Normally when you hear two free MMOs go into open beta around the same time with similar gameplay it is not exactly breaking news, since one could argue most all of them play fundamentally the same.
You point, you click, you trade blows with a mob till you kill it, or it kills you, you get bored, and then you uninstall the game.
Barunson Interactive’s Dragonica, and JCE’s GhostX both break out of the standard MMO mold…by jumping into an another mold; console style hack, and slash.
Both games core concepts involves carving up waves of mobs in frantic real time combat, but the question is which one is really worth investing your time in?
The Set Up: GhostX
Set in modern day Seoul South Korea infested with phantoms, and spirits, GhostX has you cast as one of many skinny trendy teens turned ghostbuster, thanks to the help of shape shifting cycloptic biomechanical weapons called Nanobots.
The Set Up: Dragonica
Fantasy world blablah blah evil dragon blah blahblah.
Something about a mad scientist kidnapping puppies and turning them into dire wolves.
The setting is your basic swords and sorcery shtick, just cuter and with a lot of odd pop culture references thrown in.
You got the basic four fantasy standby classes to choose from initially Warrior, Mage, Thief, and Archer, and at level 20 they branch into more specialized classes.
Visuals: GhostX
GhostX uses a cell shaded art style with a minimalistic muted color pallet giving the game a sort of comic booky look that reminds me a bit of the Nintendo DS game The World Ends With You.
The characters, Nanobots, and the games strange variety of mobs are mostly well rendered, and animated, especially the Nanobots each of which have been given a unique look both in pet and weapon form.
However many of the backgrounds, particularly the floors are extremely low rez, and blurry.
The game uses a fairly modest poly count on its models and environments, and few special effects which is a boon for those running on lower end computers, but looks nowhere near as good as Dragonica despite having similar system reqs.
Visuals: Dragonica
In contrast to GhostX, Dragonica employs a cute yet surprisingly detailed chibi style with lots of bight pastels and lush environments.
The character design in particular stands out for me because it remind me of another DS game, the remake of Final Fantasy III, only higher rez, and wackier.
Dragonica is not a game that takes itself seriously at all. It is full of visual gags, and references ranging from Orcs turning into pork chops when killed, Thieves hiding under cardboard boxes Metal Gear style, Mages conjuring a trench coat wearing flasher to stun targets, even Archers turning into a certain “smooth criminal” to moonwalk out of harms way. This is all exceptionally animated almost making Dragonica feel like you are playing a cartoon.
Music: GhostX
GhostX‘s music mostly consist of up beat techno or hiphop style tracks, though there are also a few that dip into jazz, and even ska. Most don’t sound too bad, but they recycle the same 5 or 6 tracks over, and over for most of the areas in the game, so it won’t take very long before you just get sick of hearing them; this goes doubly for the unbelievably irritating music that plays in the games one, and only hub town.
Music: Dragonica
Despite the general silliness of the game, Dragonica‘s soundtrack is surprisingly epic, which is actually a bit disjointing, as you will be running around as a Mage, turning your head into a cannon, and shooting up groups of anthropomorphic raccoons attacking you with plungers, all the while this orchestral music you would expect from a battle scene from Lord of The Rings is playing in the background, which somehow makes what I just described sound all the more insane.
Like playing Beethoven’s 5th during a pie fight.
Translation: GhostX
In a word, “awful”.
In two words “god awful”.
If it were not for the fact most of the games quests, and missions were so straight forward, you would never figure out what you are suppose to do in this game, because none of this games dialog is even remotely coherent.
GhostX feels like it was machine translated by at lest three individuals, as fast as humanly possible, and none of them cross referenced anything the other two worked on. You get a quest to kill a particular type of mob only to find out after futility trying to find it, that the mob you were looking for is called something completely different then what the quest text calls it, the one saving merit is there is some seriously hilarious Engrish in this game. For instance the cautionary statement “Blacks may be harder to kill then ghosts.”
Translation: Dragonica
One thing Dragonica has head, and shoulders over GhostX Is it’s translation into English.
