Trying to Get Your Feet on
an Icy Slope

Again like other Korean MMOGs before it, style="font-style: italic;">Last Chaos has
virtually no new player experience. Whether the developers simply
assumed that players of their game would understand the intricate
nuances of MMOGs or not doesn’t explain away the complete
lack of a thorough tutorial / entry quest. Even veteran MMO gamers will
be confused on what and where they need to go, as the initial quest
dialogues (which are more like tasks than the
“epic” quest) provide little direction other than
find out an NPC named Lorraine. After this has been accomplished, it
will still take some time before every command or order is understood.
Like trying to climb an icy hill, you’ll often lose as much
ground as you gain.

width="200">
href="http://tth.tentonhammer.com/modules.php?set_albumName=album362&id=Your_Personal_Dungeon&op=modload&name=gallery&file=index&include=view_photo.php"> src="http://media.tentonhammer.com/tth/gallery/albums/album362/Your_Personal_Dungeon.thumb.jpg"
alt="Your Personal Dungeon" title="Your Personal Dungeon"
name="photo_j" border="0" height="115" width="150">
A personal, instanced dungeon is available to every
character from the beginning of the game.

This lack of new player assistance hindered me from finding
one of the more intriguing parts of the game, as the quest had me
perform a task to make a “smelting stone” but
didn’t tell me what that “smelting stone”
did. Only after finding an online guide was I informed that smelting
stones were added to weapons to enhance their properties, and with
enough stones added the weapon would gain a certain
“glow”. Much like the Enchanting profession in
World of Warcraft, smelting is a good way to get rid of extra equipment
and enhance your own aging weapons.

Still, the individuals who localized style="font-style: italic;">Last Chaos should
have
taken some time to explore the new player experience for new players
from the Western audience. Learning to control the characters via the
mouse is often difficult enough for people, why not help them along in
your game world as well.

He’s My Best Friend

One of the best elements of style="font-style: italic;">Last Chaos is how
quickly your
character will find their first pet. Unlike the Mage in style="font-style: italic;">Everquest or
the Hunter in World of
Warcraft,
your pet will merely follow you
around, but he will provide your character with some passive buffs and
pick up all your loot for you, which is a great help when
you’re wading through multitudes of monsters. As you advance,
your pet (mine was a drake) will also advance, and help you throughout
the remainder of your playing experience. There are lots of pets to
choose from, and deciding which pet avatar best represents you is often
a difficult choice. Me…I had my eye on one of those ponies,
then I could claim he was My Little Pony!

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alt="Power Magnum!" title="Power Magnum!" name="photo_j"
border="0" height="113" width="150">
Get used to grinding, because you'll be doing a lot of
it.

The pet animations and graphics are above average, like most
of the game are above average but nothing exceptional. The graphics in
general, don’t distract from the gameplay, but they add
relatively little to the experience – even on the highest
settings. Strangely, I had some serious framerate issues while playing
Last Chaos,
and I never quite discovered why. I run a high-end GeForce
7950 in my computer and for the life of me I couldn’t figure
out why my frame rates would drop at all.

A Slow, Slow Climb

Grinding is your modus operandi for advancement in style="font-style: italic;">Last Chaos.
You will be doing it from the moment you enter the world. You may get
some experience from the initial quests, but it is a piddling number
compared to the number of enemies you will need to kill to advance.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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