DragonSword: Awakening is an open-world RPG taking place in a massive fantasy world teeming with fantastical creatures. Learn more about the game’s plot, gameplay, release date, our review of the demo, and more.
Everything We Know About DragonSword: Awakening
DragonSword: Awakening Plot
DragonSword: Awakening's story takes place on the fantasy continent of Orbis, where creatures such as Dragons, Goblins, and Orcs roam the land. It was once a world nearly destroyed 60 years ago by a powerful dragon, but six legendary heroes bested the beast and restored peace. JRPG enthusiasts will find its structure and tropes familiar, as it is packed with classic elements like destined heroes and the enduring goodness of humanity.
DragonSword: Awakening Gameplay
Gameplay in DragonSword: Awakening is an open-world action RPG similar to titles like HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact and Bandai Namco’s acclaimed modern Tales series. It blends fast-paced combat with expansive exploration and a neat tag-team mechanic for a party of three characters.
Throughout the game, players can chain together aerial juggles, dodges, and stylish tag-team combos, while also dealing significant damage through the game's elemental status effect system. Another major aspect of DragonSword: Awakening is its open-world exploration. Elements reminiscent of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild are present, including unlockable towers for sightseeing, fast-travel points, and mounts that help players traverse the environment with ease. Players can also swim across bodies of water and climb massive mountains, making exploration feel rewarding and unrestricted.
DragonSword: Awakening Release Date
DragonSword: Awakening is currently slated for a July 2026 launch on PC via Steam. Developer HOUND13 has yet to announce a specific release date beyond its July release window.
DragonSword: Awakening Review (Demo) | Easy to Like, Harder to Define
A Spiritual Successor to Dragon Nest
DragonSword: Awakening has a lot riding on its shoulders, both literally and figuratively. For starters, it is branded as a spiritual successor to Dragon Nest, one of the most acclaimed MMORPGs of the early 2010s, alongside other popular online titles like Phantasy Star Online 2. Developed by many of the same people behind the hit Korean MMORPG, DragonSword: Awakening borrows heavily from its predecessor's strengths, particularly its fast-paced combat and stylized fantasy world where creatures such as the titular dragons threaten the land.
There is also a rocky history behind its development. The game was originally conceived as a free-to-play gacha title before undergoing a dramatic transformation into a premium buy-to-play. As a result, its live-service systems, including hero banners and other monetization mechanics, have reportedly been scrapped entirely. In their place is an open-world action RPG focused on delivering a premium single-player adventure on PC via Steam. It remains unclear whether the developers have plans to bring the game to mobile platforms in the future.
Whether that gamble pays off remains to be seen, but after spending several hours with the demo, one thing is immediately clear: the game is fun.
While there are still lingering questions surrounding its long-term identity and business model, DragonSword: Awakening already shows plenty of potential. Between its polished tag-team combat system, gorgeous open world, and surprisingly charming cast of characters, it gives me plenty of reasons to look forward to its full release.
Into the Land of Dragons
If the name HOUND13 sounds familiar, it is because many of the developers behind DragonSword previously worked on Dragon Nest. So, you could say that the influence here is immediately noticeable.
The moment the demo begins, I am immediately thrown into its sprawling fantasy world teeming with Goblin encampments and picturesque landscapes. I admit, the first few minutes alone reminded me a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, where I had to find my way through multiple pathways while also soaking in the sights of what this world has to offer. After a couple of swimming lessons and some sword swinging here and there, I was taken to a massive view of the game’s first central city, Orbis Kingdom.
Visually, the game sits somewhere between titles like HoYoverse’s Genshin Impact and Wuthering Waves, featuring stylized anime characters and flashy combat effects. At first glance, I did not find anything particularly special in DragonSword: Awakening’s visual appeal compared to its peers, but the more I play, the more I see how its fantasy world slowly opens up, with traces of ancient magic hidden behind its lush glades. Others, like ancient dungeons and old ruins of a goddess, are part of the land, and humanity has only built its own safe havens in the middle of these bygone structures.
