"Defeat!"
"Draegi is mortally wounded and falls to the ground. The Tiny Elvis roots through his possessions and takes:
Marks (2243)
Short Beer (43)"
"You go to sleep immediately, exhausted from the events of the day"
I stared at the screen, aghast. I'd spent days tracking down "Tiny Elvis"! Nevermind how exactly The King managed to wheedle his way into what can only be called a mediaeval computer game in all other respects, I needed that guitar of his to be a better illusionist! (or "Sorcerer" in Dragon Court-ish.)
That was the point which, luckily for my sanity, I thought to finally write the review I'd been composing in my head for quite a while. I don't know how else I could have handled the slightly less than 7 hour wait before the game-sun was due to rise once more and Draegi could wake up and try to mug that errant rock star again.
Lost? Dragon Court 2("DC2") is one in the range of free, online, fantasy role playing games that are available to play online at the moment. Like most such games, this rpg opens in your internet window using a windows ready-installed program called Java; meaning that no install is required before play. This can be useful because it means that this game can be played anywhere cleanly, without having to mess around with installs. (Although of course, I wouldn't recommend you play this where you work/study, as the game isn't untraceable and I certainly wouldn't want people making me feel guilty for getting them into trouble. ;>)Of the makers of Dragon Court: "Fiends.com", I feel their motto would be a fair representation of them. Listed in the credits of DC2 one can find what is referred to as a "Zen Riddle": "When is a game worth playing?" Surfing around the rest of their site, I think I might have stumbled across the answer to that. "A game is worth playing when it wastes time." Truly a riddle worthy of the Zen masters of paradox. In deference to Fiends.com however, I would say that if their aim was a game which uses up peoples time and stops them being bored, Dragon Court succeeds admirably.
This is partly due to a feature which has been ported straight from the other text based internet games - A Dragon Court player can only play so much each day. Every seven hours, a player has a number of "quest points" given to them. These can be used to go adventuring (one point per encounter, etc.) although there are no negative repercussions if they are not used. This limits the amount of time a person can spend on the game in any one sitting, and means that players must make the game only a part of their lives, not the only thing they do all day! I've heard a lot of players grumble about this, but I really like the idea personally, and it does make the play a lot fairer for those of us who don't play all day.
At the risk of completely losing you, Dragon Court plays as a graphical "point and click" game. If you look at my first screenshot you'll see the map screen, which is the main mode. To go adventuring, one clicks one of the locations on the map, and once there either runs into a random encounter, (if outside) or comes into a room (if a location inside is clicked.
) Either way, this screen contains a list of options (if you look at screenshot 2) which one can select with more pointing and clicking. Clicking on each different option will produce a clicking sound which is so annoying that it usually gets disabled 5 minutes into each session by me. This, along with some affects for battle cries, and skill manoeuvring, makes up the whole of Dragon Court's audio repertoire. As for graphics, as you can see, Dragon Court is graphical, but only very barely so. This is kind of disappointing when Dragon Court is compared to other games in it's genre like Runescape with the incredible "unlockable jukebox" songs, and 3d action. This game is also so text leaden that it could easily be called really linear, (although many different options can be chosen in any given situation, and different players should be able to use their characters in different ways.) However Dragon Court's real appeal lies beyond its' occasional sound affects and picture graphics. The gameplay is well thought through, and seems "just right". How else do you describe a game which features an "oops" button in the inventory, to undo you dropping items wrongly?
The portal for Dragon Court 2 is fairly stable, but on busy days I've found my character quite frequently frozen in place for a while. So far for me the game has crashed only twice, and I never seem to lose anything, even at peak times. I would place Dragon Court far above other games in the genre like Adventure Quest in this regard, since that latter game always seems to be too busy to allow free characters to enter.
