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

In my initial preview of Perfect World International that was published a few days ago, the game may not be as flawless as the name implies, but it was worth taking the extra time to really dig into it further. I'm back to give you my review in all its gory detail. I've gotten a grip on the camera controls, no longer dive like a madman for my function keys, and finally made sense of the mini-map. Rather than rehashing both the good and the bad from my initial look, I'll be diving straight into the meat of PWI.

Over the course of the past few months, I’ve seen plenty of posts on our forums about the beauty and splendor of PWI, but all the hype in the world doesn’t help a game that requires the biggest, baddest gaming machine to run. But in this test, Perfect World International passes not only easily, but with pizzazz as well. When running through town, there were times I was surrounded by more players than I could count. Yet no matter how many players were in an area, how many spell effects were going off, or how many spasmodic kids were jumping all over the screen, I never had an ounce of frame stutter. None, nada, zip. When you see just how many players are on at all times of the day and night, you'll begin to realize that having everything continue to run smoothly all day, every day, is no small feat.

There's no lack of bright spell effects.

Before we go much further, heed a small piece of advice from a fellow gamer geek... if you are a player that tends to skip all the quest text in a game, you'd better break yourself of that habit immediately or you'll be left wandering the land without a clue. The perpetual look of blatant confusion plastered on your face will have strangers in the street commenting on how remarkable your resemblance is to some former politicians, and nobody wants that. I'll spare you the horror stories of how many hours could have been saved if I had simply paid attention to the beginning quests. Believe me, if you don't, you'll be at your class trainer later on screaming, "What the hell do you mean you can't teach me X ability until I've raised my Spiritual Cultivation?" like I did. Trust me... the ensuing tantrum isn't pretty.

This actually leads me to a point of distinct interest to me within the game. For years, players have been complaining about the ability to essentially cruise through any game in a slight state of autopilot as they make their way through the available content. As I mentioned last week in The Learning Curve, some games smooth this curve out better over the course of your avatar's career than others. At first glance, I assumed PWI fell on the simplistic side in the great coin toss of game mechanics. While it's still not as intricate a system as the one seen in EVE Online, PWI requires players to pay attention to their instructions and every pop-up that dares to appear on your screen. One might think I'd dock off points for this, but in actuality, I applaud the developers for bringing back a bit of depth to a game genre I feel has gotten too lax. Make me interested; make me pay attention to learn. Both are excellent qualities in a game.

I won't lie to you. Not everything is explained as well as I feel it should be in PWI. Sometimes not even close. But they were on the right path in their approach, and by adding just a few more lights on the runway for their players, PWI would be guiding everyone in to a perfect landing in no time. Since that's not currently the case, it's a good thing a number of players have taken it upon themselves to create some highly informative beginner guides. There's a great selection of them in the official forums so before you get too far into the game, I'd strongly recommend taking a look at a few of them.

That's not how I imagined a player store would look.

The quests, and at times the quest system, can be more frustrating than missing that perfect bowling score by a single pin. Each time you log into the game, you need to go back into the quest window to track any of the quests you were working on. I can't imagine it would be too difficult to program the game to bring your previous list up when you log in, but as things stand, you have to do it manually. It's not game breaking, but it does drive me a little crazy.

Of the quests themselves, there's at least a bit of variety from your standard "kill X Hoo-yahs". Unfortunately these other quests are split into two categories. The first are timed quests. Yes, I said timed. "You now have 10 minutes to go kill 25 Hoo-yahs and come back to me... I don't know why you're still flapping your gums... that clock's tickin'!" Never mind the fact that you have to go to the bathroom, answer the phone, let the dog out, etc. My biggest issue with these types of quests is that I am a busy person (like many of you) and sometimes I don’t have time for timed quests. I’m not some sort of trained monkey that needs to be tested in a lab. If a game has no way to pause, don't put a time limit on something I'm trying to do.

The second quest type that had me insanely frustrated until I finally gained a speed boost ability is the Leaping Quest. Because it's so important to be able to jump high and accurately (is it... I mean... really?), you have to complete a quest to jump to the top of a particularly high building to bring back a trinket to the Elder. By the way, you only have 5 minutes to complete the task. It can be done, but unlike the prehensile sensitive monkeys of today called teenagers, I've got the twitch game skills of a slug in a bowl of salt. PWI is not a first person shooter in any sense of the word, so why this quest is in the game completely astounds me. Points to the team for trying something different, but that's the only positive thing I can say about this particular quest.

You know your uber-cool when you're cruising the skies on a sword of flame!

Combat in the game is par for the course and combines an auto-attack feature with intermittent use of special abilities. Eventually, I finally learned to just leave my camera alone during combat. Once I got that lesson through my skull, my Blademaster started chewing through mobs like a termite through a rundown shack. Whatever it takes, I'd strongly suggest finding the quickest way to take down your enemies, because you'll be fighting a *lot* of mobs.

PWI definitely has the old school Korean MMOG grinding mentality attached to it. There are more quests available to you than in other F2P MMOs I've played, and that certainly helps out a lot, but by the time you hit your 20's, the return you get from them starts to slow down and before you know it, you're firmly on the grind train. It's a long, long road. With a standard subscription game, this would be an absolute deal breaker for me. After some thought though, this may not be a bad idea for a F2P game. Since I'm not paying anything to play the game, I don't have the insatiable need to level at a constant pace. Even if it gets to the point of only gaining a level every few days (or weeks), I haven't really lost anything. PWI also helps break up the monotony in this aspect by continually having you travel throughout the world, seeing different lands and different mobs, even if their levels are relatively the same. It helps keep things interesting.

If (and I do stress *if*) you don't mind the old grind mentality of yore, then Perfect World International is a very enjoyable game. It has an impressive amount of depth and plenty of different systems to keep you playing for quite a while. Seeing players on their flying mounts also provides a strong motivation to continue leveling, with your first flying mount available at level 30. Crafting is deep, if confusing at first, and should keep the creator in you going for ages since the most powerful items are generally player created. Finally, I have yet to find a F2P game (and many subscription based models) with a fraction of the population. There are always a large number of players on whether I've logged in during the wee hours of the night, middle of the day, or what those of us in the United States would consider peak evening times. You'll never have a shortage of players available to peg with questions or just go hunting with. When it's all said and done, can you really ask for anything more?

(4 / 5 Hammers)