Dofus has had a long life (it was released back in 2005) and stood very proud and tall against the backdrop of the depressing Free to Play market. This title stood as an example of how if you break conventions in a saturated genre, you can still achieve success. Dofus featured tactical battles, a wonderful art style and a lot of depth when it was first released. Does Dofus still hold up against much more developed MMORPGs, or has old age taken its toll against the title?
Dofus’s story is rather unique. Whilst there is not really much story in the game itself, the background to the game is interesting. The tale goes, there was an evil dragon, Balgrot, which came to Amakna. Rykke Errel stood up to the dragon, and because of this the dragon swore loyalty to him. Rykke then feel deeply in love with a young enchantress called Helsephine. Rykke showed the dragon his new found love, but then the dragon got mad and killed Helsephine.
Rykke swore revenge and tried to take down the mighty dragon and he succeeded. However, the battle left him with a very deep wound and he died shortly after the battle. After Rykke’s death the wise men gathered and found six eggs inside the dead dragon’s body, these eggs were called “Dofus”. The wise men tried to keep the eggs away from the rest of the world, however one day they found that the eggs had been stolen. News went out about the theft and everyone began searching for them. And that’s where you come in; you have got to find the six dofus kamas eggs. As you can tell the story is basic, however it does provide a nice reason to pay for players who feel that they need some sort of motivation in order to play the MMORPG.
Dofus is a 2D MMORPG, however this is definitely not a bad thing. Dofus’s hand drawn graphics are simply amazing to look at. You can see that a lot of effort and time has gone into the very artistic looking backgrounds which, whilst they may be still and unmoving, can be utterly jaw breaking when you get to certain places in the game. The avatars you control don’t really compare with the beautiful backgrounds, however they suit the game with their slightly anime feel and their fluent and entertaining animations. The sounds are also well done, despite being “midis”, most of them are chirpy and upbeat compositions however there isn’t any truly inspiration music in here but it does achieve its job and represents the game’s world very well.
