Build a guild and go hunt some orc with the upcoming iOS RPG Dragon Realms

Traditional roleplaying games are nothing without a good party.

Not the one in the tavern, mind - though those are pretty great in their own right - we're talking about the party with the elves, wizards, knights, and archers in it.

All of those archetypes are out in force in Gree's upcoming mobile RPG Dragon Realms, which presents as something of a hybrid between a mobile version of World of Warcraft and Diablo.

And by mobile, we mean that it's been simplified a great deal from those Blizzard-born masterpieces - but that's all for the best as Dragon Realms looks like a great way to scratch your MMO itch on the go.

As the heir to Funzio's popular Kingdom Age and Modern War titles, the free-to-play Dragon Realms has a lot to live up to.

Gree knows this, and it's put a clever spin on the fantasy roleplaying game by creating an action-focused RPG that combines elements of city building and card battlers seamlessly.

While the fun part of the game for me was tromping around the gorgeously rendered zones and delivering fantasy smackdowns on wyverns, orcs, ooze monsters, and undead, there's a rich city building mechanic underneath of Dragon Realms as well.

As you build your settlement, you'll be able to create structures that add buffs to your party members or provide and mechanical tweaks like faster energy replenishment to help you earn loot faster.

This allows for a great deal of customization in playstyle and, as a delightful bonus, presents you with some rather nice visuals when you pop in to check on your town.

But the real focus on Dragon Realms is in how you build and evolve your party.

You'll summon heroes in a manner reminiscent of opening a pack of virtual cards in a CCG or card battler, and duplicates are a way of life in this process.

But just because you have two eldritch elven electromancers doesn't mean that one's destined to sit on the bench for every battle. Instead, you can combine the two characters to evolve them into a single, stronger unit.

I'm not sure how this is supposed to work in the game's lore, but the process of mashing two heroes together sounds kinda... messy.

Thankfully, it's anything but in the graphics department as each unit has brilliant animations that help bring their characters to life.

While demonstrating the game, Gree told us that 'everything' had a backstory behind it.

I called them on this point, and asked them to read the rich backstory on the "Mobile Artillery" hero which was, for all intents and purposes, a big and somewhat lonely-looking cannon.

Expecting to see a simple line of text along the lines of "It shoots things and they die", I was instead treated to a brief paragraph that explained how its thunderous shot could be heard from miles around and how it inspired fear in the enemies who saw it across the field from them.

Hardly the writing to challenge Tolkien, but fair play to Gree for delivering what it said it would.

Dragon Realms also puts a strong emphasis on guilds, and by forming alliances with players you'll be able to take on more powerful PvE instances or engage in group-centric PvP matches.

In-game events will also strengthen the ties of a guild, and communication in game is easily managed on a guild wall. Better still, Dragon Realms will be a truly cross-platform experience and so Android players will be able to cross swords or ally themselves with iOS players freely.

As interesting as Dragon Realms looks, the one thing we can't be excited about is its release date since we don't have one yet. We'll be following news of this release carefully, however, and we'll update you as soon as we know more.