Currently, there are only three different “classes” to choose from when creating a new character. Two of them are female, the other a male. I chose the male, and was told it was a warrior-type dual-wielding character. Fine. Great. Let's go.
I played through the prologue when I first downloaded the game back in October, and I was utterly confused as to what the hell was going on. It wasn't much better the second time around, either, except for the fact that I knew what strange shit was going to happen. It still didn't make any sense to me, though. So basically, you're a rookie soldier in this regiment of mercenaries. There's a huge-ass spider climbing the bell tower, and you're deployed to go handle it. (I couldn't make this shit up if I tried.)
Since the spider is fucking huge, and it's climbing a huge tower all King Kong style, it would be incredibly easy to just shoot the damned thing down. At first, that looked to be exactly what was going to happen, until a young woman runs up and stands in front of the ballistae. Why this girl wants to save a big giant spider, I have no idea. But hey, I'll go with it.
So instead of easily shooting the thing off the tower with giant spears, we're going to go up and talk to it. Really? Okay, fine. Maybe I'll still get to kill something…
We enter the bell tower with a whole regiment of soldiers. Then, all of them are killed/wounded by arrows fired by evil gnolls. All of them except me and this girl, of course. How cliché…
In any case, I then have to battle my way up to the top of the tower. The combat was pretty basic — left mouse button was my primary attack, and the right mouse button was my secondary attack. Space bar to dodge. A couple of things stood out to me right away that I really liked. First of all, it's the animations on the fighting. This game uses the Source engine, and takes full advantage of the amazing physics that the engine is capable of displaying. I was smashing wooden beams and barrels and you name it as I fought the gnolls. Splinters of wood flew everywhere, and their bodies went flying as well. Also, I was able to pick up debris off the floor and fling it at enemies as well, which was incredibly entertaining. Also, it appears that when you pick up something, like say a wooden beam, you can both primary and secondary attack with it as long as you want, or you can hurl it at someone in the distance. Really cool stuff.
Ok, so I get to the top of the tower, and the girl starts talking to the big mean spider. Then, a rune begins to glow on its head, and it goes flipping berserk. Uh-oh. Guess who had to fight it? Oh yeah.
Since it was a prologue, of course the fight was simple. There were times you have to dodge, but it didn't really matter if you did or not. You were never really in any danger. The fight was rather fast paced, but it was repetitive. Primary, Secondary, Dodge. Repeat. Still, the graphics were lovely, the sound was great, and it was the prologue. I wanted to see more.
After the prologue, I was taken to the character customization screen. Okay. Now we're getting somewhere…OH GOD WHY DO I LOOK LIKE SOMETHING OUT OF AN ANIME?!
No, really, WTF is this shit? Devil May Cry meets The Shire? The game is made in Korea, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it looks like an anime. But I didn't even know the Source engine was CAPABLE of making things that looked like anime. Shows what I know. Right. Anyway.
After I was finished creating my character (and cringing at the fact that no matter what I did, he looked like Yokai Kurama) and was actually dropped into the persistent world, I began to see the parts of the game that remind you that the game is free. For example, you don't just walk up to NPCs in the game to get your quests. Instead, you're taken to a semi-animated screen with a portrait of the NPCs in the corner.
Now, I will admit that this kind of grew on me after the shock of “OMFG where are the NPCs!?” wore off. But I felt it best to remind everyone that you're not going to get the ROBUSTNESS of a full-fledged, big budget MMO. And look at the outfit on that NPC I'm talking to there. It looks like she could whip out a lightsaber at any moment. Use the force, semi-anime looking redhead!
Also, now that I've showed you this screenshot, it would be a good time to go over the UI. The controls are a little ftwangy when compared to other games. Yes, ftwangy. I made that word up. For this very purpose. It means “a bit weird but hey it works”.
So basically, your mouse moves your camera direction. That really threw me off at first, but I got used to it. If you want to switch it so you actually have a mouse pointer and can click on your screen, you just press the ESC key. (And press the ESC key again to go back to “camera mode”.) The ALT key does something too, but I haven't figured out what yet. I've been able to access everything that I need with the ESC key.
Movement is standard WASD stuff, with other keys around those providing other controls. E for pickup. Space for dodge. And my personal favorite: R for “kick them while they're down”. Yes, there's a special key for that. I kid you not. And as far as I can tell, there's no jumping.
