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Dreamlords Review
Posted April 12th, 2007 by Ethec
First Impressions of Dreamlords
A Ten Ton Hammer Review
April 12, 2007
One caveat: since what I’m discussing is such a new approach for MMO design, I hope those familiar with Dreamlords will forgive me for explaining the game as I go along rather than just offering a straight black-and-white review. Those familiar with the game might want to skip to the scores and analysis on page two.
| Publisher: | (self published) |
| Developer: | Lockpick Entertainment |
| Genre: | MMORPG |
| Homepage: | Official Site |
| ESRB Rating: | "Teen" - 12+ |
| Release Date: | February 15th, 2007 |
It’s not all that often nowadays that a genuinely new MMO comes along. Press releases announcing experiments in fusing the massively multiplayer framework with gaming genres other than the category’s bread-and-butter - the RPG - are increasingly common.
Dreamlords is one such fusion project, a split-client take on a true MMORTS (Massively Multiplayer Online Real Time Strategy game). I say “split-client” because you’ll cover the strategic aspects of the game (building, recruiting armies, population management, resource gathering, even relocating your troops around your own little floating island country or “patria”) in the browser or “web client”, and fight out the battles in the in the beautifully 3D-rendered “RTS client.”
“RTS client” is therefore a bit of a misnomer – this isn’t a RTS in the vein of Starcraft where you’re aim is to build big and build fast to overwhelm your opponent. The action is more tactical than strategic; there’s no building at all in the RTS part of Dreamlords, and you’re limited to what you take into combat with you.
You’d be tempted, therefore, to guess that the RTS client battles are fairly straightforward paper-rock-scissors affairs based wholly on who has the biggest, baddest army and are decided before the first bowstring twangs. And you’d be glad to learn that you guessed wrong. Jon Selin and crew have woven RPG concepts like aggro management, “train”ing, and kiting into the AI. It’s entirely possible to pin a nasty between two fast ranged units (“kiting”) if you’re fast with the mouse clicks and have organized your interface well (the standard RTS “order of battle” method of selecting and “naming” units with CRTL+1, CRTL+2 etc. to quickly select them later is a big part of successful gameplay).
Dreamlords does |
On the other hand, say you have 3 tank units attacking a group of mobs, and one squads is the focus of every enemy unit’s attack. He can take that “aggro” and run with it, drawing the pursuing enemy across the raking attacks of your other squads until, of course, the mobs hates one of your other units worse. There are heaps of special attacks that you can structure a tactic around (or, conversely, tactically minimize a special attack from a powerful enemy). Combat in the RTS client is, needless to say, pretty harrowing and from the start of the game you’ll have plenty of those white knuckle, battle in the balance, to-the-last-man estrus-filled moments that define fun for so many gamers.
That’s not to say it’s easy; in fact, my first few hours playing this game were chock full of frustration. Those of us used to the introductory quest / tutorial intro to most of today’s MMOs will probably complete countless quests before they ever run into serious difficulty. Dreamlords has a 92 step (at last count) tutorial which is entirely worthwhile, but it’s just the beginning of the learning process. This is not a game where you check your brain at the login screen. In Dreamlords, I got seriously stuck on the third quest simply because I was trying to play it like a straight-up RTS – damn the torpedoes and charge straight ahead. I lacked numbers, but more seriously lacked a plan. It turns out that Lockpick put a LOT of thought into the pace at which you can develop and successfully fight in Dreamlords.
You’ll work out much of the military pace by making decisions in the browser. Building more and more powerful armies entails completing quests, hiring leaders, constructing buildings, gathering resources, and ensuring cities are populous enough to appropriately "staff" structures. Events like resource gathering happen in real time – so there’s always a limit to how strong a hardcore gamer can progress compared to a casual gamer, all things being equal. Populations have a breakpoint as well, too much housing and not enough “gnosis” (the stat for the authority of the Dreamlord – i.e. you – earned by dissolving unneeded spoils of war) leads to a percentage of rebels stirring up trouble and lowering the efficiency of resource gathering and production.
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Continue to the
analysis & scores...
Genre: Fantasy
Status: Published
Release Date: February 15, 2007; Relaunched: June 18, 2008
Fee: P2P
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