By Danny "Ralsu" Gourley

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The normally perfect
land is filled with monsters in Perfect
World.

Skills and Spells

Perfect World
uses the common skill tree system found in almost every game since style="font-style: italic;">World
of Warcraft. My Mage started with a single fire spell. I
could upgrade that spell at higher levels. Other spells opened up at
higher levels, too. I could see ice and earth spells in my future.



The newbie fire spell was nothing flashy. My Mage would move her arm to
sort of trace a rune in the arm, and then she'd thrust out and unleash
the power. Even with particle effects cranked up, I did not really see
a whole lot to the spell--a little orange and nothing more.



Game Play and Interface

Perfect World
lost a lot of its momentum for me once I'd made a character and started
playing. Movement was handled via a combination of WASD keys and mouse
look controls. While this system is very familiar to Asian gamers, I
found it utterly disorienting. I tried in vain to find a way to change
it and then just struggled through.



The interface was a little large and not what I'd call optimized.
Combat animations were smooth. If my description of a fire spell
sounded underwhelming, allow me to note that melee was better. Perfect
World impressed me the first time I saw my scrawny Mage double-strike
an opponent with a sword (yes, I found a sword she could wield).



Quests I encountered in the early stages were generic kill quests, but
I'll admit that the attempt to weave a story was apparent. My newbie
trainer named Guide led me through a brief tutorial that ended with
slaying a few beetles before sending me to the nearby city to meet with
a guard. She advised me to kill a few more critters before I met him to
curry his favor. From there, the real story began. Overall, I got the
impression that the game tries to connect quests in a way that reveals
the story in broader and broader strokes...but there was a problem...



Translation

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A change of clothing
can make your character look different.

Perfect World
suffers from the typical imperfect translation of a free-to-play game.
I had to reread the opening line of the first tutorial quest multiple
times before I could finish the translation attempted there. As I
played, hints and tips popped up to help me learn new things about my
character development. Most of these were either roughly translated or
insufficient to tell me what I really needed to know. Most of the time,
I just clicked through the tips and tried to investigate whatever menu
was just introduced on my own.



It's not all bad, but rough spots in translation make it really hard
for me to get into a game. At just the moment when I can start to feel
the grand scope of a gaming world, one quick "All your base" line of
text reminds me that I am playing a video game. Who knows, maybe the
effect is intentional. The launcher style="font-style: italic;">does remind people
that prolonged play periods are a hazard to their health.



Parting Thoughts

Perfect World
is not what I'd call perfect, but I am not ready to write it off
either. I will continue to explore its features to see if it is worth
diving into for the casual gamer looking for a free game to play. I can
already say that the character customization is top-shelf in quality.
It might be worth a download just to play with that feature.