A License to Build
Rise of Berk is a free-to-play building game. Players start out on the familiar Viking archipelago with Toothless, Hiccup and the gang. Cartoon-like text bubbles kick start the adventure. Quest revelation works well and should be particularly entertaining to fans. Achievements completed before clicking through the quest are still rewarded. Characters' comments are as funny as in the flicks, but without the voices.
Soon Toothless is off and flying, exploring nearby islands with Hiccup. Players can gather dragon eggs from the wilderness and hatch them on Berk. As with most games of this type, players must collect fish and wood to level up their dragons and environment.
Every in-game action takes time, as expected in building games. As players advance the wait times grow. Oh, you thought Toothless would be back in an instant with that new dragon egg? No way: he'll be back in half an hour. Oh, you wanted to remove that small rock in the meantime? It'll cost you twenty fish and ten minutes. You'd rather just put down another Viking hut? Oops, you're out of room! Better get rid of that rock. Like most building and breeding games, Rise of Berk is a balancing act of time, resource expense and level up requirements.
This is not a problem in and of itself, but when combined with the freemium model, it places Dragons: Rise of Berk in a group with games that attempt to take advantage of players' interest, investment, and impatience. In this case, players can skip sending Toothless out to search for dragon eggs and simply buy whichever dragons are unlocked with runes. Runes are the early-unlock currency: they can be used to speed up all actions, buy dragons or area expansions, and can even be traded for fish or wood. Runes, of course, can be bought via the Play Store for real world cash. So why bother to actually play the game at all?
If your answer to the above is "because it's fun," then keep in mind the real challenge is not to buy any runes at all. Runes are acquired by completing quests, removing rocks and unlocking rider dragons, as well as by annoying friends via Facebook. Toothless can even find the all-important runes when out searching nearby islands. If you play a miserly game and make sure Toothless explores as often as possible, you can store enough to buy the dragons that can only be acquired via runes. Like I said, players should be ready to wait.
Rise of Berk has no other players or NPCs to beat, so pay-to-win doesn't apply as it does to games like Monster Legends, wherein players are bombarded with ads and one-click links to in-app purchases that would give them an edge over their opponents. Still, I admit I used about forty runes so far to speed a few processes along. I wouldn't recommend Rise of Berk for younger players, despite the fact that it will appeal to the youthful audiences of the films, because there is too much waiting in higher levels. Lock the IAP ability on your phone before you let your kids play this one – or any games even close to the pay-to-win model. Or better, don't download them at all.
This game should be familiar to many hardcore folks out there. It does not offer any new additions to the genre. There's no breeding, no dragon combat, and players cannot take direct control of any dragon during training or otherwise. These aspects would make for a more interesting game. As it stands, Dragons: Rise of Berk is a standard building affair with a How to Train Your Dragon skin over it and the added insult of in-app purchases. Dragon training rewards patience. Conversely, impatience will punish the player's wallet. Anyone who is not a fan of both the building games and the movies would be better served patiently waiting for another game.
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