A vast fantasy world filled with random events and choices | Review - Dragonheir: Silent Gods
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✨Overview
Dragonheir: Silent Gods is a high-fantasy RPG game with immersive role playing elements, intriguing narrative, and a relaxing tactical combat experience. Set in a universe where chaos and order collide, and gods and mortals are inextricably linked. It is now available for both PC and Mobile and features crossplay and cross progression capabilities.
Dragonheir: Silent Gods promises to take us on an epic RPG journey through an expansive high-fantasy world where the fate of the universe hangs in the balance, and the choices we make ripple through its fabric.
📌Pros and Cons
📖Story
At its core is the story of the Child of Chaos, a being who dared to challenge the Dragon God's reign over the Chaos Universum but ultimately failed. The Dragon Queen, Tiamat, personally exiled this rebellious entity, and for centuries, it remained imprisoned. Yet, ominous forces are at play, and a thousand sacrifices threaten to set the Child of Chaos free.
Our hero — who happens to be the thousandth sacrifice, is intertwined with these very events. Over the course of the story, our hero meets Noteera and Heksandra, along with many more companions to aid them in their adventure. However, there seems to be more to the story than meets the eye, and the plot thickens as we delve deeper into the narrative.
The plot unfolds in a manner reminiscent of a finely crafted fantasy novel or Dungeons and Dragons campaign, with layers of complexity and revelations that keep you guessing. With its ability to surprise and subvert expectations, creating an engrossing narrative that continually evolves. It's a story that grows in depth and complexity as you progress, with twists and turns that will leave you pondering the true nature of chaos and destiny.
Most of the story is decently voice acted, and it even comes with a proper narrator that helps set the mood for the storytelling. The only minor caveat in the story department is that, at times, the abundance of characters, subplots, and dialogue can feel overwhelming. To the point that you just want to play. However, this complexity contributes to the game's rich lore for those invested in it, and players who appreciate intricate narratives will find it rewarding.
🎨Graphics and Art Style
The graphics of the game are just simply amazing with console-like fidelity in the character models and the world around. The general art style is deeply rooted in the gothic and dark fantasy genres. The game world is characterized by grim, eerie, and foreboding settings. It often features dilapidated architecture, macabre landscapes, and a general sense of decay and despair.
🕹Performance and Controls
Playing both the PC and Mobile version, there is literally no difference in how it looks, as long as you select the same graphical settings. Both are equally as beautiful, although of course, playing the mobile version was a little bit more impressive because of the pocket-sized nature. I was able to play at High on my Snapdragon 888 phone and very high on my i7-8700k RTX 3080 PC without any issues, although you may encounter some occasional lagging especially in the first few minutes of opening the game.(e.g. opening menus or entering combat).
There is also occasional absence of audio (music, sound effects, or dialogue) during certain sequences, resulting in a dead silent experience for the players that at times I thought the game lost its audio or I accidentally muted it. While the game excels in its voice acting and orchestral high-fantasy soundtrack, it falls short in delivering a consistent audio experience.
As for the controls, It supports both touch and keyboard/mouse controls for their respective platforms, in which I have no gripes with. Unfortunately, there is no support for physical gamepads.
🎮Core Gameplay
Dragonheir: Silent Gods offers a gameplay experience that's both immersive and captivating. The core gameplay mechanic revolves around dice rolls and role playing, which players use to influence their actions, whether it's in combat, trading, persuasion or stealing. This dice-based system adds an element of randomness and excitement to every in-game situation.
The story adapts to your choices and actions, ensuring that both the narrative and gameplay experience feels empowering and cinematic, although not to the extent that the game feels like an open-ended dynamic sandbox — as everyone is still bound to the same narrative structure as everyone else. Whether your goal is to destroy your enemies, save the world, or just simply explore it, Dragonheir: Silent Gods suits various playstyles very well.
The game introduces over 200 different heroes, representing various races and classes, including Iskallan Dwarves, Death Knights, Orcs, Humans, Dark Elves, Sorcerers, Knights, and Undead, among others. This diversity offers players a wide range of options for assembling their dream team of heroes. By the first few hours I had already recruited lots of heroes to use for my adventure. Each hero can be customized with equipment, runes, and further upgraded using ascension materials obtained from grinding the game.