Where GhostX‘s translation is funny because it deploys a level of Engrish so bad it becomes comical, Dragonica’s translation can be genuinely funny. A lot of the dialog makes references to other games, and breaks the 4th wall. One early dialog that stuck out for me was a conversation with the leader of the Archers, where he gives the player “tips” to make money. Such as stand in the middle of town begging other players, or join a party, and loot everything that drops before anyone else can, and sell it.
Gameplay: GhostX
GhostX plays like a mishmash of Pokemon and Devil May Cry. Your character has no class but rather changes skill sets based on what Nanobot they have equip. Nanobots level independently from their user, and can evolve or be combine with other Nanobots to create new ones. There are currently 100 unique Nanobots ranging from two handed swords to claws, to even even guns. Trying to “catch em all” adds a layer of addictiveness to the experience you do not often see in MMOs, and really struck a cord for me.
GhostX‘s combat is much faster, and fluid then Dragonica‘s allowing the player to hit large groups of mobs at once, and even juggle them in the air, which can be incredibly fun, however a major problem with GhostX is the games server lag. Hopefully it is just because it’s beta, but there is almost always at least a one second delay between an attack going off, and the game registering the attack landing, this is hardly noticeable while you are on the offensive against a herd of brick stupid ghosts, however while trying to dodge stronger enemy attacks, it quickly becomes very frustrating; especially on boss fights where every time you clearly moved out of the way of an attack you still take damage from it. The games PvP is currently rendered completely intolerable thanks to this problem as well, because it is impossible to maneuver or employ any sort of strategy at all besides spamming attacks, and hoping you kill someone before they kill you.
Another bugbear is the games Supersyncro system, a daily allotted bonus XP multiplier that once reached drops XP, and items gained by 500% until 7am. the next day in real time. effectively making any further play until then almost completely futile. Which is a serious pain as you can easily burn though Supersyncro in less then an hour.
Gameplay: Dragonica
Dragonica offers four classes at the offset of the game, two melee, and two ranged, that branch into either specialist or hybrid classes depending which way you want to progress beyond level 20.
Dragonica‘s combat is a bit slower, and less button mashy then GhostX’s, but also considerably less laggy.
The game does not suffer the from the cheap phantom lag damage GhostX does, which is good, because recovery items are not as effective, and getting hit too many times in rapid succession will get you killed in short order.
The game world is also much bigger, and environments less repetitive then GhostX‘s, though that still does not mean it doesn’t have quite a bit of repetition of it’s own. Having to run though the same dungeon on 5 different difficulties before its considered “cleared” so you can move on with the story quests is just a waste of even having difficulty options, because the game requires you to run them all regardless.
Another thing that irks me is that Dragonica offers you tons, and tons of quests to do at any given level, but you can only have a maximum of seven at a time, and thanks to the games rather large world. you will have to run back and forth again, and again sometimes across multiple areas to turn in, and pick up quests which began to seriously grate on my patience by the time I was in the mid twenties.
The Verdict
This is actually a tough call to make, as I actually enjoyed both games more then most F2P games out there.
Dragonica is the larger, more refined, and better looking game, while GhostX is the smaller, less polished, and horrifically translated game.
Sounds easy to make a call based on that doesn’t it?
However GhostX has an extremely high level of addictiveness I just could not find in Dragonica thanks to GhostX’s combination of fast, and furious combat, and it’s dizzying array of Nanobot weapons, which kept me playing, despite the games glaring flaws long after I had sufficient data to write this review. On this merit GhostX wins the cross review as the underlying fun manages to shines through despite the layers of gunk dumped upon it.
Dragonica brings the visuals, and the content, but GhostX brings the game.
By, Justin Miller
Cross Review: GhostX VS Dragonica
Normally when you hear two free MMOs go into open beta around the same time with similar gameplay it is not exactly breaking news, since one could argue most all of them play fundamentally the same.
You point, you click, you trade blows with a mob till you kill it, or it kills you, you get bored, and then you uninstall the game.
