By Danny
"Ralsu" Gourley
I first tried and gave
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/36727">my first
impressions of Perfect
World
in June 2008. I wasn't very impressed with the game. Except for its
massively-deep character customization, it was a just another
poorly-translated Asian grindfest hitting the North American audiences.
Apparently developer Beijing Perfect World got that feedback from quite
a few gamers because the company decided to invest in some serious
localization efforts. Introduced the second time as
style="font-style: italic;">Perfect World International,
the Closed Beta for the new version of the game opened in August 2008.
The game is now in Open Beta.
Download and Installation
The
system requirements for Perfect World International have not changed.
The official requirements start pretty low, but I recommend being at
the suggested specifications or higher to get a smooth performance
without having to sacrifice the graphics. Notice that the hard drive
specifications go from 2.5GB required to 3GB recommended. This is
likely because Beijing Perfect World knows gamers will need to convert
hard drive space to virtual memory via a page file if they only have
512MB of RAM.
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card
card
or
better
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Deep
character customization options ensure that players feel like their
character is their own.
Gamers can download Perfect
World International
directly as an installer or as part of a torrent. It's also possible to
download from a number of mirror sites. The company will even mail a
DVD to gamers for shipping and handling costs only. This is a very cool
way to get the client.
The direct file first downloads a downloader that grabs the
rest fo
the file. By the time all downloads were complete, I had a 2.2GB
installer on my computer. Installation is as simple as it should be;
just run the installer and confirm your choices. I had some difficulty
patching. The patcher kept failing, so I had to give up for one day and
return the next. The patching process took almost 30 minutes. In total,
I spent about one hour installing the game after the download.
Character Creation
Changes:
style="font-style: italic;">Perfect World International
still has the three races (Human, Werebeast, and Winged Elf). The six
classes are now called Mage and Warrior (Human), Barbarian and
Venomancer (Werebeast), and Archer and Priest (Winged Elf). Also
different in the localized version is that the Human and Winged Elf
classes can be either gender.
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Expect to
be jealous the first time you see another player on a mount.
What stayed the same: The character customization options are
still
some of the deepest gamers can find anywhere. Players can customize
ears, eyes, cheeks, torsos, arms, legs, and more. With enough tweaking,
it's very possible to get hundreds of different looks. When I made a
Barbarian, I could make my Werebeast a panda or tiger or even a wolf.
When I made a Human Mage, I could customize everything myself or choose
from set looks that would combine the features to give a particular
style.
Interface and
Controls
Changes:
Perfect World International aims to please its market with Westernized
controls. The first game tip players see on screen when logging into a
new character for the first time is that movement can be handled via
WASD keys or left mouse clicks. Instead of turning the character, the A
and D keys strafe. The game tip tells players this and that it is
possible to change them to make them turn. I was unable to find this
option, but that could have been my problem. At least the developers
show an understanding of the needs of its audience.
What stayed
the same: The interface is laid out pretty much the same. Everything is
in a familiar place for veterans, and newcomers can rely on solid game
tips within the first couple of character levels to figure out anything
that is not immediately understood.
There's
more to Perfect World
International.
Continue
to page 2.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Perfect World International Game Page.
