Have you ever seen one of those online games advertised on your favorite Youtube videos or when you’re watching shows on not Hulu/Netflix? What if I told you that we took it a step further and played it? You might be surprised about what we’ve found. My fellow contributor Matt and I took off to the Internets and got a closer look at Dragon Awaken and League of Angels 3 by R2Games.
On the surface, Dragon Awaken is an RPG with elements that can be traced back to Blizzard Entertainment. You can find orcs that look like Thrall Hellscream, panda warriors, a girl that looks like Sonya from League of Legends, and various other archetypes that you might even find in Final Fantasy. It’s interesting to see all these different characters chilling out in the Holy City, the central hub for our character. We play as Mekhi Bray, a paragon of sorts who is determined to save his people from the sudden dragon invasion. He unfortunately falls into the anime hero trope. By that I mean he is completely faultless, altruistic, and morally resolute. Not a single bad bone in his body. Everything he does is in the name of his people or his friends. I would have hoped for more character development. Along the way we are also upgrading our dragon, gradually seeing it mature and become more powerful.
The story is fairly straight-forward, at least for first chapter we’ve played. Tensions arise as the dragons return, and this sudden reawakening divides loyalties. Foul magic is also in the air, revealing itself capable of controlling the minds of the Holy City’s prodigies. Certain groups, like the undead and the orcs, side with the dragons, seeing this as an opportunity to better their positions. That part is an assumption on my part, but they are open about their allegiances. Mekhi Bray manages to free some of the heroes that were indoctrinated, and is even able to recruit them into his party at a later point. Your party can get pretty big, and you can organize where people will appear in battle. The game also encourages certain combinations that boost their stats. Something to get enthusiastic about when building your team.
The missions are just as straight-forward as the plot. You can even double click on your quest and you will pathfind all the way to your objective. My experience has mostly consisted of talking to quest givers or recipients and fighting. The game can really just play itself if you let it. I’ve rarely had to select a special ability, generated by the rage meter, in order to comfortably win. Once I got a healer, everything was just so easy. I think I managed to get up to level 25 in less than an hour, but it was sort of addicting when I got gold and experience just by talking to a random person or destroying enemies in battles that last less than 30 seconds.
There are varied stages for the brief missions you go on, but that’s not saying much because you only walk a couple feet, encounter your foe, fight, and go home. The stages are pretty cool though, so I thought it was a shame that we only get to see them for a short time. Otherwise, you click and move around the Holy City and the surrounding regions. The score is repetitive, though. You will hear the same songs over and over again, and the battle theme will get annoying after a while.
You can play Dragon Awaken right now by visiting here: http://daw.r2games.com/
League of Angels 3 Impressions
League of Angels 3 is certainly an interesting looking game that I don’t usually find myself actively seeking out. It looks like something inspired by Diablo and other fantasy-rich titles. While it looks and feels very similar to Dragon Awakening, you can certainly point out the differences in style and progression. Let’s take a closer look at what League of Angels 3 by R2Games has to offer.
Right from the get-go, you can assign your character with a gender and a name. From there you pretty much take your blank slate avatar and try to acquire new gear (usually as rewards) to look better. You walk around with your 3D model via point and click to explore and navigate your environment, but battles are on stages much like in JRPGs. Sometimes there will be a cutscene, especially if the battle is important. When you’re not in combat, you will find that this title really just plays itself similar to Dragon Awaken, but it’s more aggressive here. You have to double click away from everything to stop your character from pathfinding to the next objective. Matt made a comment out of frustration that because the game plays itself rather than the player playing it, it was easier than a game he recalled from a young age, Elmo’s Preschool, which at least posed a challenge in decision making for a three-year-old.
The plot for League of Angels 3 is your classic Chosen One theme, and we are tasked collecting the Divine Armas and uniting heroes against powerful, malevolent, forces. You get a lot of attention when you first arrive, and your first party member even swears fealty to you. Other characters passive aggressively judge you, not thinking very highly of your untested skills. I think the plot is a little more ambiguous for this title, but the character development has more potential, especially since you kind of created him/her. You further customize and level through constellations. The level 11-20 one is not totally impressive, because it’s a serpentine line with no forks in the road, forcing you to make a strategic or meaningful choice.
I like the character art very much. The graphics for the game itself are limited, and sometimes models glitch in and out. This mostly occurs during battle scenarios because they are fast-paced. They don’t tend to last any longer than 30 seconds, that’s how fast we’re talking! That’s good and bad, depending on what you prefer doing. I honestly would prefer to focus more on combat and seeing how my characters improve. And with the game going on auto-pilot, this can cause some problems. What if you stepped away from the keyboard and didn’t level anyone up. Your heroes are walking into a slaughter!
Overall, while the graphics are impressive for browser games and the artwork is well done, the stories seem by the book and cliché, and when a game plays itself more than the player, you have to ask yourself why you even bothered to sit down and play it in the first place. If the game gives more freedom and control to the players in the future, it may be a worth a check if JRPGS are your thing and you are on a tight budget and are looking for something to keep you busy.
You can play League of Angels 3 right now by visiting here.
For more reviews by John Pruitt, go here.
For more reviews by Matt O’Toole, go here.
I like to think of myself as the average Joe who grew up alongside video games. I have fun playing strategy games, RPGs, shooters, sandboxes, the whole shebang! Every game provides an experience whether it strikes you as profound, mundane, or someplace in between. I'd like to weigh in my two cents before you spend a single penny.
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