What kind of character can a person make on Dragon Court 2? I know this is a very important consideration for a lot of people, and thankfully, the answer is A LOT. Characters on Dragon Court are far freer than their comrades on Adventure Quest and Runescape. The freedom can probably only be easily compared to games such as Wyvern before that one went down. In any case, I'm afraid it will take me a long time to explain the basic character possibilities, and details of the specifics are not readily available before registering for the game so I will have to go into it. If you're not interested you should probably scan ahead a bit…
When a player creates an account the username they chose becomes their "Family" name. All characters created on that account bear that family name as well as an additional first name. Characters also age, given time in the world. The only way to stop this is to join a special "clan" which makes its' members immortal -more on this later.) In game each character also has access to a number of "family" structures, such as the family bank account and any personal houses any of your characters buys. As a character progresses they can earn fame (for being well known by the people) and court favour, reflecting how highly they are liked in "court". Over time, both these scores naturally turn into "clout" which accumulates for the whole family from each individual characters fame and favour.
There are currently 8 races: (Human, Elf, Dwarf, Orc, Faery, Goblin, Centaur and Troll.) There are also "classes" which can be chosen, but I've never seen this class listed in game, and taking one seems to be optional. All it seems to do is give you a bonus to some of your starting skills, but all skills in the game are available to all characters, and these bonuses are not large, so you could pick up any given class bonus in about 5 minutes if you had money for training, (except possibly that of the Rogue and Ranger, which would take you a bit longer.) Most skills have to be taught for the first point before you can start training them by yourself, although not the basic ones.
I should probably point out at this point that on free accounts, the character level is capped at 20. However, before you all run away, all the skills, including your three major "attributes" go up independently of your level, depending on your experience, and how much you use them.
To go briefly through the some skills, at the risk of over simplification, there are 3 major attributes: "Guts" (which makes up your characters hit points) "Wits" (which makes up how intelligent your character is, and how many spells he/she/neither/both (Dragon Court caters for any of those. ;>) can cast. "Charm" meanwhile, represents how much that the beings you interact with will like and be influenced by you.
Of basic skills, we could start off with describing the most basic which reflect you getting passively better at what you do with practice. Skills like "Slash" (improving sword/axe damage) and "Stab" (improving spear/dagger damage) fit in here, as do skills like the all important "Riddle" (making you better at riddling) and "Feed" (making you better at feeding animals to stop them attacking). Slightly more specific than this are skills such as "Archer" which need the first point to be taught, but after this immediately start to give you greater passive bonuses as you keep using your skill in certain situations. (For example the Archer improves as you use bows/slings/muskets against flying enemies,) while "Medic" improves as you use healing items. Resistance skills also work like this, with skills like "Stubborn" annoyingly making creatures resistant to all my illusions, and "Sensible" which can stop creatures being charmed (by the offer of food for example). Finally, the enchanting and crafting skills which we haven't gone into such as "Alchemist" or "Cook", and the skills to obtain the raw ingredients to put together such as "Miner" or "Farmer" would all fit in here too.
The most complex, but exciting sets of skills are ones which have to be selected while in combat. You might call these skills "Feats" of a sort, because they're rarer, and have to be actively selected, although of course, in the complex manner of Dragon Court, there are passive skills which govern how good you are generally at using these active skills. These can be divided roughly into "Combat Manoeuvres" and "Magic Manoeuvres".
Of Combat Manoeuvres there are so called "Warrior" skills, such as "Berserk" which lets you go mad at one enemy, and "Sweep" which lets you attack whole columns. Here there are also "Thief" skills such as "Sneak" which make you hard to see for enemies, and "Steal" which lets you steal items from an enemy (although this skill is currently only partially in place.) Finally, there are "Ranger" skills, including skills such as "Howl" which scares enemies, "Snare" which traps enemies, and Disarm.
For Magic Manoeuvres, we have a supremely impressive six branches for manoeuvres. To summarise their affects: "Cleric" spells; heal, protect and identify. "Wizard" spells; harm, put you under or over the ground, augment and summon. "Sorcerer" spells
When Is a Game "Worth Playing"? 