Okay, so I picked up my first quest! I have to go to the MERCENARY TRAINING GROUNDS. Of course I do. But hey, at least I don't have to go kill 10 wolves or bears or boars or whatever. That's a bonus, I suppose.
So, the Mercenary Training Grounds is an instance, which I accessed by going to the docks and taking a boat there. As I was doing this, I was out in the persistent game world for the first time. And I was thus treated to General Chat!
I could say something witty here about that, but it would just cheapen the moment. So I'll just let that stand on its own merits.
Okay, so I'll admit, as I was going through this training exercise with my anime character, I was compelled to yell “Kamehameha!”, “Bankai!”, “Rasengan!”, and every other anime catchphrase ever uttered by a prepubescent martial arts hero. But enough about that.
There's an interesting twist to the combat — you can increase the power of your secondary attack depending on how many times you've chained your primary attack. Pretty cool stuff. I also like the little tutorial image in the lower left corner that they give you, and yes, that image is animated in-game.
This is just me delivering the killing blow to the last boss of the training exercise. I thought it looked neat. Though I question the realistic quality of blood spewing from a tree. And, the the glowing pink stuff is gold falling from the corpse. Don't ask. I don't even know.
This is how you loot. When you kill something, a black ooze escapes the mob and wriggles around on the ground. You walk over to it, and yank it apart. I don't even know what to say about that. It's so BIZARRE.
The game is INCREDIBLY flashy. I nearly went into an epileptic fit when I hit level 2. I had lights going off and sounds going off and things flashing in my eyes and I nearly went blind. The only thing noisier was the sounds my mother was making as she was watching the Steelers game. (They won, btw, and are going to the Super Bowl. Yay.)
This is me accepting a quest. The NPC giving it to me is, of course, in the lower left hand corner of the screen. The middle image is just a flavor image regarding the quest. The important stuff is in the upper right. Quests are called “Battles” in this game. The name of the mission is listed there, with the difficulty, location, and reward. Pretty basic stuff here. Nothing out of the ordinary.
Just when my eyes recovered from the LEVEL UP RAVE that the game blinded me with…I then turned in a quest. OH DEAR GOD MY EYES. Aside from that, however, in this shot you can see the inventory screen in the upper right. Also rather basic, though there's one thing you can notice there that really, really horrified me beyond belief. See the items with an “E” in their upper left corner? That means they are “equipped”. Yup, your gear stays in your bags even though you're wearing it. WHAT IS THIS I DON'T EVEN.
Minus 100 internets.
Also, I was rather annoyed by the fact that the quest reward item for this was one level higher than me. Really? I could understand if it was a drop I got out in the world. But it's the quest reward! If I'm high enough to do the quest, how am I not high enough to wear the reward?
Minus 50 internets.
And the last shot I have for you is a similar shot, but here you get a really good view of the room I'm in. It's not really a room, though, more so just a backdrop for you to look at while going through your character screens. It is slightly animated, however, and I actually found it quite nice to look at. Also, I'm mousing-over a piece of gear, so you can see the tooltip. Rather typical here — It tells you such basic things as proficiency, vendor price, weight, stats, durability, etc. Classic MMORPG stuff.
Ok, so my final thoughts. For a game that is free, I'm very impressed with the quality. The prologue had great cinematography, it had voice acting, etc. There's a lot of detail in the world, and the graphics look fantastic. The combat is fun, albeit it was getting a bit repetitive for me when I stopped playing a little bit ago. However, I'm also in the process of training a new skill, so I'm guessing that will add more and more variety to the game for players, and alleviate some of the repetition of just pressing two mouse buttons all the time.
On the other hand, DEAR GOD EVERYONE LOOKS LIKE THEY'RE FROM “INSERT GENERIC ANIME SHOW HERE”! Also, your class is gender dependent…say what?
Bottom line, this thing looks like the Poor Man's MMORPG. If you don't want to pay the 15 bucks a month for WoW, then this game would probably entertain you at the very least. While I was walking around town, I saw a level 37 player, and his gear looked fantastic. It made me want to keep going and see how cool I could get my character to look. I probably won't, but the desire was there and I can see other people having fun with it.
That said, if you're bored and looking for something different to try for a while, I'd recommend this game. You're not going to lose a thing, since it's free. But, if you're happy with your current MMO, there's no reason to try this one. There's nothing new or better here.
Now playing: Muse - Resistance
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