The world itself feels massive. During my playthrough, I frequently stumbled upon environmental details that encouraged further exploration, such as smoke billowing from distant Goblin camps and restoring a broken statue by locating three missing relics scattered throughout the environment, ultimately unlocking additional healing and revival benefits.
One instance, I was visiting a farmstead packed with people asking me to do tedious fetch quests that range from silly “do this, do that” tasks to more endearing questlines, including estranged family members trying to make amends with one another by handing a sack of grains in secret. Another revolves around collecting a Rainbow Mushroom for a hungry guard. Again, they’re not particularly unique, but it was enough to bring me into its strange fantasy world.
On to the more graphical side of things, DragonSword: Awakening is built in Unreal Engine 5, so there are already some expected optimization quirks like fluctuating frames. Surprisingly, even when running on normal settings, the demo runs quite well. If you are the type of gamer using a dated GPU, there is still some leeway when playing on lower to normal settings, but you will have to brave a couple of pop-ins and occasional odd textures as you explore Orbis.
Unfortunately, the demo itself is pretty limited, for obvious reasons, of course. You can only explore through the game’s first two areas, as well as three dungeons you can take on to get its nifty rewards. Yet despite the limitations, the demo does a great job of giving me a brief taste of its grander ambitions, most notably in its combat, which I deeply enjoyed.
Power Comes in Threes
Combat is easily DragonSword: Awakening's strongest feature. As someone who played Dragon Nest in my teenage years, watching enemies fly into the air more than a decade ago was satisfying. In DragonSword: Awakening, you can still send these poor souls flying, leaving them struggling to regain their balance after a single heavy attack. The only difference now is that you have more options to do that, as you can seamlessly swap between the three-party system mid-combat, increasing the combo potential tenfold. Say you want to launch an enemy with Lute’s aura attack, then close the gap with Castella’s sweeping axe moves, only to send them flying again and finish them off with whatever third hero you have as a closer.
This is where the gameplay truly shines in DragonSword: Awakening. It is not a completely unique mechanic, as similar systems have appeared in other RPGs, but what DragonSword offers here has strong potential for growth gameplay-wise, especially with over 19 playable characters, each with their own unique powers and elemental traits. The demo only handed me half of its playable characters, but I expect flashier and more powerful heroes coming in when the full game launches this July.
Speaking of, combat becomes even more enjoyable when paired with the game's tag-team mechanic. After dealing enough damage to an enemy, your other party members can quickly jump in and unleash significant damage using their unique skills. For example, you can start off an encounter using a sweeping scythe attack from your Thunder-Affinity hero, attacking multiple enemies at once, then you can close it off with other characters who excel in big area-of-effect abilities, sending them into a feedback loop of being constantly dazed and confused, allowing for more crazy combo follow-ups. Of course, the demo is still on the “easier” side of things, so I’d imagine tougher endgame challenges will be around when the game launches.
Overall, you can already tell that DragonSword’s gameplay encourages experimentation, as it opens up multiple party member synergies that are as rewarding as they are satisfying, especially when chaining attacks with their own elemental affinities that keep enemies hilariously flailing in the air until their inevitable defeat.
However, while these gameplay systems are firmly in place, there are some issues I noticed in its combat. Basically, the game lacks a dedicated lock-on mechanic, so I had to manually aim my strikes at waves of enemies, which risks my positioning in the process. Admittedly, this was something already present in the classic Dragon Nest games, but it would have been nice to include a lock-on system to help with managing multiple enemies on screen or during its many encounters. The number of strikes I whiffed was honestly a bit embarrassing, but a lock-on feature would have helped alleviate that issue.
There is also the fact that, for a game that revels in combo potential, there seems to be a lack of incentive to go all-out flashy, as some enemies can knock you temporarily, which can ruin your momentum. Its dodge system is not the most intuitive, and it is certainly not like other games where time slows down. You have to be very careful with positioning here, and while it may be a deal-breaker for players who are looking for a faster-paced experience with more mobility options, it can actually teach good positioning in the long run, despite my complaints.
While gameplay is DragonSword’s strongest feature, it is also something that needs more refinement. There is a responsiveness to its tag-team combos and a vibrancy to each character’s moves, but the addition of quality-of-life improvements would help players who reach endgame territory survive better. Given that this is still a demo, I’m hoping HOUND13 listens because there is clear potential to go further.
