Yeah, it’s another one of those Anime inspired MMORPG’s. Anime is pretty popular so why would it ever stop? Me, I don’t care if the game is made based off an Anime or Western culture. I’m only concerned about two things. Is the gameplay enjoyable and how big of a grind-fest it is before you can do the awesome stuff.
My associate Aron wanted to try this game so I decided to try it myself. MMO’s aren’t exactly keen on story (there are exceptions, but this isn’t one of them) so I skipped mentioning it. This one is especially generic, so more reason not to touch it on these grounds. Let’s see if it’s worth picking up in terms of game play, shall we?
Gameplay: The controls are the standard WASD movement and or point and click. Combat it click and watch your character beat the crap out of the enemy, so nothing new there, then again it’s not exactly bad, for all we know the developers wanted to keep accessibility high so they made it like that.
One thing I have to say is that I’m surprised by (and impressed with) the fact that you don’t need to make multiple characters (of the same race) because of the way the games class system works. You pick between Warrior and Mage to start with, but from there you can change classes as you level up on the fly. So you could become EVERY CLASS IN THE GAME! As of writing this the game has 15 classes available for us to fool around with, so yeah this aspect I REALLY ENJOY. But it takes more than that to keep me amused/committed.
The combat is the standard “click and enjoy” prevalent in the genre, so nothing more to say on that. Weapons and Armor have durability and speaking of which this game, like any douche bag does will ruin this for you at the worse possible moment. When you die everything on you loses 10% of its current durability and if that wasn’t bad enough death is also murder on the experience points front. I have no clue what the industry standard norm is for these matters (quite frankly I would like this to be listed under the constitution under Cruel and Unusual punishment on games with lots of grind), but you lose 50% of you experience points. No matter how you come back from the dead (except if you get one of those leaves from the Item Mall, AND the death was not in a Dungeon (nice to know Areia Games aren’t complete dicks, but who knows how long that will remain true)) you will always lose these. Some of you might think that it’s part of the challenge and if I don’t like it then I’m a scrub, but to you who think like that I would like to state I’m not fond of masochism and fear to see how you plan on disciplining your children. Here’s hoping that it’s not possible to actually level down as an end result.
Speaking of grind, it does start to feel like a drag around Level 30. I will say that this is the first MMORPG I have ever played that I managed to get over Level 20 in under a week, so congrats on that, but I’m really starting to feel it after beating the Vile Shark HQ (a five player Dungeon) after dying who knows how many times and spending three days stuck on it, going through several groups until I found one that I could work well with. I did find it funny that an Illusionist could use Mind Control on a boss and have it work, so it was worth every single misshape in between to see it.
The game has Guilds, but as it seems to be the norm the cost to make one is fairly large. I’m part of one on the Emerald server called Kaze (it means wind), all part of the reviewing experience, also I was curious how it would be, so I went what the hell and accepted the random invite. When I did most quests part of my reward would be given to the Guild, and no I had no say in it, but I would have liked one. They give you an option to donate Silver & Gold to the Guild so this feels like overkill. To expand on the Guild feature, you can have Guild Towns for the low, low price of 5000 Gold (or 5000000 Silver since 1000 Silver coins equals 1 Gold coin)! While the guild town can give you a place to buy & sell stuff and other functions I’m not sure of, it’s really only a good investment for a Guild that has zero life. The Guild town only sticks around as long as people are active and if something unforeseeable happens in real life (like a relative dying, house on fire or choosing to simply take a break from the game for a period of time) they take the town from you. All that Gold, all that grinding gone, for nothing which why I would never start a Guild in this game.
Speaking of grind, there is a lot more of it than in most MMO’s I’ve played. You grind for your character level and grind for your class level. In order to use some classes you have to have a class level in one or two other classes AND your class level can never exceed your character level, which makes a lot of sense but just serves to make the grind even more…grindy.
The interface can be quite cumbersome at times, especially if in a Raid and if you need to click on a person to target them it could be somewhat of a delay, or if you have a sizeable quest screen (not sure if they can be adjusted) it gets bothersome moving it out of the way to click on those alerts like Legend Acquired, and when you click on a quest to go to its location your character seems to go all over the place.
Land mass can also be an issue like the Vile Shark HQ run. Sometimes a pile of bones got in my way (that my character could walk over easily in any other game) and I couldn’t Oni Rush the enemy, or intercept a foe soon enough to get the mobs off our Healers. Here’s hoping they address these issues.
One thing did bother me that seems to enforce grinding and pressure you into going into the cash shop is that you cannot Power Level anyone. If someone in your party is more than five levels higher than you then you get no experience points or drops. This means I can’t help a friend level up fast and I’m stuck waiting or they can’t catch up, get discouraged and quit.
If that doesn’t make you quit then the limited bag space sure will. Those slots fill up fast, and the storage house/bank isn’t any better. You can buy other packs to give yourself more room, but the gold they take to get makes things more grindy, but you could purchase from the cash shop for about $3 if you wanted to add 10 more slots to it. Bank is far worse since its extra slots are temporary AND CAN COST REAL LIFE CASH AND IS ABOUT $1 A SLOT.
Judgment: This game to me is rather luke warm. I don’t exactly hate it but I don’t exactly like it either. While I love the ability to become any class the grind and death penalties really suck that out. If you want to check it out, be my guest. If you like it that’s fine, if not that’s fine too. I just feel so neutral on this game. Who knows, something will probably come along sooner or later and make me go one way or the other.
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