at all but it was a case of better late than never. The new-old version was already up and running by the time the news filtered out to my usual sources. That at least meant I didn't have to bookmark it to come back when the servers were ready. They were already up.

Given my previous experiences with the various companies that have had a hand in running the franchise, I was expecting a whole lot of problems getting into the game at all. That did not happen. I did try a couple of my old accounts first, never expecting them to work and there my expectations were met in full. With that formality out of the way, though, I made a new account and off I went, no trouble at all.

Classes are gender-locked in the Classic version so, since I wanted to play a female character, I had a choice of Cleric or Sorceress. I picked the witch. I have a feeling that's what I've picked every time although I'm not sure the classes were the same in every version, nor if they were always strictly male/female only.

Everything felt very familiar. The starting town for Clerics and Sorceresses is called Mana Ridge It's not all that big so it's easy to get to know the layout and I've been through it many times now. Many, many times. I knew where I was immediately.

I ought to. Every time I've played, I've gotten through the start of the game and then either wandered away or got kicked out before I got very far. I did have one run where I made some meaningful progress through the storyline, up to the part where you leave the first town by airship and go to the big city, Saint Haven, but usually I stall somewhere around the second town, Calderock Village.

Actually, until today I always thought Mana Ridge was the only starting village but I read the launch day patch notes and I noticed they refer to "Prairie Town : Starting area for Warriors and Archers". Warriors and Archers are both gender-locked male so it's entirely possible I never played either class and therefore never saw the other starting area. I'll have to start an alt and check it out. You can have as many as sixteen characters.

The truth is, even though I've probably put dozens of hours into the various versions, I haven't seen all that much of the game. I never was all that bothered about making progress. I've just always liked the way the game looks and plays. I especially enjoy the tactility of the combat.

Dragon Nest was the first action MMO I really felt comfortable playing. It was largely responsible for my change of attitude concerning action versus traditional tab targeting. Now, I genuinely enjoy both styles. I can even play action-style almost as competently as I can tab target, which admittedly isn't saying much.

Despite my long and patchy history with the game, I hadn't really thought about it for years. I certainly wasn't expecting to be playing it again this Autumn. But once I started, I was back. This is very much the version I remember, my favorite of them all. 

Except for one huge difference: the translation.

This is the North American version of Dragon Nest and I believe that's one iteration I was never able to access before. I seem to remember it being region-locked, when some other company had the European rights. Now it looks like all the versions are under Eyedentity. If there's any region-locking, it isn't affecting me.

I'm guessing the NA version has always had this translation, which is really excellent. I don't imagine it's new for Classic. Come to that, I'm not sure it even is a translation. It might be a complete re-write. 

I remember the original having one of the goofiest translations I've ever seen. It was English but not as it's ever been spoken. It was so wonky I couldn't always understand what it was even trying to say.

It didn't help that it always seemed as though the game had a very complicated plot involving time travel and time paradoxes. An early quest involved fixing a device so the player-character could talk to someone in the future and the two of them were always arguing but I could never really follow the nuances. 

This version has none of that. Instead, my Sorceress seems to be a lying, cheating, duplicitous gambler with a heart of corroded steel. She's daggers drawn with her old teacher and she's out for what she can get. Actually, they both are. Everyone in the village is either sarcastic, snarky or flat-out rude and all the factions despise each other. 

I loved it. I laughed out loud several times. I hope the whole game's as well-written as the opening section. If it is, I might get a lot further this time. 

Of course, that's always assuming I can fit Dragon Nest Classic into the schedule. It's not even the last of the recent glut of new or returning games I'm having to incorporate, somehow. There's just been a massive content drop in Once Human and I was playing that last night and this morning. 

I'll be posting about that one next... unless something else turns up first. The way it's been going, I wouldn't be surprised.