href="http://2moons.acclaim.com/" target="_blank">2Moons
is the free-to-play action fantasy MMOG released by Acclaim Games in
late 2007. With its emphasis on combat (and lots of it!), this MMOG has
carved a nice little niche for itself in the online gaming community.
How is the gaming experience in
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons?
We’ll examine various aspects of the game, including
graphics, gameplay, combat, and characters. Naturally, we’ll
also take a close look at microtransactions, which are standard in any
free-to-play MMOG. Loosen your blades and read on!
Character
Creation
When you first create your character, one thing sticks out:
there’s only one race to play, and that’s Human.
The second thing you realize is that you cannot choose your sex.
Basically, the class you pick determines your gender. Finally, there is
no customization for your character--you can’t change the
look of the character at all. The only real difference between your
character and another one of the same class is your name.
Overall, there are six different classes, each with their own strengths
and weaknesses. The classes are pretty much standard fantasy MMOG fare.
While I’m not thrilled with being unable to modify my
character, it isn’t a game-breaker for me.
Gameplay
The gameplay in
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons
is solid. The layout of the UI is the standard MMOG layout, with a
mini-map in the upper right, a chat window in the lower left, and the
action bar on the bottom. Movement is the standard WASD. You can see
available quests by clicking on a quest tab on the upper left part of
your screen, which will list people who have quests for you to pick up.
NPCs who have quests to offer are easily identified by the icon
floating over their heads.
On a side note, you can’t change the key bindings;
you’re stuck with the default settings. As for quests, the
game does show its age a bit in that quest destinations are not shown
on the map like they are in games such as
style="font-style: italic;">Warhammer Online
or Champions
Online. Again, this was not a
terribly big deal to me, it just means that I’ve gotten used
to having a location marked out.
An aspect of the game that will shock many is the lack of crafting.
However, you can place sockets in items, which will accept gems to
grant them bonuses and abilities, or you can fortify items with rare
metals to also increase their usefulness. You can also fish, which is
more useful at lower levels. While some may recoil in horror of not
crafting finely woven rugs to sell on an auction house, I actually find
it refreshing. Why craft when you should be questing and killing
monsters?
Another stunner is there is no auction house. Instead, if you wish to
sell items, you can go into a store mode. Basically, this means that
your character sits down and you can sell up to 10 items with prices
that you set. Other players can go up to your character and purchase
your items if they wish. In the two main castles, you’ll see
a lot of players sitting around selling various items, similar to
players in vendor mode in
style="font-style: italic;">Aion.
Graphics
The graphics in
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons
are detailed with a somewhat gritty feel, but not too gritty. While the
graphics aren’t on the level of
style="font-style: italic;">Age of Conan,
they’re definitely top notch for a free-to-play game.
They’re also from a male perspective. Women are scantily clad
hotties who kick butt. I played a Hunter whose gear seemed to be a
bikini. I’m not complaining, but if you’re a
card-carrying member of NOW, you might want to move along.
Style
One interesting aspect of
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons
is that you must be 17 years of age or older to play. NPCs do utter a
great deal of adult language. This starts off right from the beginning,
letting you know that you’re not playing Toontown. While the
language can be salty, it doesn’t veer into obscene.
Combat
Combat is the heart and soul of the game. Overall, combat is extremely
fluid, fast-paced, and a little gory. When you’re hitting the
bad guys, you’ll see blood flying and then pooling on the
ground. (It’s not as cool as decapitations in
style="font-style: italic;">Age of Conan,
but it beats a lot of other games, if you like that sort of thing.)
You can choose two different styles of fighting. The first has your
character performing autoattacks, which you can augment with special
abilities. The second style has you clicking for each attack, including
your special abilities. Both styles work well for getting the job done.
A second important combat feature in
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons
is that when you hit an enemy, you tend to drive them back a foot or so
and stun them for a quick second. Basically, this means that you can
rain a lot of blows upon an enemy before they can strike you. While
this style might not be everybody’s cup of tea, I thought it
worked in that it was simple, quick, and made me feel like a bad-ass.
Lastly, there seems to be little to no aggro in
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons.
As I was wandering through the countryside killing everything in sight,
nothing would leap out and attack me. This was good, because the zones
are teeming with monsters. Monsters respawn rapidly, so you
don’t have to worry about other players hampering your
efforts to finish quests. You can accidentally aggro a monster if
you’re executing an autoattack and you happen to kill one
monster while another monster is standing right next to it. Your rapid
blows will drop the first and usually you’ll fire one extra
which will hit the next monster. So be careful in densely packed areas.
Microtransactions
Being a free-to-play game,
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons
uses microtransactions to generate revenue. While you can buy some
basic items with in-game coin, the more powerful ones must be bought
with cold hard cash. To use the microtransaction shop, you must first
buy Acclaim coins for money. You then use the Acclaim coins to purchase
the items. An interesting twist here is that you can buy an item for
different time periods. An example would be a formal costume. You can
buy the costume for 15 days, 30 days, or forever. The longer the time
period, the more the cost. Mounts must be purchased this way as well,
as are pets. Other things you can buy are backpack capacity increases,
warehouse (bank) capacity increases, and items to help with socketing
or fortifying.
Flaws
There are a few flaws in the game. First, the chat channel is
constantly spammed by gold sellers. Acclaim really needs to crack down
on this. Secondly, the help screen is useless. You can hit
‘H’ to bring up a help screen with a list of
topics, but if you click on a topic, but at the moment nothing happens.
This could be a temporary glitch, however. Lastly, the screen can get
quite busy at times. When you see a character, they’ll have a
large bar over their head with their guild name, their name, and an
icon (which I believe shows up when the character is in store mode).
Now, imagine 30 plus people sitting in a common area with all this
aerial graffiti clogging up the area. I have had trouble finding an NPC
that I needed to talk to because of the sheer number of people with
their information bars overhead.
While I have listed some flaws, overall,
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons
is an enjoyable free-to-play MMOG. It’s not a game that
I’ll play religiously, but one that I’ll come back
to from time to time when I’m in the killing mood. If
you’re looking for action, then
style="font-style: italic;">2Moons
will satisfy your cravings.
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