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