After playing it for 2 and a half years (I joined halfway through the second anniversary when I finally jumped from a shitty iPhone to an Android), I was considering writing up a review of this game. Never imagined it would turn into a eulogy.
Dragalia Lost is a collaborative effort between Nintendo and Cygames, taking the throne of Nintendo's only wholly unique mobile title. The most barebones description of the game would be "a touch-controlled top-down dungeon crawler with a heavy emphasis on boss fights", but something simple like that feels like a disservice to everything I love about this game. So that's my justification for what I can only imagine will be an abnormally long retrospective for a gacha game found below this point. Buckle up.
The controls are simple. Touch and drag in a direction on the screen to move in that direction. Swipe in a direction to dodge in that direction. Tap the screen repeatedly to attack. Touch and hold to do a "force strike" (charged attack). Tap either skill button at the bottom of the screen to use that skill when it's charged. That's really all there is to know, and it's all that's necessary for the main crux of Dragalia Lost: its boss fights. All you gotta do is dodge through normal attacks (shown through red inidcators) and outright avoid undodgeable attacks (shown through purple indicators). Sounds easy when you put it like that, but in practice? It gets insane real quick. The keys to success are preparation, improvisation, and memorization. Knowing is half the battle after all, and most bosses do follow patterns when performing their moves. There will always be situations where you'll have to make a choice in the moment though: Does this move have enough i-frames? Should I use my shapeshift to tank this unavoidable attack, or save it so I can do massive damage when the boss' defenses are broken? And most importantly: Was I even properly prepared going in?
Power creep comes naturally with the nature of gacha, driving you to roll for better characters, but Dragalia's focus on a large quantity of characters that are all upgraded from the same pools of resources allowed most of the "weaker" units to be viable for most of the game's content. Every single character has their quirks, many are better against certain enemies, and many work best when paired up with other specific characters. Teams consist of four characters, each one gets a weapon, a dragon, and five wyrmprints (stat modifiers with really nice artwork attached). Gradually making your teams strong enough to fight endgame content had the unfortunate side effect of making "normal" content essentially play itself. They did solve this later in the game's life by having specific story-related quests give your team fixed stats, but I personally would've liked to see them take it a step further, like letting us manually limit our character's levels for the sake of self-imposed challenge. (the kaleidoscape managed to do this somewhat, more on that later)
Outside of the emphasis on boss battles, Dragalia got to be experimental with what it could squeeze out of its gameplay. There's a dedicated battle royale mode. The game's April Fool's Day jokes ended up being a shoot-em-up and a mode where you play with a dog and take photos. During the last year of its life, they added a mode called "Enter the Kaleidoscape", a roguelite mode where you descend a randomized 50-floor gauntlet with any character in your roster. They're reset back to level 1, and you need to make do with the randomized equipment drops to tough your way through. I don't mean this as a backhanded compliment: Dragalia Lost is a great example of reusing assets to their fullest potential, and working within the scale of what you've got.
Dragalia Lost was just a really accessible game in general. Materials of higher rarities could be exchanged for ones of lower rarities (and vice versa). Something this game inherited from Princess Connect: Re:Dive was Skip Tickets, a consumable that allows you to reap the rewards of a quest you've already beaten, without actually having to play it. Dragalia is also home to a feature that all gachas should have: the Event Compendium. Missed an event the first time around?Joined the game two years after its initial launch? Need to hoard some more rewards? Stamina and free time burning a hole in your pocket? The Event Compendium basically ensures that you'll have new content to tackle for a damn long while, and you can do so at your leisure. Notte's Notes was another good feature, a library containing nearly every single story event and your roster of adventurers/dragons. You can view their 2D art/3D models, hear some voice clips, rewatch their gacha pull animations, it's all great stuff.
The music drives this game's identity and energy. Coupled with the presentation overall, it transforms the game into something greater, a "straight vibe" is what I believe the kids call it. DAOKO's soundtrack serves as a backbeat for the whole game, really. Her early involvement in creating many of the game's most commonly used songs go a long way. This isn't to discredit all the other talent that worked on Dragalia Lost's music though. The whole OST is incredible. The characters bob their heads to the beat of whatever music is playing in the menus, something I will never fail to think of when I hear "Bokurano Network." Not to mention that the UI is clean and fluid, the way everything slides in and out of frame in the menus is so damn smooth. None of the backdrops for the dialogue segments are static imagery, there's always some subtle bit of life to them. It can be something as simple as foliage swaying in the visible breeze, the clouds passing overhead, light peeking through the treetops, dust particles floating around a musty old room, among countless other examples. A little bit of life in your more mundane elements goes a long way, and Dragalia Lost goes the distance.
