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Trying to Get Your Feet on an Icy Slope

Again like other Korean MMOGs before it, Last Chaos has virtually no new player experience. Whether the developers simply assumed that players of their game would understand the intricate nuances of MMOGs or not doesn’t explain away the complete lack of a thorough tutorial / entry quest. Even veteran MMO gamers will be confused on what and where they need to go, as the initial quest dialogues (which are more like tasks than the “epic” quest) provide little direction other than find out an NPC named Lorraine. After this has been accomplished, it will still take some time before every command or order is understood. Like trying to climb an icy hill, you’ll often lose as much ground as you gain.

A personal, instanced dungeon is available to every character from the beginning of the game.

This lack of new player assistance hindered me from finding one of the more intriguing parts of the game, as the quest had me perform a task to make a “smelting stone” but didn’t tell me what that “smelting stone” did. Only after finding an online guide was I informed that smelting stones were added to weapons to enhance their properties, and with enough stones added the weapon would gain a certain “glow”. Much like the Enchanting profession in World of Warcraft, smelting is a good way to get rid of extra equipment and enhance your own aging weapons.

Still, the individuals who localized Last Chaos should have taken some time to explore the new player experience for new players from the Western audience. Learning to control the characters via the mouse is often difficult enough for people, why not help them along in your game world as well.

He’s My Best Friend

One of the best elements of Last Chaos is how quickly your character will find their first pet. Unlike the Mage in Everquest or the Hunter in World of Warcraft, your pet will merely follow you around, but he will provide your character with some passive buffs and pick up all your loot for you, which is a great help when you’re wading through multitudes of monsters. As you advance, your pet (mine was a drake) will also advance, and help you throughout the remainder of your playing experience. There are lots of pets to choose from, and deciding which pet avatar best represents you is often a difficult choice. Me…I had my eye on one of those ponies, then I could claim he was My Little Pony!

Get used to grinding, because you'll be doing a lot of it.

The pet animations and graphics are above average, like most of the game are above average but nothing exceptional. The graphics in general, don’t distract from the gameplay, but they add relatively little to the experience – even on the highest settings. Strangely, I had some serious framerate issues while playing Last Chaos, and I never quite discovered why. I run a high-end GeForce 7950 in my computer and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why my frame rates would drop at all.

A Slow, Slow Climb

Grinding is your modus operandi for advancement in Last Chaos. You will be doing it from the moment you enter the world. You may get some experience from the initial quests, but it is a piddling number compared to the number of enemies you will need to kill to advance.