[STEAM] The new open-world RPG climbing Steam is the biggest surprise since Crimson Desert: huge, pretty, and only $30

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It was looking like open-world RPG DragonSword: Awakening might not come out at all after publisher legal issues and a last-minute delay, but against pretty steep odds, it's landed on Steam to strong early responses, sitting at 90% positive after more than 4,600 reviews since its July 22 debut.

DragonSword: Awakening has drawn heavy comparisons to Genshin Impact for its look, feel, and former gacha DNA, but as an RPG that purposefully avoided gacha baggage in favor of a normal, premium pricing model, it might be closer to something like Granblue Fantasy: Relink. Here we have an action RPG that demonstrates how much more fun gacha games would be

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.

After a complicated development process that, as

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reports, saw former publisher Webzen, accused of failing to fulfill its own obligations, sue developer Hound13 over a contract dispute, the devs had some fires to put out. An FAQ

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on Steam in April reveals the discussions orbiting the game. "Is it a gacha game?" it reads. Nope! "Isn't this an MMORPG?" Also no: "It is a single-player RPG focused on story and exploration in an open world." (Some of the confusion seems to have come from perceived connections to Dragon Nest, an old MMO.)

Things were shaky right up until launch. On July 22, Hound13 producer JYJ

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an apologetic Steam post announcing an 11th-hour delay. "The app review currently in progress on Steam has not yet been completed, and we are unable to release the game at the scheduled time," they wrote. "In our eagerness to bring the game to you as soon as possible, we did not sufficiently account for Steam's review timeline — and as a result, we have failed to keep our promise to you."

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(Image credit: Hound13) But here we are. The game is real, out, and, according to thousands of people on

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, pretty darn good.

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charts reveal a rare trend. DragonSword: Awakening is not only trending in genre feeds on Steam despite any sort of discount, it's also hitting new concurrent player highs every day. It surely helps that the game is only $30 at full price and, judging from user reports and the system requirements, will run reasonably well on most machines.

Flashes of Crimson Desert are seen in DragonSword: Awakening's 'more is more' approach to open-world game design. 19 playable heroes! Mounts! Cooking and costumes and dungeons and flying and underwater temples! A little voice in my mind is slightly put off by the obviousness – what I might snootily call the loud, high-contrast, Unreal Engine 5-dipped inelegance – of DragonSword: Awakening, but I react to character-heavy action RPGs roughly the way that cats react to autofeeder alarms, and this one does look mighty fun in motion.

"Everything you wished Genshin was, but better!" writes Steam reviewer AvionLight.

"More games should go from the gambling/gacha model back to this," agrees xame.

"This game is like a fusion of Genshin Impact and Dragon's Dogma and its so damn good. 30 bucks is a steal for this game," reckons King ******, with 47 hours logged already.

"I've been begging for a non-gacha gacha game for years now, I am morally obligated to buy this game and say something nice about it," adds iliveinabag, who hopefully didn't wind up living in a bag due to excessive gacha spending.

Dutifully

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, DragonSword: Awakening even brought its own gen AI disclosure to the table. Hound13 says, "Generative AI was not used to create any in-game content resources. AI was utilized solely for the translation of certain in-game dialogue and external content, such as our Steam page and community posts."

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