Quest Dwarves And Doguns Review

Spoiler: Disclaimer:

You know why this is here, I'm too lazy to retype it.

So, I just played D&D and since my earlier playthroughs of this quest where obstructed by hype I used to think it qas the best quest in the game. Now that I have played it without the hype-filter and can look at this quest from a neutral point of view I can say that my opinions have changed, a lot. But I still like this quest so don't worry.

For this review I will be returining to the original format and review it step-by-step, since this is what I felt was the easiest way to hit all of the points I wanted to make. This will be a longer one so let's just jump right into it.

Part 1
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Part 1 kicks off our journey to discovering the Molten Heights lore, it starts us off with a charmingly horrible play where our main character is named Dwarfi. I sort of shit on A Journey though SE for having a character named Dren, but considering the context of the play this only serves to make this entire sequence better.

Anyway, the play is basically just a sort-of true story of MH lore. It serves as a fun way to exposition dump but also not just shove all of the information in our faces. It tells you the basics of what you need to know and the rest of the quest expands on or exposes parts of it. This is actually one of the best parts in the quest if you ask mr.

Immediately after this, we are intorduced to Axelus, whom I will expand on later, who tells us that the play was really bad and we shouldn't listen to it because theres some shady shit goin on.

Next, we are lead to the 2nd half of the celebration of the Dwarves victory over the Demon Doguns in the great war. Where we have Dwarves literally torturing Doguns for public enjoyment. Which makes for a perfect opportunity for my least favorite hero, Axelus, to make a generic passionate good guy speech.

And he get's arrested.

Fortuneatly, the guy who has him arrested tells us exactly where we need to go to find him. Axelus also drops a note for us to read which conveniantly noone else sees.

So, we go to pay Axelus a visit in prison where he tells us that the Dwarves are being lied to and the Doguns are being unfairly hunted because they actually aren't demons. He tells us that if we want to learn the truth we need to go to the Library of Flames. This is also the first of many times the player is called by name. I personally, hate this shit so much, but that's just me I guess.

Anyway we go to the Library which we enter by fighting some minibosses for no reason, throwing things into a HOPPER and doing a couple parcour jumps. At the library we read another exposition dump about the propoganda and shit to turn public opinion against the Doguns.

After this Axelus greets you outside and acknowledges that you know things too. And he also says "My people are tyrants and conquerers" Mate what? Your people aren't tyrants and conquerers, the king is the only person that knows about this that isn't trying to do something about it. Everyone else that knows is trying to help, and don't say "Oh but tig, Axelus has been trying to tell the people that the monarchy is lying, so they do know but still aren't helping." because the people have no reason to believe him. This lie has been pounded into these peoples brains for centuries, why would they ever listen to this?

Anway he also tells you to head to the coalition base which is in Maex, and you have to do some pretty cool parcour to get to it. Once you get there you are intorduced to the main Dogun, Korzim, who says he is the son of the Chief and he has been banished, which is the first really bad part of this quest, but I'll talk about that later.

Anyway now we need to get some dragon bone to present to the Dogun Chief so we go outside to do a fun puzzle and now we have said bone.

Since we are going to present the dragon bone to the Chief we need to clean it up a bit, but on the way to getting the tools the base is discovered by Dwarven scouts. After killing these Dwarven scouts and dropping their badges into a HOPPER Axelus freaks out and says to move the base to the upper heights.

This leads up to us giving the Dogun Chief the dragon bone, and also the last remaining Dogun settlement getting discovered by a Dogun scout and the quests ending.

So Part 1 was pretty good, it had a couple flaws but I think we have a good quest to work with nonetheless, so do the last 3 parts live up to the promise? No, not really, this is the best part.

Part 2
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Part 2 begins with us having a meeting with Cheif Paku (I think I got that right.) Since the Doguns got discovered Paku want's to move the settlement somewhere else, but leaving the heights would kill them. Fortuneately Axelus and Korzim barge on in with some help. Axelus says Korzim can help the Doguns relocate (which they never do) and thay we can help him sabotage the Rodoroc army.

We start the sabotage by having a fight outside the barracks, then breaking in, and destroying the war machines; which is my personal favorite part of this quest.

Phase 2 of the sabotage consists of us defending Axelus while he shuts down the Rodoroc power core, which is powered by Dogun magic which Axelus makes sure to point out.

After completing the sabotage Axelus who I keep accidentally typing as "Aledar" tells us he wants to meet with the king so we go through the slums. Where he states "Dwarven society isn't as grand as it's made out to be, the poorest are hidden away." But aren't Dwarves communist? Isn't the wealth shared by everyone? Why is this here?

Anyway you may be wondering why we are going through the slums to find the king, and it's because... the slums are connected... to the king's... toilet? What the fuck?

Anyway now shit get's real annoying. Here Axelus confronts the king about the lie. The king refuses to tell the public the truth because he doesn't want an uprising. Which all makes sence. But during this we find out that Axelus is the prince....


Hold on a second guys.

