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Combat and the User Interface

For many veteran MMO gamers, the combat system in Mabinogi may come as something of a shock. Among the few Ten Ton Hammer staffers that have attempted the game, most of them made note of how surprisingly simple – yet effective – the combat controls function in Mabinogi.

Rather than gave the gamers the common options – an auto-attack with a few special attacks thrown into the mix – Mabinogi’s combat is more like a giant game of “Rock, Paper, Scissors.” Instead of simply spamming certain buttons over and over, the mobs will display a particular attack over their head, like “counter-attack,” “smash” and “defense.” Each of these maneuvers has a weakness. For example, players can break through a “defense” maneuver with a “smash” attack.

Each of these skills can be accessed via the games fairly simple user interface. Rather than trying to disguise the UI with some sort of in-game graphics, Mabinogi comes at you without any of the fancy nuances. Set-up more like Windows Explorer, you can access any of the relevant menus via a taskbar and/or hotkeys. It’s an incredibly fluid and intuitive set-up.

A Few Issues

The graphics in Mabinogi aren't the best.

All the terrific gameplay items aside, I did have a few complaints about Mabinogi.

Although I found the graphics in Mabinogi to be whimsical and bright, I wasn’t particularly impressed with the textures, models or character animations. Although it’s easy to understand why Nexon opted to create a game with such simple graphics – they can allow more users with lower system requirements into the game – I find myself hard pressed to compare the game with other free to play games that have been released recently.

Requiem: Bloodymare and Sword of the New World: Granado Espada are both in the free to play realm and they sport some amazing graphics for their users. While Dungeon Runners may not fall into the same graphical class as Requiem or Sword, it also vies for the lower end computer systems while still allowing players to enjoy the vibrancy of the world around them. That said, the graphics in Mabinogi do stand up to the test of time, and many users will probably still enjoy the game for years to come.

Contrasting with the timeless nature of the graphics in Mabinogi, I found the music and sounds in the game to be overly harsh, annoying and simply overwhelming to my ear. When so much of a game is devoted to the shearing of sheep or milking of cows, it pays to have sounds that aren’t going to distract the user from their “fantasy life” experience.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case with Mabinogi. From the herds of sheep that I had to wade through to the attacks of my sword, I really couldn’t bring myself to listen to the in-game sounds. Within a few minutes, I turned off the sound and turned on my own soundtrack, one that wouldn’t make me cringe every time another sheep bleated in my direction.

Finally, I found the death penalty in Mabinogi to be excruciatingly harsh, especially if a person doesn’t want to be teleported back to the town they were previously occupying. At a modest level 14, I dropped over 10% of my overall experience to the death penalty, simply be allowing myself to be resurrected in the field. If a person opts to teleport back to town, the penalty isn’t as severe, but it’s still a solid blow when you’ve had relatively little to complain about up to that point.

Mabinogi is still an incredibly fun game, despite its faults.

If a person isn’t paying attention and is surrounded by fierce monsters, I could easily see them losing a whole level of experience without even blinking. Although I don’t mind a bit of an experience penalty, the whole concept of losing experience upon death seems like an antiquated notion compared to what we’ve seen with the success of World of Warcraft. Perhaps the developers believed that Mabinogi players would find the loss of experience to drive those players to further their own skills, but I found it to be a major hindrance.

Conclusion

All things considered, Mabinogi was an extremely fun experience for me. From the very outset of the game, I was thrilled with how many things I could do, and do without too much trial and error. Really, almost every moment of my Mabinogi experience was spent actually achieving, collecting, or creating something for my character. If a game could win awards based on pure activity, Mabinogi would win hands down.

Even with my complaints, I really felt that Mabinogi exemplified what North American publishers should try to achieve with imported games. It was a fun experience, and I’m definitely not done playing this game yet.

(3.5 / 5 Hammers)

Ten Ton Recommendation:

Mabinogi is a surprisingly intricate game that hides many unique features behind its cute exterior. If you can get past the aged visuals and harsh death penalty, this game is definitely worth your time.