Barunson Interactive’s Dragonica, and JCE’s GhostX both break out of the standard MMO mold…by jumping into an another mold; console style hack, and slash.
Both games core concepts involves carving up waves of mobs in frantic real time combat, but the question is which one is really worth investing your time in?
The Set Up: GhostX
Set in modern day Seoul South Korea infested with phantoms, and spirits, GhostX has you cast as one of many skinny trendy teens turned ghostbuster, thanks to the help of shape shifting cycloptic biomechanical weapons called Nanobots.
The Set Up: Dragonica
Fantasy world blablah blah evil dragon blah blahblah.
Something about a mad scientist kidnapping puppies and turning them into dire wolves.
The setting is your basic swords and sorcery shtick, just cuter and with a lot of odd pop culture references thrown in.
You got the basic four fantasy standby classes to choose from initially Warrior, Mage, Thief, and Archer, and at level 20 they branch into more specialized classes.
Visuals: GhostX
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GhostX uses a cell shaded art style with a minimalistic muted color pallet giving the game a sort of comic booky look that reminds me a bit of the Nintendo DS game The World Ends With You.
The characters, Nanobots, and the games strange variety of mobs are mostly well rendered, and animated, especially the Nanobots each of which have been given a unique look both in pet and weapon form.
However many of the backgrounds, particularly the floors are extremely low rez, and blurry.
The game uses a fairly modest poly count on its models and environments, and few special effects which is a boon for those running on lower end computers, but looks nowhere near as good as Dragonica despite having similar system reqs.
Visuals: Dragonica
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In contrast to GhostX, Dragonica employs a cute yet surprisingly detailed chibi style with lots of bight pastels and lush environments.
The character design in particular stands out for me because it remind me of another DS game, the remake of Final Fantasy III, only higher rez, and wackier.
Dragonica is not a game that takes itself seriously at all. It is full of visual gags and references ranging from Orcs turning into pork chops when killed, Thieves hiding under a cardboard boxes Metal Gear style, Mages conjuring a trench coat wearing flasher to stun targets, even Archers turning into a certain “smooth criminal” to moonwalk out of harms way, this is all exceptionally. animated almost making Dragonica feel like you are playing a cartoon.
Music: GhostX
GhostX‘s music mostly consist of up beat techno or hiphop style tracks though there are also a few that dip into jazz and even ska. Most don’t sound too bad, but they recycle the same 5 or 6 tracks over, and over for most of the areas in the game, so it won’t take very long before you just get sick of hearing them; this goes doubly for the unbelievably irritating music that plays in the games one and only hub town.
Music: Dragonica
Despite the general silliness of the game, Dragonica‘s soundtrack is surprisingly epic, which is actually a bit disjointing, as you will be running around as a Mage, turning your head into a cannon, and shooting up groups of anthropomorphic raccoons attacking you with plungers, all the while this orchestral music you would expect from a battle scene from Lord of The Rings is playing in the background, which somehow makes what I just described sound all the more insane.
Like playing Beethoven’s 5th during a pie fight.
Translation: GhostX
In a word, “awful”.
In two words “god awful”.
If it were not for the fact most of the games quests and missions were so straight forward, you would never figure out what you are suppose to do in this game, because none of this games dialog is even remotely coherent.
GhostX feels like it was machine translated by at lest three individuals, as fast as humanly possible, and none of them cross referenced anything the other two worked on. You get a quest to kill a particular type of mob only to find out after futility trying to find it, that the mob you were looking for is called something completely different then what the quest text calls it, the one saving merit is there is some seriously hilarious Engrish in this game, for instance the cautionary statement “Blacks may be harder to kill then ghosts.”
Translation: Dragonica
One thing Dragonica has head, and shoulders over GhostX Is it’s translation into English.
Where GhostX‘s translation is funny because it deploys a level of Engrish so bad it becomes comical, Dragonica’s translation can be genuinely funny.
A lot of the dialog makes references to other games, and breaks the 4th wall.
