Savage Hunt - Dragon's Prophet

Game overview

Savage Hunt - Dragon's Prophet is a relaunch of the original Dragon's Prophet. All the dragons are now free, and the game is the culmination of five ears of bug fixes, changes, and new content.

➔ Main points:

• Lots of dragons to tame.
• Action-based combat is fun.
• Large-scale Frontier PvP.

Full review

A few years back, Dragon’s Prophet (from developer Runewaker, the makers of Runes of Magic) went out with not so much as a whimper – at least in the US. Those servers were shut down November 16, 2016 by Daybreak Games while the game continued to operate unimpeded in Europe. Fast forward a few years, and Dragon’s Prophet has made a triumphant return, with a new moniker, Savage Hunt – Dragon’s Prophet.

Don't burn yourself.

This relaunch is mostly a way for Gamingo to breathe some new life into the game, but there is at least one major new feature, all of the game’s dragons are now freely obtainable through the game. This alone is fairly huge. Dragons, hundreds, are at the core of the game. You’ll spend a vast majority of your time hunting for them. Taming each one involves a minigame that’s tantamount to bull riding. Keep the cursor centered, and eventually the dragon will bend the knee.

Dragon’s aren’t just cosmetic, either. Each one augments your combat abilities in various ways. Tanky dragons can grant you a taunt ability, and by stabling a dragon you’re able to train it, granting both you and it mounted combat options. For anyone looking to collect them all and live out their dragon taming, this game is probably right up their alley.

Fortunately, when you’re not taming dragons, the game’s combat helps to keep the other areas of it afloat. If you’ve played other action-based MMORPGs, like TERA, then you’ll know what to expect her. Chain together left and right mouse clicks to lay out combos that lay utter waste to your foes as one of four classes: guardian, ranger, oracle, and sorcerer.

All the classes are fairly true to their name. Guardian is an armored tank, your typical sword & board class. Or equip a two-handed sword to lay the smack down. Rangers are ranged damage dealers who utilize either guns or bows. Oracles are the support class, but they can slice up enemies with their scythes. Lastly, sorcerers are your typical magic-based damage dealers.

While the action-based combat helps to keep Savage Hunt fun to play, at its base, though, the game resembles its predecessor, Runes of Magic. You go from point to point, collecting quests, killing the enemies associated with said quests, and then flying your way back to the quest giver for rewards.

Take to the skies.

Yes, flying.

From the moment you’ve tamed your first dragon, you’re able to take to the skies and fly from point to point. This can, understandably, suck some of the immersion out of the experience; it’s why Blizzard doesn’t allow flying on brand new content until later into the expansion. Still, though, there’s an argument for not having to wade your way through enemies littered all over the map, and it’s a strong argument to be had.

Outside of the PvE side of things, there’s PvP, from small skirmeshes between other players and their dragons to large-scale battles on the Frontier. That latter one is a large battle over the Sky Islands between alliances of players. There are citadels to attack and highlords to grab quests from. The Sky Islands are also where the game’s housing system comes into play. As your alliance captures islands, you’re able to buy a housing plot there and stake your claim.
Graphically, it’s a 2013 game, so it’s serviceable, but if you’re on the market for a pretty MMORPG to play, you’ll likely want to pursue other avenues. It does seem to run better than it did at release and is much less buggy.

Fancy living.

Savage Hunt – Dragon’s Prophet is ultimately just a relaunch of the original Dragon’s Prophet. There’s a few new things here, but only if you haven’t been keeping up with the game since its 2013 launch, and there still aren’t NA servers, so expect to play on EU ones, which can prove to be problematic if you’re looking to dive into the end game or PvP seriously. It’s interesting that Gamingo chose to relaunch the game, but don’t confuse Savage Hunt for a sequel to Dragon’s Prophet, or at the very least a revival/revamp, because it simply isn’t that.