A stand out online fantasy strategy game | Full Review - Call of Dragons
Call of Dragons is a new upcoming fantasy strategy mobile game that features city-building aspects combined with strategy war game and RPG elements. It is currently available for testing on mobile devices and for PC as well as an emulated-port.
🟩Pros
+Beautiful graphics and presentation
+Highly engaging game mechanics
+Commendable user experience
🟥Cons
-time consuming
-Heavy pay to win elements
From the makers of the popular strategy game Rise of Kingdoms, comes another similar game with a Lord of the Rings makeover. A fantasy world populated by Orcs, Humans, Elves, these three races have been at war for the longest time, until the arrival of a universal threat. The invasion of the Darklings.
Call of Dragons has a lot going up on its plate, starting with the city building aspect. At the outset, players have to choose between three main factions representing the three main races aforementioned above.
Since you can create multiple characters in different servers, I was able to play two factions at once. I chose the elven faction and the human factions. They are visually and audibly distinct from each other with different buildings and voice acting, but most of the gameplay elements, even the story, are the same.
The main gameplay loop focuses on upgrading the City Hall. Upgrading such buildings will require the prerequisite building and levels, plus a specific amount of resources. And these resources are in turn generated and rewarded by the game through various production buildings and tasks.
The base-building element is pretty time consuming, and players will need to wait out hours, days even, for some buildings to complete. Giving players something to look for and constantly check for in a day to day manner. You can only construct or upgrade one building at a time, or more depending on the number of builders that you have. I also loved how you can reposition buildings without a hassle, not even costing anything.
It’s a pretty overwhelming system, but this has been made easier by a commendable user interface, clearly identifying what buildings or levels are needed. Tracking down what needs to be upgraded is possible with just a few convenient touches.
Of course, with the city building aspect comes the need to defend it and attack others as well. That’s where the army management aspect comes in. Different structures can train different troops, and you can assign heroes to lead them.
Heroes come in many forms: mages, warriors, etc. Coming from across all races and can be leveled up in an RPG fashion, complete with a skill tree and talent system. Heroes can be obtained in a gacha manner by either grinding or in-game purchase to open chests .
The battles play out automatically with minor interventions, mostly in the form of moving units and activating skills. Troop composition and strength is what mostly matters. Like Rise of Kingdoms, what makes Call of Dragons much more unique from the rest of the online RPG strategy games out there is that players' troops and units can freely travel across the land, not only attack, defend, or directly interact with specific points of interest.
At first, there’s more than plenty enough of everything to get players started, it will feel like you’re on a cheat code with unlimited resources and currency. Everything is just a time-investment during the early parts, with all the timers players wait for upgrades are in progress.
However, once players approach mid-game, Call of Dragons slowly starts depriving them of the basic necessities, steadily leading to more grinding, and gradually implanting dependency to the gacha mechanics. Sooner or later, players are now considering paying to progress faster.
The online world map is so big, and I mean big. It will take players literal months, or even years, to even get to the farthest points, and I’m not even talking about fully exploring it, which is just basically impractical.
While it is so big, they came up short with the zooming in aspect — the units are too small to see in all its glory. however the game was indeed designed to show hundreds of battles at once, so that may be a necessary compromise.
There is a story that players can follow, which picks up where the introduction left. 4 sets of stories to play and each divided into many different parts. From what I can see, it’s a pretty standalone experience from the rest of the gameplay, one that is optional.
Aside from the story, you can also take part in a series of around 80 increasingly difficult battle missions via the “Dragon Trail”. The premise is relatively simple, just defeat the enemies in combat, and get rewards. Giving players something cool to do, especially when waiting and there’s nothing else to do in the city-building aspect.
Multiplayer is also highly integrated within Call of Dragons that takes the game into another level of fun. Players can form alliances and participate in alliance research, wars, and team ups with other co-members. Players will also receive various alliance bonuses such as additional resources and donations/helps. If you have friends to play with in this game, the fun factor is easily doubled.
As for the presentation, the voice acting is top-notch, everything in this game speaks high production values, including the CGI-looking in-game graphics and cinematics. You can tell that the developers and artists took great care in crafting this beautiful game. My only gripe, as said earlier, is that the units are too small and you cannot zoom in very close to the action.
Conclusion:
Call of Dragons is a great fantasy strategy game; the beautiful graphics, amazing presentation, accessible user interface, and highly engaging gameplay mechanics are what makes this game stand out in the mobile gaming scene. It of course comes with the caveat of free-to-play games, it’s pay-to-win. I only highly recommend it if you and your friends are into those types of games.
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