DragonSword: Awakening Game Review: It Made Me Uncomfortable, But Not in a Bad Way

DragonSword : Awakening is an anime style open world RPG game that was released on 23rd of July, 2026 by developers called Hound13 Inc. This game, up to January, was solely meant to be a mobile Gacha game and was even released on Google Play. Unfortunately, the publishing house refused to pay them, so they shut it down and spent months overhauling the game. 

They’ve removed all microtransactions, live-service elements, and mobile gacha mechanics. Any predatory tactics that you can find in any gacha game – GONE. They’ve rebranded the name into what we know today and turned what was another regular cash grab into a $29.99 single-player, JRPG for PC. Talk about a comeback story. 

So, now you see why I’m all confusion. My brain heard “Gacha Game” and decided to hyperfocus on that part. Imagine my surprise when I entered the game, played it and I just started getting all these amazing characters without having to collect kabillion scrolls/tickets. 

Not only that, but the real shocker came when I started farming for my gear and realised I wasn’t restricted by daily energy consumption. Even now, as I’m writing this, my brain is telling me “That can’t be right”. It feels like I’m spreading misinformation but it’s true. Anyways, I’ve played DragonSword : Awakening since the release and here are my thoughts on everything. 

System Requirements to Play Dragonsword: Awakening

ADDITIONAL NOTES: An SSD is strictly required for an optimal gameplay experience. Installing the game on an HDD may result in extended loading times, texture pop-in, framerate drops, or unexpected crashes.

The Story

DragonSword: Awakening story started very dramatically by showing us a big intense fight only to switch it to goofiness in the next 30 seconds. It was so quick that I didn’t even know what was happening so I brushed it off. 

The main protagonist is called Lute and he joins a goofy mercenary band for a week as a trial period. They’re newbies when it comes to this so mainly they’re offered low-tier tasks like finding a missing cat or making lunch deliveries. Of course their captain Johnny isn’t happy about that, he wants bigger and better missions. Which leads to them getting into some serious trouble and making this story a fun and enjoyable experience. 

The whole silly comradery with constant bickering and somehow always ending up in the center of biggest trouble is giving me big Black Clover vibes. As a huge fan of that anime, I couldn’t help but like the story of the DragonSword: Awakening.  

And yes, there are a bunch of cool looking Dragons involved. 

Gameplay 

The DragonSword : Awakening gameplay consists of world exploration, fighting mobs/bosses, random side quests, building your characters and farming gear for them. It has all of the appeal of Genshin Impact but without daily restrictions or predatory banners that’ll cost you a month’s rent each time. I’ll even say that they took it a step further and improved a few things that I had issues with in the rest of these kinds of games. 

Combat

Combat in DragonSword is usually done in a team of 3 characters that you can switch between and create various combos that deal additional damage. If you keep your characters leveled up, there isn’t a real challenge when it comes to fighting normal enemies. As for the bosses, in the beginning it’s easier but as you progress deeper into the story, you’ll need to optimize your gear, level your skill and make sure that synergy is there. 

Once in a while there’s this thing that really grinds my gears. There’ll be an extremely cool boss that’s obviously too strong for you but you have to fight him until the cutscene is triggered. What hurts the most is that I always figure it out too late. What hurts even more is that I always sweat like crazy and try to dodge every move and try to beat it. 

Characters

DragonSword features 19 Heroes that you can obtain by completing various quests. Some of them will join you once the specific quest is completed but for most of them, you’ll get a ticket so you can pick the one you want to unlock. 

It’s so jarring that you can pick the character and just unlock it. Instead of characters being classified by elements (wind,water,fire,light,and dark), they are categorized by traits. Traits are categorized into Amplitude, Crushing, Gale, Breaker, Frostbite, Blazeflame, Thunderbolt, Venom, and Bloodburst. Each of them are corresponding to some sort of special effect like armor break, stun, poison, burn, bleed, and etc. 

Hitting the right combination can lead to higher damage and easier time defeating all the enemies. 

Open World

As for the open world of DragonSword, I don’t have any real complaints. The world is filled with life that mostly will try to kill you but there are also places where you can complete challenges/mini games, solve puzzles, or simply open chests filled with goodies. 

The size of the map is the same as when Genshin was originally launched. To clear fog from the map you’ll need to discover Eona’s Legacy and complete a mini-puzzle in order to unlock certain areas and the fast travel in them. It’s called UX. Genshin Impact  should learn from them. 

Mini games are really fun and unique, they are all activated by approaching the hole in the ground and talking to the King of Marmot. Depending on location, he’ll give you a different challenge for you to complete and if you do you’ll get high tier chests.  

Another thing that I really like and I feel like most games stopped doing is that they allow you to teleport from anywhere on the map instead of forcing you to go to a teleporter in order to go to another place. I hate that with a burning passion.

Gear 

There’re different types of gear in DragonSword, you have the generic 3 set: +%HP and %ATK but also there are sets that are tied to traits that will suit your characters better. Those basic sets you can farm through various available dungeons but as for the trait specific gear, you’ll have to craft them at the blacksmith. 

Getting gear is on the easier side but getting the right stats is harder. Especially if you have a specific build in mind. So far my luck with it hasn’t been the greatest and all I’ve managed to achieve is to get all of my characters above 50% crit. For the rest, I’ll have to invest some time into farming gear religiously. 

Familiars

Familiars in DragonSword are sort of mounts that help you get to places faster via land or air but also they’re the only way for you to climb places. There are 29 of them available but some of them are only available via the paid DLC, 10 of them to be exact. 

Which I personally don’t care about but I’ve seen few people display their dismay towards this. It is not a big deal if I’m being honest, it’s nothing game changing or something 10x better than the free options we have. 

I don’t think they’ve done it to milk players but rather as a testing ground for future revenue and more awesome updates. The one thing that I agree with other reviewers is that they should have put all of these in a deluxe version and just charged slightly more. 

Graphics 

DragonSword: Awakening isn’t trying to impress you with photorealistic graphics even though it’s made in Unreal Engine 5, and honestly, it doesn’t need to. Instead, it leans into a colorful anime art style that gives the game its own identity. 

You already know it looks good but what’s surprising is that it also runs well. The game feels optimized and it’s running smoothly. I had zero issues when it comes to performance. I’ve also noticed that they’ve already addressed a few bugs but I’ll have to be honest with you. I haven’t seen any of them. Sounds like I’m glazing but I’m not. 

The character designs are detailed, and the entire world is just popping with vibrant colors and lighting that makes the whole experience feel alive. Sure, if you hyperfocus on details, a few textures won’t hold up but during the normal gameplay it’s hardly noticeable. 

I’ve played it on a Steam Deck also and everything is clear and runs smoothly. The only issue that popped out once was some issue related to Cloud Sync which I don’t know if it can be blamed on the game. 

Conclusion

I’ve been really enjoying my playthrough of DragonSword : Awakening, it feels like a breath of fresh air. The game developers of this game showed us that sometimes you gotta take a loss and have people rub it in your face before you get pissed off. And come back different and stronger than you were. 

Also showed us what all of those gacha games look like without all the money grabbing stuff. And hopefully enough people get it to show other game developers what gamers really want. 

So my conclusion is this: If you’re someone who enjoys JRPGs or Gacha games but is tired of their constant attempts to squeeze every last drop of money from your wallet, I can’t recommend this game to you enough. You must try it, if nothing just to see how poorly they’ve been treating us. 

Have you seen this game on Steam yet? Did you play it? What are your thoughts?