On the topic of those character and dragon designs, they're all excellent, even the lesser ones. Character art was all done by one person, Naoki Saito, and that kind of unified style comes through in every character. No two are alike, but no one looks out of place either. Every design is elaborate and colorful, from the main characters to the NPCs. Dragons in particular stand out for not being limited to the typical portrayal of "big lizard monster." Dragons come in all shapes, sizes, and forms in Dragalia Lost (and they're also all designed by one artist!) Dragalia's setting allowed for tons of creative freedom in terms of characters, species, scenarios, and world-building. There's a church system divided by two vastly different sets of beliefs, an set of small islands overseas called "Hinomoto", a species of forest-dwelling rabbit people called "Sylvans", an underwater city of fish people (we were robbed of a playable fish person), celebrations of the lunar new year, and so much more.
A lot of my praise goes to the excellent localization work by 8-4 Ltd and the really good English voice actors, minimal as the voice clips may be. Being a fresh IP under Nintendo's brand and combined with Cygames' connections, Dragalia had the opportunity to have crossovers with tons of out-there properties, including Fire Emblem, Mega Man, Monster Hunter, Persona 5, and Princess Connect: ReDive. All the adventurer stories are worth reading to some degree. Every single one manages to have their own self-contained arc. Dragon stories take the form of fables long since passed. Some of my favorite characters/stories include:
-demon child and her two gay dads
-anything about the Apostles, messengers of Her divine will;Christianity has never been cooler
-Audric and Cassandra. hoo boy.
-The goddess of this world is actually a spunky young alchemist with an adoptive fairy mother
-Pop star mermaid dragon
Finally, I wanna take a moment to thank the community for being so cool. Every time I had a question, wanted help building a team, struggled to wrap my head around the Wyrmprint system, or wanted to play co-op with people who understood what they were even doing, the Discord server was there for me. I'm never gonna forget the jabs we took at Genshin Impact's 1st anniversary (if you could even call it one) versus our third anniversary. Hell, once EoS was announced, I witnessed them going full steam ahead into archival mode. For all the doomposting we joked about, I don't think any of us wanted it for real. We just knew that the announcement could come any day.
Even though Dragalia Lost will reach its end-of-service soon, the one thing I'm the most satisfied with is how the game will end with dignity. The plug won't be pulled prematurely; as of me writing this, the game's campaign has finished with the conclusion of its final chapter. I have no doubt in my mind that I'm going to miss this game. I bought the artbook and both soundtrack CDs just so I'll have something tangible to remember the game by. In the not-so-distant future, the only way to relive all this game's content will be to load up a YouTube playlist from an archive project. It makes a part of me feel hollow, knowing that I'll likely never enjoy this game in its original format ever again. I've always known this to be the eventual fate of all gacha games, but I can't say I ever imagined I would get attached to one like this, much less watch it fade away in real time. So, once more for the road:
Thank you Cygames, and thank you, Mr. Lost.
Dragalia Lost is a collaborative effort between Nintendo and Cygames, taking the throne of Nintendo's only wholly unique mobile title. The most barebones description of the game would be "a touch-controlled top-down dungeon crawler with a heavy emphasis on boss fights", but something simple like that feels like a disservice to everything I love about this game. So that's my justification for what I can only imagine will be an abnormally long retrospective for a gacha game found below this point. Buckle up.
The controls are simple. Touch and drag in a direction on the screen to move in that direction. Swipe in a direction to dodge in that direction. Tap the screen repeatedly to attack. Touch and hold to do a "force strike" (charged attack). Tap either skill button at the bottom of the screen to use that skill when it's charged. That's really all there is to know, and it's all that's necessary for the main crux of Dragalia Lost: its boss fights. All you gotta do is dodge through normal attacks (shown through red inidcators) and outright avoid undodgeable attacks (shown through purple indicators). Sounds easy when you put it like that, but in practice? It gets insane real quick. The keys to success are preparation, improvisation, and memorization. Knowing is half the battle after all, and most bosses do follow patterns when performing their moves. There will always be situations where you'll have to make a choice in the moment though: Does this move have enough i-frames? Should I use my shapeshift to tank this unavoidable attack, or save it so I can do massive damage when the boss' defenses are broken? And most importantly: Was I even properly prepared going in?
Power creep comes naturally with the nature of gacha, driving you to roll for better characters, but Dragalia's focus on a large quantity of characters that are all upgraded from the same pools of resources allowed most of the "weaker" units to be viable for most of the game's content. Every single character has their quirks, many are better against certain enemies, and many work best when paired up with other specific characters. Teams consist of four characters, each one gets a weapon, a dragon, and five wyrmprints (stat modifiers with really nice artwork attached). Gradually making your teams strong enough to fight endgame content had the unfortunate side effect of making "normal" content essentially play itself. They did solve this later in the game's life by having specific story-related quests give your team fixed stats, but I personally would've liked to see them take it a step further, like letting us manually limit our character's levels for the sake of self-imposed challenge. (the kaleidoscape managed to do this somewhat, more on that later)
Outside of the emphasis on boss battles, Dragalia got to be experimental with what it could squeeze out of its gameplay. There's a dedicated battle royale mode. The game's April Fool's Day jokes ended up being a shoot-em-up and a mode where you play with a dog and take photos. During the last year of its life, they added a mode called "Enter the Kaleidoscape", a roguelite mode where you descend a randomized 50-floor gauntlet with any character in your roster. They're reset back to level 1, and you need to make do with the randomized equipment drops to tough your way through. I don't mean this as a backhanded compliment: Dragalia Lost is a great example of reusing assets to their fullest potential, and working within the scale of what you've got.
