In my initial href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/52233" target="_blank">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.

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style="font-style: italic;">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... target="_blank">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 target="_blank">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 target="_blank">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.

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style="font-style: italic;">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.

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style="font-style: italic;">You know your uber-cool when
you're cruising the skies on a sword of flame! style="font-style: italic;">

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?

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(4 / 5 Hammers)