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I've Got Skillz (or Stancez)

The stance system, although being derived from a fairly common MMO foundation, is one of the more unique aspects of Sword of the New World. A stance is much like a skill set that can be found in other games. With each skill set, you are better at healing, fighting, magic, defense, etc.

Each of the classes has various stances that can be acquired and developed as you gain money and experience. Stances advance independently of your character’s level and allow characters to develop a particular branch of their character in more detail. Each of these stances requires different configurations of your single character. For example, to use the Healing stance, a Scout must unequip all his weapons. He is rendered practically defenseless, but his healing becomes very powerful (this is a very powerful stance if you’re in a dungeon and need to go AFK, just set the Scout to the healer stance and take care of business).

Killing a large group of monsters is as easy as hitting CTRL+H

Playing Your Games

After you’ve decided on your characters and the stances you believe will be most valuable to you, it’s time to go adventuring! Combat in SotNW is very different from what most people have come to expect in modern MMOs. Since you don’t have control of a single character, all the movements are mouse-click oriented. This can be a little frustrating for individuals used to the WASD control scheme, but it’s absolutely necessary in a game like this. Individual characters can be selected to move around freely from the group, but you’ll want to spend most of your time hunting with the entire group close together which can be managed with a quick CTRL+A.

Like an RTS or an isometric RPG, you will need to click on the enemy you’d like to destroy if you’re out for a single mob. However, since SotNW is so focused on quick combat, you’ll often be killing multitudes of monsters in “Assault” or “Defend” mode. By holding down the CTRL button and clicking your mouse button, you enter Assault mode, which tells the characters to attack everything on the way to their destination. Defend mode is activated by hitting CTRL+H, and has them stop and defend themselves from whatever is attacking them.

As you can tell, hotkeys are your friends in SotNW. Each character will have an assigned selection of keys (top row for the first character (QWERTY), second row for second, and so on) where you can select his or her specific skills. If you want to be really skilled, try your hand out at PvP and try to stay alive against a veteran opponent. It is NOT easy.

A recharge timer appears when you die. As you level, the time to ressurect goes up.

Death occurs in SotNW, that’s no surprise. However, instead of respawning you’ll have a “reset” timer above the heads of your characters. Once a certain amount of time is reached, the character will automatically resurrect much like an FPS. It’s not a huge inconvenience, but it’s still annoying to have your entire party wipe and have to sit and watch their recharge bars go up. Thankfully, death doesn’t come too often and really only occurs when you are extremely outnumbered or if the enemies are much too high for your current level, otherwise you’re pretty powerful against most single opponents.

Before you start down the adventuring path, you might want to pick up a couple quests along the way. While quests are not the primary source of experience, nor are they even a significant source, there are many that provide you with Unique Player Characters. UPCs, as many people call them, come in many shapes and colors, ranging from Panfilo the Chef to the city guard. You’ll acquire many of these UPCs over your travels, and it’s always intriguing to see who will join your crew next. When you do get your UPCs, you’ll often find yourself traveling through towns to show off your newly acquired status symbol.

You can get Panfilo the Chef as a UPC when you complete his quests.

The World Is Baroque

Journeying across the world is never a bore in SotNW. Besides the constant threat of monster attacks, you’ll also simply enjoy the outstanding visuals that imcGames has built into their game. Everything is impeccably pretty and SotNW has the realistic-anime style that is extremely common in many of the imported titles.

The one thing that makes the game stand-out from the other imported fantasy MMORPGs is the Baroque styling that has infused every piece of archeology that is planted on Granado Espada. The long, narrow naves and centralized projections of the Baroque buildings is very apparent in many of the buildings you’ll find, and the costumes characters can buy and wear are the epitome of opulence (if not a bit overzealously made by the developers).

Sword of the New World is definitely one of the first imported MMORPGs that has truly grabbed my attention. Although the game is still in Beta, where many of the kinks are being worked out, the majority of the game is finished and just needs a nice coat of polish before it’s sent out the door. With that said, I suspect SotNW may catch the attention of many in the Western audience, and I look forward to seeing what the game will do once it reaches the open market.

Ten Ton Hammer is your unofficial source for Sword of the New World news and features!