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Everyone is Unique

Once you do get yourself thoroughly comfortable with your characters, however, there are hosts of options for you to explore within Sword of the New World itself. On top of the five classes you can choose from at the beginning of the game – Fighter, Scout, Elementalist, Wizard, and Musketeer – there are dozens of stances within each class for the players to explore.

Stances in Sword of the New World are another innovation from the game’s developers. Instead of merely restricting characters to particular classes based around certain fundamental concepts of each character, the developers decided to allow each class to have its own sort of unique “personality”, insuring that even a group of three Fighters would not be merely the same character swinging the same sword over and over again. You see, each Stance has its own way of dealing with certain situations. Stances also vary from class to class, Elementalists’ stances all deal with their various magics – Wind, Earth, Fire, Water – while Scouts can choose between damage dealing and healing, to name a few examples. Each Stance can be leveled up individually from a character’s overall level and the every other stance, meaning a Fighter could be level 15 but only be level 1 in Bare-Knuckled fighting.

On top of the various stances, there are also Unique Player Characters (UPCs) for the players to find or enlist to join their family. By optioning to go with the MCC system, Kim really tapped into an area of MMOGs that had gone unnoticed but is a prevalent part of many single player RPGs: the idea of “recruiting” characters to join your fighting force. Like I mentioned previously, players of Sword will have the opportunity to collect various UPCs that can fight alongside your standard family members. While players can still play with the characters they have created, the UPCs will present them with characters with special powers that are a bit different than what comes with a standard character.

UPCs are typically collected through completing various quests and missions, and you’ll receive your first UPC fairly early in the game. Be careful, once you make your UPC you can’t remake them unless you redo the quest. This can get a bit hairy early on, as I found out in my barracks. When I first made my squad, I started with a Fighter, Elementalist, and Musketeer; a group very heavy on damage. However, playing without a Scout (healer) can be extremely frustrating, and dying often is not fun at all. However, when I went to make my Scout I noticed that the final spot in my barracks had been used by my first UPC, a soldier from the starting town. I continued to play with my initial three characters, albeit at a slight disadvantage.

For me, although the UPCs often had abilities that surpassed the regular Stances of my characters, I had a hard time opting to throw them into my squad. Along with the high price of buying extra barracks slots – at least at first – it was extremely difficult to give up a character I had been working on for several weeks just to put in a UPC that was “better” than what I had used previously. Although for the high-end PvP game, it’s almost essential to have a variety of UPCs, for the low to mid game, I found that my UPC cards would be left unused in my inventory.

However, once those extra barracks spots do open up, it’s a thrill to play with characters that you’ve grown to know throughout your gameplay. The first time I was able to use Panfilo the Chef was a terrific moment; Panfilo is one of the earliest NPCs you meet in the game and has a quirky chef-ish personality to him. All of the UPCs are well-conceived and have their own unique look about them, not to mention their unique abilities.

A Beautiful World

Finally, it would be a shame to review Sword of the New World: Granado Espada without mentioning the absolutely beautiful graphics the team has employed to create the game. In the MMOG world, nothing can really compare to what K2 Network has brought from across the ocean; Sword of the New World stands alone when it comes to sheer graphical style and panache.