⚔️Combat
Dragonheir: Silent Gods features a semi-real-time tactical combat system that incorporates elements of strategy, grid placement, and dice checks. Players can strategically position their heroes on a grid to leverage their strengths and exploit enemy weaknesses. Additionally, assessing the elemental affinities of heroes and foes allows for tactical decision-making to maximize damage output or defense.
The entire combat is automated and can be fast forwarded, but you can still heavily influence it through the initial placement of units and by strategically using hero skills. Hero skills range from high-DPS single targets to massive AOE attacks like fireballs. Up to five heroes from your lineup can be selected and freely maneuver in a grid-like battlefield while in combat, engaging enemies with their AI. Fortunately, there is no friendly fire for AOE attacks, allowing players to unleash their AOE skills and abilities without worry. The animations are not only visually appealing but also entertaining for the most part. Of course at the end of the day, the heroes’ power level and rarity matters the most.
Furthermore, the game offers slight variations to the combat system. In addition to the traditional versus combat, the layout of the grids also vary. There's also the dungeon crawling variation where you progress through the dungeon, facing one wave of enemies at a time. During some defensive-oriented segments, the system transforms into a tower defense setup, requiring you to strategically place units and prevent enemies from escaping along the designated path. I like the variety, it avoids the game pit falling into a repetitive single combat style while still introducing not too many variations that it becomes hard to master.
🗺 The World
The game features an overworld 'adventure' mode that resembles a tabletop setup. In this mode, you can freely explore and interact with the world, encountering enemies, collecting resources, taking on dungeons, challenges, and visiting various locations, including cities and taverns. The aesthetics of the overworld map are equally visually appealing as the overall graphics of the game, enhancing the game's immersive atmosphere.
Notably, there is no change in art style or a sudden shift to a Chibi art style, as seen in other RPG games. Players will find themselves in numerous situations where they must make choices, roll dice for skill checks, and experience the corresponding outcomes. These elements add an extra layer of role-playing akin to classic DND tabletop games, where decisions carry both risks and rewards that shape the overall gameplay experience.
After the introduction part of the game, I was free to practically go anywhere I want in this big map of the material plane, and do things my way. Teleportation is common; the player isn’t deprived of fast traveling even to unexplored locations even from the start.
The world is expansive, and features many game modes that contribute to a great role-playing experience. Such as setting up camp anywhere, anytime during adventure mode to craft meals, equipment, train, and improve your characters. As well as the option to join alliances and take on dungeon challenges with friends, or against them in asynchronous arena style PVP matches.
Personally, fresh off coming from playing Baldur's Gate 3 and Diablo IV? Dragonheir: Silent Gods definitely passed the vibe check for me, and feels somewhat similar to either of those games in its artistic tones and gameplay mechanics. The use of the 20 sided dice alone is a nice nod to Dungeons and Dragons’s style of play.
💵 Free-to-play with In-app purchases
As a live-service free-to-play game, it features expected features like login bonuses, weekly events, premium currency, a stamina system to limit playtime, and even gacha methods to obtain new heroes. Remarkably, the game strikes a decent balance, at least in my free-to-play experience in my first few hours, I found the game highly enjoyable and I never felt pressured to spend money. I found the gacha rates are kind of generous, as I was already able to get five legendary units in my first few hours of play, and I was overflowing with stamina. Moreover, there are combat-oriented game modes designed to facilitate material farming for character progression.
Since previous test leading up to the September 19 release of Dragonheir: Silent Gods, the game also has undergone some changes and additions that may be noteworthy for previous testers:
60 New Heroes are added, new season dungeon and mid-season events, the addition of a new playable race called Lizardfolk, and a shifting rotation for elemental affinity and rules each season. For Season 1, new pairings include Fire & Poison, Radiance & Lightning, and Necrosis & Ice.
⚖️Conclusion
Dragonheir: Silent Gods' evocation of a D&D vibe, combined with the freedom to explore a vast, immersive world filled with random events and player choices, is the game’s best highlight to me. The diversity of characters with unique skills, the automation of combat, and dungeon crawling make for a relaxing yet engaging gameplay experience for both PC and mobile.
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