Runescape has a long history, one I’m not really familiar with. It all started as a browser game back in 2001 and has always been known for its rich community, skill-based progression, and freedom. I never joined that community because I was too busy with MapleStory, Doofus, and World of Warcraft.
RuneScape is an IP that’s had several iterations, and its popularity has never really fizzled, especially due to its dedicated communities. However, RuneScape is getting its 2nd resurgence, modernizing itself and expanding its audience by coming to consoles. And this is where my story begins: as a console peasant, I finally get to experience what it’s like to be in the world of RuneScape.
Legend of Ashenfall
I have always been a semi-fan of survival games. I love exploring the genre and trying it, but I never stick around past the first zone. However, there’s something about RuneScape that spoke to me specifically. It’s a fantasy-magic-focused survival game with a relatively deep combat system, freedom of adventure through its open world, improve-by-doing character progression, and, most importantly (for me), an NPC- and quest-driven narrative that leads you to each new goal and area.
When I first saw the Dragonwilds trailer, where you can cut down multiple trees with an astral axe, quickly mine a vein of ore with an explosion, and fish with a tornado, I knew I had to have it. But did it live up to my expectations?
The Open-World
The world of RuneScape: Dragonwilds is a sight to behold. It has a hyper-fantasy colourful art style with simple textures and shapes. The lighting is great, letting you greet the morning sun after an arduous night of grinding a dungeon or making the perfect build. The weather system, with rain, lightning, and fog, really adds atmosphere and danger, making each new location feel different. While the game is open-world, each new main area is separated by story progression, forcing you to kill the area’s boss. And to tackle the area’s boss, you need to complete a quest chain.
The Gameplay Loop
The game’s main goal is to beat the final boss. To do so, you need to prepare your resources, your gear, and your skills so you’ll be strong enough to overcome whatever hardships come your way. Each new main area has a boss and a new set of materials you’ll need to make new tools and gear. This general gameplay loop gives you direction toward your next goal without spelling it out every time you arrive at a new area.
When you pick up a new material, you’ll gain a new recipe associated with the new material you picked up. You most likely won’t be able to make it yet, but it’ll give you information on the other items you’ll need to make it. Also, reading the description of the item tells you how raw materials are processed to turn them into usable materials. If all else fails, some real-world reasoning will do wonders. In general, every time you start a new area with new materials, you’ll need to focus on your tools first, typically the axe.
Once you have the tools to gather the new materials and process them into better gear and armour, you’ll then need to tackle the necessary quest to beat the area’s boss! It’s a satisfying gameplay loop with a bit of direction without spelling it out for you. Personally, this is what I need in survival, base-building games, as I prefer to play with a goal in mind, and RuneScape: Dragonwilds gives me that while I lose myself in the game’s base-building.
The Building
Stability:
RuneScape: Dragonwilds has stability- and durability-focused building. This means structures have to make sense and be stable, or it won’t let you build there. This also means you can’t just have floating structures or structures reaching for the sky, because every material has a hidden weight and stability rating that will stop you from building more unless you have something to support it. Since I don’t play many base-building games, I had to get used to this, and I loved it. I’m not a fan of weird floating structures that don’t make any sense, so I liked that the game forced me to think properly about my build. Also, the main reason your buildings need to be stable is that your base will occasionally get attacked by enemies.
The Materials & Storage:
Maybe it’s because I’m lazy, but I much prefer building games where I don’t have to have the materials in my inventory for me to be able to build something. Maybe it’s because I don’t plan far enough ahead, so I don’t know what I want to build in advance and can grab the materials from the 5 different chests I may have put them in. Especially when a build could end up with several stacks of wood, stone blocks, sand, and planks, leaving my character too overencumbered to do anything.
Luckily, the storage system in Dragonwilds is as magical as the rest of the game. Each workbench is linked to nearby chests, allowing you to create items using materials in those chests without you grabbing them. Similarly, building structures will pull materials from nearby chests as long as the structure is close enough. The neat thing is, sometimes, if the destination of the structure is a bit too far and I’m too lazy to grab the items myself, I’ll make it as far as I’m able, “destroy it” as Dragonwilds has 100% returns on items you made (did I forget to mention that? It’s awesome. I can make building mistakes knowing that I can re-do without wasting the materials I gathered), so I can place the materials in my inventory, allowing me to then build it where I want.
