By Danny
"Ralsu" Gourley
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1647">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.
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2000/XP
2000/XP/Vista
Series 64MB or better
Series 256MB
9.0c or later
disk space
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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
style="font-style: italic;">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.
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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
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/46356">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
style="font-style: italic;">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.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Florensia Game Page.