An Identity Crisis
As mentioned earlier, DragonSword was initially planned as a gacha game with live-service features designed to emulate popular titles from its contemporaries. You can still find traces of the game’s gacha roots in the demo, as it is filled with familiar UI elements such as character rarities, five-star hero icons, hero growth materials, and the aforementioned progression mechanics where growth items are used for leveling up. This contrasts with more traditional RPGs, where progression often comes from simply defeating enemies and leveling up naturally over time.
Progression in DragonSword: Awakening is fairly similar to how characters are upgraded in gacha games. You still need resources such as EXP items, monster materials, and currency to strengthen your party. In the demo, I only managed to reach around level 20 with my favorite characters, while the rest of the party still required more grinding for XP materials and dungeon runs to power them up.
Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t inherently problematic, but it does create a sense of identity crisis for DragonSword. The game clearly wants to present itself as a standalone RPG, yet many of its systems still feel rooted in a live-service framework. While I understand that rebuilding the entire game from the ground up would significantly extend development time, a more thorough rework could help create a clearer design philosophy instead of making the game feel like Frankenstein’s monster with systems taken from existing titles.
This raises the question of what exactly DragonSword: Awakening is supposed to be. With live-service features seemingly off the table, will the final release be a complete experience from start to finish? Or do the developers plan to expand it over time through free content updates for players who purchase the game? It’s also worth noting that, unlike many of its peers, DragonSword is not a free-to-play title, likely to help offset development costs and provide additional resources for future support. However, there is still no word on its intended price point, and attaching a price tag to a game that still feels uncertain about its long-term direction comes across as somewhat strange.
This is also where things get a little weird. By removing its gacha roots, DragonSword also eliminates much of the needless grind that plagues modern gacha RPGs, which is a welcome change for players looking for a more casual experience. There are no daily restrictions preventing me from repeatedly clearing dungeons, nor are there limited resources forcing me to wait until the next day to continue. Everything in DragonSword is available from the start, and all you have to do is keep grinding until you become absurdly overpowered compared to everything around you.
Would the game have been better off sticking to its live-service roots? It’s hard to say. What HOUND13’s shift toward a single-player experience has accomplished, however, is the removal of much of the genre’s usual tedium in favor of a more relaxed open-world RPG experience. That alone could make it appealing to players who have grown tired of the endless grind found in similar titles.
Strong Demo Impressions, But Far From Finished
DragonSword: Awakening is far from a finished product, but the demo has already left me with a strong first impression. In the six or seven (heh) hours I spent with it, many of its features remained inaccessible, which is completely understandable at this stage. This includes raids and other endgame content, as well as a suspicious in-game shop button for a game that has supposedly abandoned its gacha elements.
That being said, there are still areas that need work. While it remains difficult to judge the game's long-term identity after shedding its gacha and live-service layers, it is a concern that prospective buyers should keep in mind. Players interested in DragonSword purely as an open-world RPG will likely want reassurance that the experience stands on its own, without having to wait for future content updates or, worse, risk seeing support for the game disappear altogether.
In my time with the demo, I thoroughly enjoyed its combat system. It takes the foundations of its 2010 inspirations and modernizes them with mechanics like a tag-team system that gives players more options to launch enemies several meters into the air. It feels like a natural evolution of Dragon Nest's real-time combat philosophy. On top of that, the open world feels genuinely rewarding to explore, especially when paired with a cast of surprisingly likable and funny characters.
If HOUND13 can successfully bridge the gap between its live-service origins and its single-player ambitions when it officially launches sometime this July 2026, DragonSword: Awakening has potential to find its place among this year’s more interesting RPGs.
Game8 Reviews
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DragonSword: Awakening Demo Product Information
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| Title | DRAGONSWORD: AWAKENING |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 2026 |
| Developer | HOUND13 |
| Publisher | HOUND13 |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Open World, RPG |
| Number of Players | 1-3 Players |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | DragonSword: Awakening Demo Official Website |