As you progress through the game, you’ll obtain more magical items that improve your quality of life, typically gained through perks from increasing your skills. Items and spells like the Storage Ledger, which auto-places things from your inventory into linked chests that already have those items, making dropping off materials you gathered a breeze; Rocksplosion, Axstral Projection, Splinter, Humidify, Mucksplosion, and Fishnado, which make material gathering a bit easier; Magical Mending, Home Teleport, Shelter, and Personal Chest, which make adventuring much simpler as they let you fast travel from lodestones, rest in the wild, and access a chest from anywhere (including cross-server!). While Dragonwilds is still a survival game that comes with gameplay friction that serves as a challenge or time sink, it magically rewards your efforts with well-earned QoL.
The Problem with being a bit undercooked
As a 1.0 release, Dragonwilds ran through some early game-breaking bugs, especially on console. It has since released many patches to fix these bugs; however, as a survival game that was in early access before release, it arguably spent a very short time in early access. While it otherwise launched in a really good state (though I personally experienced the save and server bugs), Dragonwilds spent only about 17 months in early access, which affected not only performance but also content.
I’m placing this portion of my review right after talking about building because this is where my biggest complaint about Dragonwilds comes in. Don’t get me wrong: there are hundreds of hours of game to play in 1.0 Dragonwilds, especially if you’re into base building. However, if you are super into base building, you’ll easily notice the many things it doesn’t have that are typical in others of its genre.
Variety felt lacking. Variety in decorative furniture (like, why are there only 2 types of beds: a crummy bedroll and a normal-looking bed?), inconsistent ability to place (the again lackluster selection of) carpets on the ground, and not being able to change the colour of your building materials. Also, as a personal gripe, the game doesn’t let me do one of my favourite things in base building games: rooftop gardens! Which doesn’t make sense to me, as the farming plots have soil in each type of plot to suit the plant, so why do I need to place it on the ground? LET ME HAVE MY ROOFTOP FARM!
Spending less time on early access means I can play it earlier as a console player, but it also means 1.0 isn’t necessarily feature-complete. Dragonwilds has a detailed roadmap that will introduce goodies, but will I want to go back to it when that update comes out?
Combat, Skills & Perks
RuneScape: Dragonwilds isn’t just a base-building survival game. As I’ve mentioned, the end game is to get good enough gear to beat the final boss. This means combat! There are three main combat styles: melee, magic ranged with a staff or wand, and physical ranged with a bow or crossbow. Each one has a light attack and a heavy attack. Unfortunately, aside from a tiny amount of perks that add to the combat or combo, it is another thing that’s lacking in variety. Even with magical attacks looking super cool and impactful, it still feels lacking. For example, there are 6 types of runes you can use in the game, but only 3 are used for attack: water, fire, and air. Water has the effect of slowing enemies down as well as healing you while standing on a puddle; Fire has lower attack strength, but adds burning damage over time as well as boasts an area of effect; and Air has great single-target attack and is great for knocking enemies back. No ice, no thunder, no earth, no nature magic, even though it is used against you by enemies.
Variety in magic is not the only thing it’s missing. Melee combat and ranged combat will also feel repetitive over time as well. Luckily, melee allows for parry with a really satisfying parry sound effect (sounds extra good on the DualSense’s speaker), making parrying dragon attacks feel extra badass. There’s great potential in improving all aspects of combat once skills and their perks are a bit more fleshed out, based on the available content in 1.0; however, the current level of variety in combat is serviceable.
Controller
It’s no secret that the survival, base-building genre is typically catered to mouse-and-keyboard gameplay on PC; it’s much rarer to see it on console because the genre is usually menu-heavy, and camera controls and building precision are better on M&KB. However, Dragonwilds did a great job adapting the controls for console players. They make full use of the DualSense buttons and their combinations, for example. As usual, it’ll take a bit to get used to all the buttons, but it’s laid out clearly and is easy to use.
I want more RuneScape
Now that I’ve sunk my teeth into many hours of Dragonwilds, will I recommend this game to others? YES! RuneScape: Dragonwilds has a great world waiting for you to discover. With enemies to kill, materials to gather, and dragons to slay, and it provides good magic-based survival action-adventure gameplay. It looks fantastic, sounds great, and feels good to control. Late 2026 is a weird time full of truly endless variety of great games to play, across many genres, that could take up 100s of hours of your time. To make matters more complicated, several of those games fall under the same genre as Dragonwilds, making the choice even more difficult. However, RuneScape: Dragonwilds is a game worth carving out a portion of your time to spend in Ashenfall. And it’s only going to get better.
RuneScape: Dragonwilds was reviewed on PS5. Gamer Social Club would like to thank the devs and publisher for the code.