Dragalia Lost was just a really accessible game in general. Materials of higher rarities could be exchanged for ones of lower rarities (and vice versa). Something this game inherited from Princess Connect: Re:Dive was Skip Tickets, a consumable that allows you to reap the rewards of a quest you've already beaten, without actually having to play it. Dragalia is also home to a feature that all gachas should have: the Event Compendium. Missed an event the first time around?
The music drives this game's identity and energy. Coupled with the presentation overall, it transforms the game into something greater, a "straight vibe" is what I believe the kids call it. DAOKO's soundtrack serves as a backbeat for the whole game, really. Her early involvement in creating many of the game's most commonly used songs go a long way. This isn't to discredit all the other talent that worked on Dragalia Lost's music though. The whole OST is incredible. The characters bob their heads to the beat of whatever music is playing in the menus, something I will never fail to think of when I hear "Bokurano Network." Not to mention that the UI is clean and fluid, the way everything slides in and out of frame in the menus is so damn smooth. None of the backdrops for the dialogue segments are static imagery, there's always some subtle bit of life to them. It can be something as simple as foliage swaying in the visible breeze, the clouds passing overhead, light peeking through the treetops, dust particles floating around a musty old room, among countless other examples. A little bit of life in your more mundane elements goes a long way, and Dragalia Lost goes the distance.
On the topic of those character and dragon designs, they're all excellent, even the lesser ones. Character art was all done by one person, Naoki Saito, and that kind of unified style comes through in every character. No two are alike, but no one looks out of place either. Every design is elaborate and colorful, from the main characters to the NPCs. Dragons in particular stand out for not being limited to the typical portrayal of "big lizard monster." Dragons come in all shapes, sizes, and forms in Dragalia Lost (and they're also all designed by one artist!) Dragalia's setting allowed for tons of creative freedom in terms of characters, species, scenarios, and world-building. There's a church system divided by two vastly different sets of beliefs, an set of small islands overseas called "Hinomoto", a species of forest-dwelling rabbit people called "Sylvans", an underwater city of fish people (we were robbed of a playable fish person), celebrations of the lunar new year, and so much more.
A lot of my praise goes to the excellent localization work by 8-4 Ltd and the really good English voice actors, minimal as the voice clips may be. Being a fresh IP under Nintendo's brand and combined with Cygames' connections, Dragalia had the opportunity to have crossovers with tons of out-there properties, including Fire Emblem, Mega Man, Monster Hunter, Persona 5, and Princess Connect: ReDive. All the adventurer stories are worth reading to some degree. Every single one manages to have their own self-contained arc. Dragon stories take the form of fables long since passed. Some of my favorite characters/stories include:
-demon child and her two gay dads
-anything about the Apostles, messengers of Her divine will;
-Audric and Cassandra. hoo boy.
-The goddess of this world is actually a spunky young alchemist with an adoptive fairy mother
-Pop star mermaid dragon
Finally, I wanna take a moment to thank the community for being so cool. Every time I had a question, wanted help building a team, struggled to wrap my head around the Wyrmprint system, or wanted to play co-op with people who understood what they were even doing, the Discord server was there for me. I'm never gonna forget the jabs we took at Genshin Impact's 1st anniversary (if you could even call it one) versus our third anniversary. Hell, once EoS was announced, I witnessed them going full steam ahead into archival mode. For all the doomposting we joked about, I don't think any of us wanted it for real. We just knew that the announcement could come any day.
Even though Dragalia Lost will reach its end-of-service soon, the one thing I'm the most satisfied with is how the game will end with dignity. The plug won't be pulled prematurely; as of me writing this, the game's campaign has finished with the conclusion of its final chapter. I have no doubt in my mind that I'm going to miss this game. I bought the artbook and both soundtrack CDs just so I'll have something tangible to remember the game by. In the not-so-distant future, the only way to relive all this game's content will be to load up a YouTube playlist from an archive project. It makes a part of me feel hollow, knowing that I'll likely never enjoy this game in its original format ever again. I've always known this to be the eventual fate of all gacha games, but I can't say I ever imagined I would get attached to one like this, much less watch it fade away in real time. So, once more for the road:
Thank you Cygames, and thank you, Mr. Lost.
Hooblashooga
1 year ago