Dragon City is another freemium game that is available to play on Facebook. It came out in May, and at the time of writing has just under 11 Million players. That is more than World Of Warcraft!
At its core it is a city/pet management game, with a hint of Pokemon/Final Fantasy in its collectibles and combat system.
You build 'Habitats' to house dragons and generate Gold, and you make farms for food. There are a variety of other buildings that can be made that provide functionality and boosts that help you do more, including the Hatchery where you hatch eggs you buy or breed, and a Breeding mountain where you can breed the dragons.
 |
| My city |
In order to get new dragons, you initially need to buy or be gifted elemental dragon eggs (earth, fire, wind, air, ice, etc.) which you can then cross breed with other dragons to create hybrid dragons which will have multiple abilities, and then further down the line, the rare hybrids, legendary or pure dragons. It is very Pokemon-esque and incites quite a 'gotta catch em all' mentality. A full list of the eggs and dragons can be found here:
>Linky< - be warned - you may find youself returning time and time again to see what type of dragon you managed to breed, and to take your new pets for a spin in the arena to find out what works best for you and kick some dragon-rumps.
 |
| A Platiunum and Legendary dragon duel |
There is a ranked battle system (PVP and PVE, but they are all against AI - the PVP system is against the dragons that other people have selected to be their fight-team) in the game where you take the dragons you have bred and trained into combat against other dragons groups. Each dragon has a number of abilities and they can affect other dragons to varying degrees, e.g using a water spell from a water dragon on a fire dragon would do a critical hit and likely kill it in one shot, whereas using a meteor attack from an earth dragon on a fire dragon might result in a 'weak' or 'innefecctive' hit that does little or no damage. The system has many intricacies, at least up until your touting an army of legendary dragons that need to be understood to have success in these arena battles.
 |
| PVP arena (You play against the teams, not actual players.) |
I found this game to be quite addictive, and indeed at the time of writing I am around level 28 and my main battle trio is 3 different legendary dragons (Which admittedly feels cheap.) and I am trying to breed Pure dragons.
Naturally, as a freemium game there are elements to the game that introduce an in game currency, in this case, gems, but much akin to Tiny Tower - it is so easy to gather them through levelling and arena battles, that there is little need to spend unless you have the extra money to do so, or only have short play periods, as the majority of the gem spends are on time boosts (food, breeding, hatching, building and later on, island expansions, most of which take time, and if you want you can skip the wait at the cost of 1 gem per hour.) This game has actually proven to be one of the best facebook games for someone like myself who is too cheap to spend money on freemium games, as the balance of required currencty to available means that at most, I have to play a few days of arena matches to get a pile of gems for things I want to treat myself to. In any case, Facebook/google adverts are all screened and safe so if you are like me, just click on any adverts that interest you and give them some ad revenue ;-).
Verdict:
Graphics: 4/5 (tis good, but could be better)
Sound: 5/5 (The music is very relaxing and I would say is the best I have heard in a facebook game. 99% of the time I have the music off...)
Gameplay: 5/5 (Basic, but with an excellent element in addictive battles and breeding.)
Balance: 5/5 (You never need to spend a penny, nor a lot of time, but you don't feel ripped off if you do spend money, and you can actually sit in game for a long time playing around, replanning your city, etc etc.)
Overall: 5/5 - (about 95% to be more accurate)
If you have not played it, try it out!
-V
