been a lifelong fan of the fantasy genre thanks to my
father, who introduced me to Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Edgar Rice
Burroughs, and countless other authors. I’ve also been a
student of different mythologies, again, thanks to my father. Growing
up, I read extensively on Greek and Roman gods, Native American
mythology, Egyptian mythology, and so on. Thus, I was interested in the
latest MMOG to come down the pipe, style="font-style: italic;">Craft of Gods,
by Italian dev company Kalicanthus Entertainment.
Craft
of Gods is based on Slavic
mythology, which I know next to nothing about. Set in the world of
Akvilon, you play for one of two factions: Light and Dark. Each faction
has three races, and humans are present in both factions. Anyway, Craft
of Gods boasts of a huge world to explore and adventure in, a robust
crafting system, a unique mount system, and other features. How does it
stack up? Read on!
Gameplay - 50 / 100
The gameplay in
style="font-style: italic;">Craft of Gods
is a mixed bag of both good and bad. We’ll start with the
good. First, the world is large and you can roam over it at will,
exploring to your heart’s content. There are unique zones for
your hero to adventure in. While character creation related to
appearance is limited, the character system itself is interesting and
kind of a throwback to earlier days. There are no set classes. When
your character levels, you get a few points to distribute amongst your
four attributes. You also gain a point to spend in one of the fourteen
schools. These schools range from Berseker to Necromancy to various
elemental disciplines. Each school has abilities you can purchase for
your character to use and each school emphasizes certain stats.
Your character can also train talents to make them stronger. Talents
can increase your stats, increase your resistance to various things,
and increase your ability with various magic types. You can train every
talent; all it takes is time. The first time you train a talent, it
will increase in 10 minutes. The second time, it will take 10 minutes.
For the third increase, you’re looking at 4 hours, and so on
for higher levels.
The biggest kick for me is the ability to charm any animal and make it
an instant mount to use for your riding pleasure, as long as its level
isnt too high above
you. I charmed my first mount at level 2. Granted,
it was a cow, but at least I was travelling faster than on foot! This
was the most fun part of the game for me.
Now, we look at the bad part of gameplay. First, the UI is ungainly and
impractical. The chat window is situated in the upper right of the
window and the mini-map is located on the bottom right. Fortunately,
you can move the chat window around, but you still
can’t
resize it smaller width-wise. Also, you can’t create tabs
with filters for specific chat channels; you’re stuck with a
tab for chat and one for battle reports. If you want to talk in global
or local, you have to click that tab, which pops up the
‘global’ or ‘local’ command in
the chat window for your use. There are tabs for groups and raids, but
it’s rather cumbersome.
As bad as the chat window is, the mini-map is worse. In fact, it is
practically useless. The only thing the mini-map shows is quest givers.
It does not show enemies, locations of quests, resource nodes, or
anything of real importance. If I could, I would turn it off since it
seems to only exist to taunt me with its uselessness.
Dealing with the quest givers themselves and fulfilling the quests is
cumbersome as well. When you talk to an NPC to get a quest,
you’ll see the title on the far right. You then click the
title of the quest to have the NPC describe it, and then you click
accept or decline. You’ll see other quests that you may not
be high enough level to get, but you won’t know that until
you click on them and then you’ll see “not high
enough level” in red text appear over your character for a
split second. To get the location of any quests, you have to open your
quest journal, click on the quest, and then click “show on
map,” which will open your main map and display some circles,
which appear like sonar pings around the areas you’ll need to
go to. They don’t appear on your mini-map. There’s
also no highlighting of completed quests versus unfinished quests.
You’ll have to manually go through each one to see if
you’ve completed it.
The quests themselves can be frustrating. You may be told to collect
specific items, but not told from which mob they drop. Resource
gathering is a nightmare. (According to the forums, the company is
aware of the problem and is attempting to fix it.) Resource nodes are
extremely hard to pick out from the surrounding terrain. Some resources
may not even be on the same map you’re on, despite the fact
that you received no notice from the quest giver.
Be prepared for some awkward English as you play through the game. The
company’s first language isn’t English, and it
shows in the clunky translations.
Combat itself is uninspiring. It’s basically button mashing
with auto-attack thrown in. The fights themselves are not visually or
audibly interesting, but we’ll discuss that later in the
appropriate sections.
Graphics - 65 / 100
nice degree, but the combat animations are woefully inadequate. Most
creatures you’ll fight will have a simple animation that
they’ll repeat over and over again. Most of the NPCs are
static; only a few actually seem to move around. However, the special
abilities that you get from the various schools have some nice
animation. I would have given graphics a slightly higher rating, but
the lack of combat animation hurt the score.
Sound - 50 / 100
is uninspired. There is nice background music, but it gets repetitive
after awhile. There is not a lot of ambient sound as you travel around.
In the same way that combat animations leave a lot to be desired,
it’s during the combat sequences that sound also falls flat.
Your opponent might have a basic sound attached to them, but
that’s about it. There is no ring of metal on metal, no cries
of agony, and no sounds of flesh ripping and the body falling to the
ground. You’ll just hear “thunk” sounds
as you rain down blows on your enemy. a sound like two pieces
of wood hitting each other. While there is sound if you’re
running on foot, there’s no sound for you riding around on a
mount. Apparently, you’re riding a ninja horse that makes no
sound when it gallops!
Multiplayer - 82 / 100
partner up with other players easily enough. There are PVP areas
separated by level range. However, there is no minimum number of
players needed. The PVP areas are always open and are not instanced, so
prepare yourself for the possibility that you can be grossly
outnumbered. There is a pillar in the center of the PVP maps that grant
bonuses to the guild that holds it. Yes, the guild, not the faction,
that holds it. So, if you’re not in a guild, you’re
out of luck in that department.
Value - 45 / 100
While there are some interesting ideas within the game, there
isn’t much value to be found here. If the game was free to
play, I could see messing around and hoping that a lot of the bugs and
problems mentioned above would be ironed out. The game currently costs
30 US dollars to download (all the prices on the official website are
in Euros). You can buy a month’s subscription for 10.7 US
dollars or you can purchase a single day’s worth of play for
90 cents. Overall, paying real money for a product with all the
irritating gameplay issues that
style="font-style: italic;">Craft of Gods
has doesn’t seem like a wise decision.
Lasting Appeal - 30 / 100
grade for lasting appeal. If combat gets more exciting, it quests get
more streamlined and easier to follow, if, if, if. Unless
you’re in the vein of an Asian gamer who loves grinding or an
EverQuest
fan who loves a wide open range to fruitlessly search for resources in,
I don’t see any lasting appeal.
Pros and Cons
- Interesting character design
- Classless characters
- Mount system is unique
Cons:
- Dull combat
- Frustrating quests
- Useless mini-map
- Even more frustrating
resource gathering - Uninspired sound
- Having to pay money to play
this game
Conclusion
Sadly, those ideas are not good enough to outweigh the sheer number of
flaws in the game. If the game were free to play, I might check it out
from time to time to see if Kalicanthus Entertainment made any
improvements to the issues I’ve listed. The fact that they do
have issues, mostly related to the game lacking things that are
considered standard for MMOGs today, is astounding. Save yourself the
money and check out a book from the library on Slavic mythology instead.
Overall 50/100 - Poor
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