Joe Morgan
I’ve tried a handful of survival games over the years. None of them have ever clicked with me before. There’s something about endless tedium that never sat well with me. The constant juggling of hunger and thirst, being too hot or cold, going out and punching trees and rocks until, at long last, I could finally start having fun just never sat well with me. The gameplay loop itself felt grindy with no real direction.
To my surprise (with ample reassurance from our own Raven Winters), despite my disdain for the genre, I would have a good time with Runescape: Dragonwilds. At the point of my writing this, I have around 10 hours in the game, and there are some notable things it does that make it a standout good time, even for someone who doesn’t typically care for the survival genre.
First, Dragonwilds leans into the grindy nature of the survival genre in a way that synergizes its namesake. Runescape, an old-school MMO that’s been around for a quarter century, built much of its gameplay loop on grinding out skills. Dragonwilds intelligently weaves that same constant dopamine drip into its progression, giving you experience and levels for nearly everything you do. Chopping trees, attacking sheep, fishing…heck, you can even earn up to 99 levels in running around. The most interesting catch about this system, though, is in its steady release of passive buffs and interesting new skills you get for reaching milestones. Chopped down enough trees? We’ll save you some time. Become a magical lumberjack and knock down everything directly in your path. Set off a magical bomb and harvest several slabs of ore simultaneously. They’re fun, practical, and intelligent carrots to keep chasing. You will have a good time just playing the game.
Second, and just as important for me, is the guided narrative path. Runescape: Dragonwilds is a huge game (it looks like I’ve uncovered about 20% of the world in 10 hours) that gives the players a storyline to follow with checkpoints on the map that invite you to walk a focused path to progression. There’s plenty of room for exploration along the way, but having a set of goals gives me something to focus on. I tend to play open-ended games like a magpie – I’ll wander down a path, see something shiny, then venture off and completely forget what I was doing. Dragonwilds keeps me focused and driven, and I’m loving it so far.
On top of the story beats, Dragonwilds has dungeons where you can pull rare crafting materials, get some skill manuals, and take on traps and monsters in concentrated action RPG fashion. I appreciate how the world plays together, allowing you to lure monsters into machine traps and more for sticky situations. It gives the more action-driven part of my brain some candy to chew on while rewarding the crafter.
With any survival game, building is going to be an important aspect of the game. Construction in Dragonwilds is functional in the basic sense of the word, but there are some seriously awkward moments that need to be cleaned up. Snapping walls and roof tiles can be frustrating. If I’m trying to put 4 walls on a single block, the wall will be oriented to fit two walls properly, but I have to use the mouse wheel to turn the piece 90 degrees to fit the other walls. Building foundations on uneven surfaces creates some awkward moments, too. The team could implement small quality-of-life improvements like making this experience smoother to really bring it up to snuff.
Most of my other concerns with the game right now are relatively minor. I need to remember to carry the materials with me to create a teleporter as I’m adventuring, since getting killed respawns you at the last bed you slept in. (For the longest time, this would set me to the west coast of the map, which caused 10 minutes of running to get back). With the game having just launched 1.0, it’s probably no surprise that there are some bugs here and there. I noticed some dungeon bosses could glitch. One in particular wouldn’t chase me into the treasure room, so I could either poke out and take shots with my axe or sit back and shoot him with archery or magic. It worked to my benefit, but it pulled me out of the experience, too.
So far, I’m having a great time in Ashenfall. It’s a pretty game with a fun gameplay loop and interesting ways to see your skills and building capabilities grow in interesting, meaningful ways. It’s also doing a great job keeping me focused and engaged. I’m looking forward to seeing where the game takes me.
Henry Viola
I grew up playing Old School RuneScape, so it’s only natural for me to be gravitated towards Dragonwilds, a survival spinoff of my childhood’s MMO. You can play solo offline, privately with friends, or join public servers with random players. While Joe’s time was spent on the PC, I started my tree cutting and rock mining journey on the PS5. Did you know this is the first time Runescape, of any kind, in the franchise’s 25-year history, has made it on a console? Pretty momentous moment!
Like most survival games, this one gives you a multitude of options for world creation, including your standard affair with either Normal or Hard mode. RuneScape: Dragonwilds also offers a custom mode that lets you toggle an extensive suite of settings that includes invulnerability, player resistances and damage, hunger and thirst scales, friendly fire, along with enemy damage and health scales. Lastly, there’s creative mode that features no building costs, no aggressive enemies, and no survival upkeep. Note that if you make the game easier, it disables trophies.
I’m a big fan of separating your character profile from your world file, meaning you can bring your character progress over to your friends to see what they have built without losing your own progress.
Dragonwilds isn’t too big on the PS5, taking only 22 GB or so, considering it's an open-world survival game. Both a performance and quality mode are offered, though performance mode frame rates dip a bit in certain areas. A decent amount of DualSense features are utilized too, including the built-in speaker and adaptive triggers. Load times vary depending on whether you’re playing offline solo or online via a server. For example, connecting to my own server took around 12 seconds to load.
My only real complaint is the small text UI on the PlayStation 5. You can change the font size of some of the elements, but others like in-game popups and notifications, along with lore documents, are extremely small and difficult to read. Otherwise, the game plays great with a controller, despite the series being known to be a point-and-click type of experience. Right now there is a bug that can corrupt your save if you edit your character’s appearance after you create it, so hold off on that until a patch is made.
Echoing what Joe said above, this game is huge! I’m only barely scratching the surface of what Dragonwilds has to offer. I plan on hopping on a 4-man server this weekend with some buddies. It’s doing a fantastic job thus far keeping me hooked and wanting to play more, so here’s to hoping I don’t burn out until end-game.
