Dragon Nest works like a lot of free-to-play hack-and-slash games. It lets you create a character from a specific class (such as warrior, wizard, archer, or priest) and then sally forth into instanced combat areas to beat the living heck out of various cutesy monsters by repeatedly clicking your mouse button to swing your weapon or occasionally using various hotkeyed abilities. Instanced areas are divided into short, combat-heavy segments bounded by doors that unlock only when all monsters are destroyed, but these shorter segments make it easier for impromptu parties to stick together until they can take on the Dragon Nest Gold boss and eventually complete the instance and either move on to the next instance or return to a shared-space town to socialize with other players or purchase items from the in-game cash-op (which lets you spend real money in microtransactions in exchange for in-game items). 

In our session, we ended up playing as a warhammer-wielding warrior in a four-player party with a wizard, an archer, and a healer. We had to tackle an outdoor instance that appeared to be an abandoned temple overgrown by bright green jungle. We found the controls to be easy to pick up--you use W, A, S, and D to move, like in a first-person shooter, and your number keys to Dragon Nest Gold access any hotkeyed special abilities or items. You left-click to attack and right-click to perform a secondary attack (in the warrior's case, a standing kick that has a chance of stunning an enemy). You can also double-tap your W, A, S, or D key to perform a quick evasive tuck-and-roll in that direction.