*inhales*

WHAT THE FUCK
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This is so FUCKING stupid. Not only does it make this already generic-ass motherfucker even more generic but it's just so much less interesting than him being a nobody. Making the hero of the story a nobody gives the feeling that anyone could be special. You, me, anyone. You don't have to born into a position of power to be a hero, to be something. But this way. You have to be the son of the king, you have to be born special to be special. It fucking sucks and only serves to make the story less engaging.

This is made even worse by having Korzim be the son of the chief. You can't even be second fiddle if you aren't born into it. Your regualr ass everyday guy like all of us can only be that random coalitionist that gets 2 lines, unimportant and forgoten.

This also makes Axelus and Korzim effectively the same character. Both born heirs to their respective thrones. Both outcasts trying to convince their people to side with them. If you remove either one of these characters hardly anything changes. And you wanna know what makes this worse? This isn't the worst part of the quest.

Ok, Imma need to take a breather after that.


Oof, aight. Anyway, after this we get kicked out of the throne room. But Axelus isn't done he want's to go back and try resoning with daddy.

Again.

And get's arrested.

Again.

And Part 2 is over now. For the most part, it's actually pretty good. Atleast up untill that stupid fucking ending.
Anyway we have 2 more parts to hit so let's go.

Part 3
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So part 3 is pretty dumb. The only stuff worth talking about is at the very begining where the Doguns begin to sommon Garaheth, a demon they used to worship.

1st: If the point of this quest is to make peace by convincing the Dwarves that Doguns aren't demons, why is it mentioned that they used to worship a demon? Where the Dwarves really wrong when they called them demons? Why is this here?

2nd: Korzim mentions that interrupting to ritual will have disasterous effects. But are they more disasterous than an apocalypse? Really? This is a bit nitpicky but it bothered me anyway.

So now that that's out of the way we can move on to the rest of the quest that I'm not going to talk about because it's just fetching garbage. So onto part 4!

Part 4
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We made it, the final part of D&D. The hopefully thrilling climax to the rollercoaster that has been the first 3 parts.

The Finale is kicked off by Korzim telling you to go find Axelus and then promptly dissapearing until the very end.

When we find Axelus he is haning from a statue in a cage, where he screams some propaganda and demands to be released because he is the prince, except in post-script dialouge at the end of part 2 the king disowns you. So you aren't the prince.

After releasing him we get shot out of a cannon into the upper heights into all the action. We run through a sort of war maze killing certain enemies while carnage ensues around us. This stands among my favorite things in the quest.

After escaping the carnage we see the Doguns sommoning Garaheth, and enter a sweet cutscene just before the boss. Speaking of the boss, it has mixed feelings from me. While it is undwhelmingly easy I do really like the concept. Running through the Garaheth's body and freezing his organs is pretty fun, but again, underwhelingly easy.

And with all of the good stuff of part 4 out of the way it's time for the finale.
Which stands, as the dumbest part of the quest.

It starts off with Axelus yelling about how both sides are assholes and Dwarves shouldn't have been meanies for centuries and the Doguns shouldn't have resorted to world anhiliation instead of defeat. Which pisses of Paku who kills Axelus for reasons. But Axelus takes long enough to die to tell Draani to stop being a pussy and end the fighting. Which works, why does this work? Because the quest fucking wants it to. There is no reason for Draani to want peace after this, if anything he should hate the Doguns more for killing his son.

Draani and Paku should have died, Axelus and Korzim (mostly Axelus) could have made an empassioned speech about how war is bad and people die and shit, and Axelus and Krozim should have made the peace treaty together. It's not perfect but it's infinitely better than Draani and Paku doing illogical 180s and being like "ooh yea war bad we should like, chill tf out even though we should really only hate eachother more now" This is a conflict that has been going on for a millenia and these 2 people that are into the most just kinda stop. All because the quest wanted to find a way to end.

Anyway, in the last scene we see the entire last 1000 years undone in a couple hours with no consequences except Axelus dieing. Ok.

I would also like to mention another problem I have here, why is Axelus named Axelus? Why isn't he Draani IX? I know it's modeled after Imaxe but it really doesn't fit. This kind of naming technique is fine most of the time, but I don't like it being forced in where it doesn't belong. IMO Axelus should be Draani IX but that might just be me.



So I shit on this quest a lot. But I still like it, all I really wanted was a quest with fun gameplay and some good ol' MH lore, and I got that. The quest had a lot of flaws but considering I still got what I wanted I really can't complain too much.

To be fair, most of this quest is good. Part 1 is good, Part 2 is good untill the end, Part 3 is... bad, and part 4 is good untill the end. And as a result, despite all of my shittalking I give Dwarves and Doguns a 7/10 I still love you Imaxe.

 

I actually liked Dwarves and Doguns quite a lot.

Part one was good, part two was alright, part three was.. uhh.. grinding, but the war scene in Part 4 must be one of my best Wynncraft experiences. It felt like I was within a cutscene, with custom NPCs all around me, using spells, blowing holes in the ground, killing each other.

But the plot has some major issues, mainly the ending. The characters aren't made that well, and yeah, the ending. Why did the Paku/Palari/whatever guy kill Axelus just because he didn't like that he was correct? Why did the two sides stop fighting just when Axelus died? Why is no one talking about the player that literally just killed Garaheth?