Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

By Danny "Ralsu" Gourley

Florensia is a 3D free-to-play fantasy game from German-based Burda:ic GmbH. While the publisher may be located in Germany, many Japanese influences are evident in every aspect of the game from the cutesy graphics to the gameplay mechanics.

Download and Installation
Before downloading any game, it's always best to check out the system requirements. Florensia should play on any system purchased in the last 4-5 years. Systems purchased in the last 2-3 years should handle the game with no hiccups.

	Required	Suggested
OS	Windows 2000/XP	Windows 2000/XP/Vista
CPU	Pentium4 1.3GHz	Pentium4 2.4Ghz
RAM	512MB RAM	1GB RAM
Graphics Card	GeForce4 Ti Series 64MB or better	GeForce6 Series 256MB
DirectX	DirectX® 9.0c or later
HDD	4GB free disk space

Ralsu created his character with brown hair and blue eyes, but his character portrait showed black hair and red, demonic eyes.

Gamers can download Florensia as an installer from a few different mirrors. Most are in Germany, but there is no indication if the client is in German or English. At the time of publication of my first impressions, only one mirror was marked as an "international" host. The download is 1.56GB, and the isntall size on my hard drive is 2.53GB.

Installation was was trouble free. By contrast, patching took almost an hour for me. The server would not push data any faster than 25KB/sec. for most of the patch time. At the very end, it spiked to a little over 200KB/sec. If I had not experienced that spike in speed at the end of the patch, I would have guessed I needed to open a port. Since I did get increased speed near the end, I would say the port theory is unlikely.

Character Creation
Florensia starts players with one of four base classes: Explorer, Mercenary, Noble, and Saint. All characters are human and can be either gender. Customization options include 3-5 different looks for hair, face, eye color, and hair color.

Explorers are the melee damage-per-second (DPS) characters. They can wield rifles and pistols in addition to short swords. Mercenaries are the tanks, equipping the sturdiest armor and hefting axes and big swords. Nobles are the caster DPS class. Finally, Saints are the healers.

Every character has a level in his adventuring class and sea combat. There are no options for the sea at character creation.

Interface and Controls
Florensia uses a tried and true interface. The player's character portrait appears in the top left of the screen. In the top middle is information on the creature, player, or quest giver being considered. In the top right is the mini-map.

Along the right edge of the screen are the menu buttons to open character sheets, skills, inventory, options, and more. The bottom left corner belongs to the windows for chat and system messages. Above the chat box is a quick key that allows players to customize the key bindings.

The map makes it easy to find quest givers and shops as well as exits to new areas.

Skills reside in a hot bar on the bottom right. The hot bar can be cycled up or down to access more slots, and gamers can assign different bars for land skills and sea skills.

A thin line indicating XP gained toward the next level runs all along the very bottom of the screen. Finally, quest givers have scrolls in different shapes and colors above their heads to let players know who to talk to and when. Florensia isn't looking to reinvent the wheel with the user interface (UI).

Just as with the UI, controls in Florensia are fairly standard for action on land. Players can move with WASD keys or left mouse clicks. Right-clicking a non-player character (NPC) initiates dialogue. Right-clicking a monster starts combat. Skills in the hot bar are bound to the 1 through = keys by default.

Controls are a little more complicated for sea battles, where arrow keys can fire guns in a specific direction, and players must learn to account for wind direction and speed when moving. Movement is all about gaining and slowing momentum, so it feels a little like you would expect sailing. No stopping on a dime. Luckily, the game is full of tutorial quests and on-screen tips to help gamers learn the ropes.

There's more to Florensia. Continue to page 2.