Dragalia Lost Review

3 months ago, on 27 September 2018, Nintendo collaborated with Cygames (A Japanese video game development studio established in 2011 by CyberAgent) to release a brand new mobile game entitled “Dragalia Lost” a single and multiplayer action role-playing game.

The first time I heard of it, I was like “Wow, classic Nintendo gaming on a mobile device! Time to have some fun!”

The story of the game takes place in Alberia, the kingdom where all the dragons live. All the kingdom’s royal family have a Dragon Transformation ability gained after they formed a pact with a dragon in order to borrow their form in battle. One day, something strange occurred, the Holy Shard protected by the Alberia Kingdom started to lose its power. So, the King has requested one of his sons, the Seventh Prince (the only family member who hasn’t made a pact with a dragon) to set off on a quest to complete the Dragon Selection Trial so he can save his people.

Background Story

The story of the game has 6 Chapters currently including both a normal and a hard mode. The story is narrated by a group of voice actors including Japanese and English but the subtitles (a.k.a. the display language in game) has Japanese, English and both simplify as well as traditional Chinese. (I personally prefer listening to the Japanese voice cast because I feel it expresses the feeling in more of an anime style)

Gameplay

The game has 5 different elements Fire, Water, Wind, Light and Darkness which represent the 6 legendary dragons. Technically 5, as one dragon didn’t make it from the previous war.

The game starts off by giving you the main character which is the Seventh Prince himself (a.k.a. Euden which is also a default name that later used in the story) and you can have your first pact forming experience with the Legendary Wind Dragon, (a.k.a Lord of Strom) Midgardsormr.

There are 4 major gameplay elements in this game, heroes, dragons, weapons and wyrmprints (Support card). You will be given maximum of 6 team slots to form a variety of different teams. Each team has a maximum capacity of 4 heroes.

Heroes

Let’s start off with heroes first. They are classified into a number of different classes such as attack, defence, recovery and support. Heroes, dragons, weapons and wyrmprints are rated as 3, 4 or 5 stars. Each star is limits the maximum level of the thing in question. For heroes, 3 stars can level up to 60 levels only, 4 stars can go up to 70 levels and 5 stars can go until 80 levels. For example, Sophie’s level (1/60lvl), 60 indicated the maximum level of the card can reach. Althemia is the 4 stars hero example and Xainfried is the 5 stars hero example.

Weapons

There are 8 different types of weapon (sword, subjugator, dagger, axe, trident, bow, rod, staff).

Each character is already equipped with the type of weapon they use. For example, Pia’s weapon symbol (on the right of wind element symbol or at the left of Pia’s name) shows that we can only equip her with tridents.

Dragons

Dragons as I mentioned earlier, are one of five different elements. So, I will use the five legendary dragon in the story as an example.

The wind dragon

The water dragon (Mercury)

Fire dragon (Brunhilda)

later she shapeshifted herself into the face of her human female companion in the past as the story goes on.

(# Waifu xD)

The light dragon (Jupiter)

The darkness dragon (Zodiark)

Wyrmprints

Wyrmprints is a type of supportive card which help to increase stats of the heroes. So, heroes can have greater amount of power in attack or healing or even block some debuffs based on the skill of the “card”.

Castle

Did you think that’s all about this game? One of the more unique feature of Dragalia Lost is that it allows you to build your kingdom by giving you a map with the Halidom, Dragontree, Smithy, Rupie Mine, Elements Altar and many more locations.

During your adventure, you can choose to skip the story and simply play on auto-mode, where the story will go on by itself. It’s just like you’re listening to an audio-book but with moving images and animation.

If you are interested in understanding more of the story, you can also check out the stories of dragons and characters that you unlock later in the game.

Upgrades

Dragalia Lost also includes levelling up and upgrading of your heroes, weapons, dragon and wyrmprints. If you are don’t get any 5 star heroes at the beginning, there is always the option for you to upgrade your heroes, dragons and more. 3 star heroes can also be upgrade to 5 stars heroes as the only requirement is maxing out your level and upgrading them 4 stars and then doing the same to upgrade them to 5 stars.

Dragons, weapons, and wyrmprints don’t act the same as heroes. They cannot be upgraded from 3 stars to 4 stars. Instead, they need the exact same card to increase the maximum level limitation. For example, Jupiter, is needed unlock the maximum level limitation one by one. 4 similar cards to let it reach from level 30 to level 80.

Wyrmprints and dragons are upgraded in a simlar way.

Weapons go by a slightly different method. Upgrading can enhance a normal weapon up to a special weapon (that has an extra ability for heroes to use) to an element weapon. As I mentioned earlier about the unbind part function the same with weapons. In order to get higher stars weapon, you need to level up Halidom (The Castle) to a certain level.

Raid / Events

This is where the multiplayer game mode come into play. I spent roughly 3 months playing this game and there have been 4 events. One has just ended recently which was the Halloween event. These raids consist of 4 players in a room each with a team of 4 heroes. So, 16 characters in total. These events really helps players not wanting to spend money get new characters, elements, upgrading crystals and more in a easier way.

Difficulty can be chosen from easy to hell mode, the medals are separated into bronze, silver and gold for you to collect and hopefully claim some items, maybe even a unique one.

Summon

Dragalia Lost is mainly a card summon game so you can be lucky enough to summon some 5 stars heroes, dragons and wyrmprints. However the chances of getting rare cards is as low as 4%.

Music and Songs

The game’s soundtrack comprises of songs from Daoko’s discography and it’s theme is “Owaranai Sekai de” (“In a Never-Ending World”)

On November 30th, 2018, in anticipation of the “Resplendent Refrain” event, Cygames released a preview of three new songs. “Kaede”, played on the event’s menu, was written/performed by EVE. The event’s soundtrack is avalible on iTunes and Spotify.