System: Switch 2
Release date: September 15, 2026
Developer: Jagex
Publisher: Jagex

After a year or so in early access on PC, it’s finally time for console players to descend upon the lost continent of Ashenfall in the world of Gielinor. As someone who’s always strictly played on home consoles, and largely on Nintendo, I never really got the chance to try any version of RuneScape. I was aware of the series, of course, because of its immense popularity and loyal community, but never got to hop on the wagon. After getting to witness a demo played in front of me at Gamescom and chatting with the really passionate developers, my curiosity was piqued to the point that I really wanted to dig into RuneScape: Dragonwilds myself to see what sets this game apart from some of its contemporaries in the genre.

While the franchise is traditionally an MMORPG, this spin-off title, Dragonwilds, is an open world action survival game based within the lore of the original title. The story follows an avatar protagonist that the player designs with a character creator tool, who is enlisted by a Wise Old Man to set forth to slay dragons and take the fight to their queen, Kuldra. Over the course of the mainline quests of the game, your hero will traverse forests, swamps, highlands, temples and valleys and fight against giant rats, goblins, skeletons, zombies and vault enemies in an effort to save the day.

The plot itself is relatively straightforward, but the story gets meat on its bones through lore found out by speaking with some of the NPCs in the game, reading journal entries scattered around the vast world. These include information on things that happened in the world before the events of the game, some of the enemy types you encounter and other guide-like intel. For example, a journal entry includes some background information on the primary antagonist of the game, Kuldra, and how her story is a sad one and her turn to becoming a monster was born from living a life where she was abused in her youth, and her desire to burn the world down is simply because everyone else is happy, and she is not. That was enough to wage war on the world. These journal entries add depth to the characters in the world, and are a strong motivator to explore around the vast landscapes and not just go from point A to point B. 

To speak about the actual gameplay, if you’ve played The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, you know what the game’s about for the most part. Gathering materials, food, and learning new skills all are a core part of the experience here. Dragonwilds’ unique draw is how it incorporates traditional RuneScape elements into the staples one would expect from an open world survival adventure game. For instance, when a player uses one of the skills or abilities in their arsenal frequently, at one point it will level up. If you use an axe to cut trees, eventually that skill will level up, and you will be able to chop trees down faster. This can be further sped up using magic to levitate and shoot the axe forward to chop down multiple trees in one go. This builds experience points faster. The higher you level up, the longer it takes between levels. 

While Breath of the Wild was so open that you could directly go fight Ganon more or less from the start, this game is a little bit more structured. There are certain areas and bosses you have to face in order to progress the narrative, and these can’t be skipped. This wasn’t something that bothered me, but might be a point of contention for some who seek absolute freedom.

Another big part of the game comes in the form of crafting. You can make a lot of really, really cool stuff. From picking up a few stones and wood at the start of the game, you can create housing and a tool bench. From that, you can create even more things, such as clothing for your protagonist, new weapons and equipment like bows, magic wands and shields. You can craft tools to make threads from materials, or a campfire to cook your food and filter dirty water into clean water.

If there’s one gameplay point that really stuck with me, it’s that the difficulty is very real here. When you die, you lose everything and get sent back to the last point your avatar rested in bedding. It is encouraged to keep building shelters around the map so there are more places to recover health, and so you aren’t flung really far back across the map if you get killed. I found in the early game that I was dying a lot, and it began to get tiresome getting materials to craft basic weapons at the start. As you level up, however, these issues are mitigated because your health takes longer to hit 0 and your movement speed improves to the point you can flee from almost any fight. Is it pathetic and cowardly? Sure. Is it effective? Oh heck yeah.

Incidentally, the plethora of different items you can create your shelter with is quite expansive. I’ve never been much of a designer, but I was at least able to build two floors, a bed and a door in there. More creative people could really make something majestic, I reckon. One thing I didn’t know was that certain tools you craft needs different elements in order to work. For example, a Spinning Wheel needs a roof over it in order to work, whereas campfires need open areas to serve its purpose. 

One thing I was absolutely gobsmacked by was how good the music was. The instrumentation is great – specifically the way it builds up and gets louder as you encounter enemies, or when a dragon is lurking nearby and suddenly springs out and attacks the terrain around you. The vocals sound incredible, and even environmental sounds at night feel tense to match the increased difficulty in fighting enemies. The sound effects all have that great retro feel. I couldn’t tell you if they are ripped directly from RuneScape Classic, but they feel like they are from that era in the absolute best way. Naturally, there are lots of side quests to get involved with in the world, and lots of hidden crafting recipes and treasure chests to find.

If I were to point out negatives, I had a few quibbles with the map system in the game. There is no mini map on the UI, as your health and stamina meters are at the bottom of the screen and your inventory takes up a lot of the screen when active. As a result, you have to manually check the map when travelling. However, the game is continuing when you visit the map screen. There were several instances where I got jumped by enemies when I was checking where to go and it got frustrating fast. I also found that markers on the map itself weren’t especially useful, and didn’t help me too much in gameplay. 

To talk about how the game runs on Nintendo Switch 2, I never encountered any slow down or graphical issues playing the game docked. In handheld mode, I did come across a few small instances during my playthrough of the game where the game stuttered a little bit. It was rare – truly seldom that it happened over such a long and meaty campaign but it did happen. To reiterate, I had no issues playing the game docked, and personally found it was the best way to experience this game anyway. 

Despite my gripes with the rather slow start to the campaign that seems a bit too harshly difficult, with a lot of grinding before I felt strong enough to venture forward with the plot, some technical quibbles portably and my disdain towards the map in the game, the level of depth and sheer amount of content in this ever-growing game is truly a magical experience to partake in. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the most fun and unique open world games I’ve ever had the chance to play, with a world rich in lore and so many tools to really individualize each individual campaign for players. While I didn’t get a chance to try out the online offerings, I prefer to tackle these types of games solo. The option to party up is excellent and a welcome addition. If you are on the fence about playing this game, I really would recommend trying this one. For a relatively low price point in today’s gaming market with lots and lots of content available within the campaign, you’d be silly not to take this quest on. 

RuneScape Dragonwilds copy provided by the publisher for the purposes of this review.