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The rest of Mabinogi’s character creation system is fairly intuitive and features the standard choices of hair, facial features, gender, and naming options. After a bit of experimenting, I finished off my red-headed 10 year old named Micajah and set him off into the world of Mabinogi.

Upon first arriving in the gaming space, you’re not actually in the world of Mabinogi proper. Instead, you’re in a spacious white wonderland where the game’s ambivalent feature character, Nao, descends from the heavens in all of her voluptuous glory. With an innocent grin (and a strange bit of bouncing), Nao proceeds to explain where you are and how to interact with the world around you. It’s a lengthy dialogue, but I was impressed with the amount of effort the Nexon developers put into the translation of Nao’s narration.

Nao is the first NPC your character will meet. Things are looking up!

In fact, Mabinogi falls into the very small group of imported games that have truly mastered the art of proper localization. Even while I was scrutinizing the dialogue for errors, I was ejoying the story that Nao was telling me. The other NPCs I met in my initial experience were also extremely well-translated, and it shows that Nexon really put in a large amount of effort to make Mabinogi accessible to every type of gamer.

Once Nao was finished with her introductory tutorial, I was whisked off to the main world in Mabinogi. Alighting upon the ground, I instantly made my way to my first quest task, which was to find the “Chief” in the area. To get there, I obviously needed to figure out my best movement options. Controlling your character in Mabinogi is done almost completely via the mouse. While I typically enjoy moving my characters via the WASD buttons on my keyboard, Mabinogi seemed like an appropriate type of game for moving with mouse clicks. That may seem like a strange sentiment, but it just worked for this particular game.

Once I found the “Chief” of the town, he explained to me the various ways to gain experience, earn money, and advance my skills in Mabinogi. Unlike many of the other MMORPGs on the market, Mabinogi doesn’t force players to go down a particular path in order to be successful in the game world. Although hunting mythical monsters is an option, many players may choose to harvest herbs, milk cows, or work a smithy for their money.  On top of that, players can also find “Part-Time Jobs” to do around a particular town. These “mini-quests” can be accomplished once per in-game day and will give the player a certain amount of coin to do whatever they wish with. Of course, hunting is also an option for the intrepid adventurer, and monsters regularly troll the hillsides for unwary travelers.

Combat in Mabinogi falls under one of those “easy to learn, tough to master” sort of scenarios. Constructed to act like a giant game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors”, players will be constantly watching their enemies to see what attack they’ll be readying next. For example, a Smash Attack will break past a character in Defense mode, but a Regular Attack will always defeat a Smash Attack in a heads-up contest. All of this plays out in real time, and the combat system continues to evolve into greater levels of complexity as you advance. Although I’m still only in my lowest levels, I can tell that hunting in the world of Mabinogi is not for the lazy or faint of heart.

Creating dungeons in Mabinogi is as easy as dropping an item.

Once they have the money, players can then choose to learn in game skills – combat or otherwise – through classes that NPCs “teach”. Money can also be used for any of the common uses – items, scrolls, equipment – and is a fairly valuable commodity in the world. However, I have yet to see an official “gold farmer” speak up in the game and try to peddle gold to me.

Finally, I would need to be scorned if I forgot to mention the intriguing “insta-dungeon” creation system that has been developed for Mabinogi. Unlike most typical MMOGs where you need to crawl around the countryside looking for quests, players in Mabinogi have the option of creating unique, level-based quests for themselves and their party by simply dropping an item onto the “Altar of the Goddess”. Each item is connected with a unique dungeon, so creating new adventures for you and your party is as easy as dropping a sword onto the altar and seeing what appears around you.

Even though I’m still only in the lowest stages of gameplay in Mabinogi, I’ve been enjoying my time in the world. Despite the oddity of playing a 10 year old character, I can’t help but smile as I run around the world and find new NPCs to interact with. Each time I pick up a new item, I wonder where I’ll be ushered off to when I drop it on the altar. It’s really been a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

For now, I can’t help but recommend that interested players at least give Mabinogi a shot. It’s free to play, and it’s certainly a unique take on the MMOG experience. If you’re still on the fence, keep checking in with Ten Ton Hammer as our official review should be right around the corner!

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