By Danny
"Ralsu" Gourley
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A group of
players fishing in the starter town of Roxbury.
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Graphics
Graphics in Florensia
focus on colorful caricatures rather than ultra realism like that
displayed in
style="font-style: italic;">Rohan: Blood Feud.
Terrains are mostly flat even on maximum graphics settings. Textures
are pretty simple, too.
It
is worth mentioning that character models are somewhat childlike--as
though the game is aimed at the preteen audience. The resulting look is
decidedly Japanese, though, so it plays more like a stylistic decision.
Certainly, most inexperienced gamers would be put off by the difficulty
of the early sea battles.
Battle animations are smooth, and
spells and special attacks have distinct looks. Even critical strikes
warrant a special animation. Creatures are very cutesy early on.
Players will be killing mushrooms and bees in beginning quests. Early
sea enemies are iconic copies of the
style="font-style: italic;">Creature from the Black Lagoon,
but later sea battles will pit players against rival ships as well.
Gameplay
Florensia
holds the player's hand for several quests, leading him to key NPCs and
teaching him how to handle equipment and skills. The skill trees are
the now-standard
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft
tiered sets that vary by the type of weapon or magic the player wants
to focus on. To use a skill, players must first meet the level and
prerequisite requirements. Then they can buy the skill book from a
trainer. Increasing skills takes skill points gained at each new level.
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Florensia permits
players to upgrade their ships as they gain power and new materials.
Character attributes allow for min/max builds (builds that
seek to maximize a class strength by minimizing development of areas
that are weak), but the attributes all seem to be moderately useful for
any class. At the very least, the games makes it harder to decide how
to place attribute points than many other games.
Characters start
in Roxbury where they perform increasingly important tasks until they
gain the trust of the townspeople and get to the real plot. It's a
mostly pedestrian plot made more fun by the different presentation.
The starter quests led me to both land and sea combat. Land
combat was easier by far, and I particularly enjoyed how my Explorer
would perform a forward roll before firing off a critical shot with his
rifle.
Sea
combat was a much different story. I needed time to adjust to the
controls. Then I needed to get the hang of timing attacks when enemies
were in my three lines of site (straight ahead and to either side).
Several deaths later, I figured out I could fire specific cannons with
the arrow keys. Even after killing a few sea creatures, I still had
trouble looting my kills at sea.
It
seems I was not alone in my troubles with sea combat. I saw many
players in chat looking for groups with messages like this: "14 Saint/
1 Sea LFG." Players who aren't up to the challenge may abandon the sea
combat.
Parting Thoughts
Players who give up on the sea battles in
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are truly missing out one of the best aspects of the game. With both
land and sea development in addition to trade skills such as fishing,
style="font-style: italic;">Florensia
offers a lot for players to do. The tutorials are fairly thorough for
the land controls, but most gamers are familiar with that aspect of
gameplay by now. The ship controls remind me of learning to drive a
car: you can read the manual all day, but nothing replaces experience
behind the wheel.
If there is one feature of
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that disappoints me, I would have to say I am saddened by the choice of
graphical style (but the forgettable music would be a close second).
The Japanese enthusiasm for cartoon-like worlds just does not carry over
well to the West. It is my fear that many gamers won't even try this
fun game because of the art style. Meanwhile, I think
style="font-style: italic;">Florensia is good
enough to spend some time in my
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/Top10F2P">Top Ten
Free-to-Play Games.
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Florensia Game Page.