One early dialog that stuck out for me was a conversation with the leader of the Archers where he gives the player “tips” to make money, such as stand in the middle of town begging other players, or join a party and loot everything that drops before anyone else can, and sell it.
Gameplay: GhostX
GhostX plays like a mishmash of Pokemon and Devil May Cry.
your character has no class but rather changes skill sets based on what Nanobot they have equip.
Nanobots level independently from their user, and can evolve or be combine with other Nanobots to create new ones.
There are currently 100 unique Nanobots ranging from two handed swords to claws, to even even guns. Trying to “catch em all” adds a layer of addictiveness to the experience you do not often see in MMOs, and really struck a cord for me.
GhostX‘s combat is much faster, and fluid then Dragonica‘s allowing the player to hit large groups of mobs at once, and even juggle them in the air which can be incredibly fun, however a major problem with GhostX is the games server lag, hopefully it is just because its beta, but there is almost always at least a one second delay between an attack going off and the game registering the attack landing, this is hardly noticeable while you are on the offensive against a herd of brick stupid ghosts, however while trying to dodge enemy attacks it quickly becomes very frustrating; especially on boss fights where every time you clearly moved out of the way of an attack yet you still take damage from it. The games PvP is currently rendered completely intolerable thanks to this problem as well, because it is impossible to maneuver or employ any sort of strategy at all besides spamming attacks, and hoping you kill someone before they kill you.
Another bugbear is the games Supersyncro system, a daily alloted bonus XP multiplier that once reached drops XP and items gained by 500% until 7am. the next day in real time. effectively making any further play until then almost completely futile. Which is a serious pain as you can easily burn though Supersyncro in less then an hour.
Gameplay: Dragonica
Dragonica offers four classes at the offset of the game, two melee, and two ranged, that branch into either specialist or hybrid classes depending which way you want to progress beyond level 20.
Dragonica‘s combat is a bit slower and less button mashy then GhostX’s, but also considerably less laggy.
The game does not suffer the from the cheap phantom lag damage GhostX does, which is good, because recovery items are not as effective, and getting hit too many times in rapid succession will get you killed in short order.
The game world is also much bigger, and environments less repetitive then GhostX‘s, though that still does not mean it doesn’t have quite a bit of repetition of it’s own.
Having to run though the same dungeon on 5 different difficulties before its considered “cleared” so you can move on with the story quests is just a waste of even having difficulty options, because the game requires you to run them all regardless.
Another thing that irks me is that Dragonica offers you tons and tons of quests to do at any given level, but you can only have a maximum of seven at a time, and thanks to the games rather large world. you will have to run back and forth again, and again sometimes across multiple areas to turn in, and pick up quests which began to seriously grate on my patience by the time I was in the mid twenties.
The Verdict
This is actually a tough call to make, as I actually enjoyed both games more then most F2P games out there.
Dragonica is the larger, more refined, and better looking game, while GhostX is the smaller, less polished and horrifically translated game.
Sounds easy to make a call based on that doesn’t it?
However GhostX has an extremely high level of addictiveness I just could not find in Dragonica thanks to GhostX’s combination of fast and furious combat, and it’s dizzying array of Nanobot weapons, which kept me playing, despite the games glaring flaws long after I had sufficient data to write this review.
On this merit GhostX wins the cross review as the underlying fun manages to shines through despite the layers of gunk dumped upon it.
Dragonica brings the visuals, and the content, but GhostX brings the game.
July 9, 2010
#
I’d say GhostX…I found it more flashy and cool over dragonica…which made me feel like i was kicking a puppy everytime i attacked something.
December 8, 2010
#1
hmmm id still say dragonica becouse of 2 things.
1 i dont llike that in ghotsx the exp rate is kinda rely slow
2that all the enemies are robots
and oh ya i cant log into ghostx cuz it gimes errors lol XD
December 8, 2010
#2
dragonica is now called dragon saga too at some site and dragon saga is the only one that would deserve being plaed cuz the other ones are DEAD.
and dragonica got lots of development( sory if i wrote this wrong im not native english talker)