by Jeff Francis on Mar 31, 2011
Stylistically,
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is a fantasy MMOG that combines elements of Eastern and Western games.
The lore for
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is your typical clash-of-the-gods scenario with the player races
loosely banded together to face the increasing threat of Dysil, an evil
entity now housed in the body of a black dragon, and his forces.
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A female dwarf marksman.
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A male elf warrior.
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A female kindred vampire.
Just like other MMOGs, there are crafting professions (called Jobs)
such as Alchemy or Cook that a player can learn. Some Jobs are
automatically learned by reaching a certain level, whilst the others
are learned by spending Job points. In addition, each class has their
own talent trees (starting at level 20) by which they can further
specialize their class. Other game amenities include a bank and an
auction house.
While every person is on the same side (the good side), there are three
factions in the game that a player can increase their reputation with
for rewards, normally in the guise of better gear. Just like in
style="font-style: italic;">World of Warcraft,
gear can increase stats and abilities.
Quests are your typical MMOG quests: kill X of something, gather X of
something, and run messages back and forth between NPCs. There is a
main quest storyline in the game (denoted as yellow) and offshoot
quests (green) as well as daily quests. The dungeons in
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require a party to enter and the usual minimum is three players, so if
you play solo, you’ll miss some of the content.
A feature that I like in the game is that when you’re looking
at a quest entry, you can click on the name of an NPC or monster and
you will automatically run to their location. While some might think
that this takes the fun out of exploring, I have almost no patience and
I don’t want to spend an hour looking for a specific named
monster or an NPC contact in the city.
Combat is straightforward with the player having an auto-attack and
special abilities. As you gain levels, you gain new abilities and
increase the effectiveness of certain abilities. However, you
regenerate health and mana (used for all your abilities) very slowly,
so you’ll be drinking liquids and eating food to replenish
your vitality after fighting.
Two other things stand out about monsters and combat. First, hitting
TAB does not automatically select the closest enemy to you in the
direction you are facing. It selects the closest one
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which means that it can select one behind you. If you’re not
paying attention, you can start a fight with one creature and
accidentally attack an enemy behind you. With the incredibly fast
respawn rate of creatures, this can become quite a problem.
Another weird trait is that most of the monsters do not attack on
sight. If they can be aggroed, they will have a symbol of crossed
swords over their heads. It took me awhile to get used to this, and it
still feels weird to walk through a pack of vampires equal to my level
and they don’t even bat an eye (no pun intended) at my
presence. You will definitely have to keep an eye out for those
creatures that will aggro on you as that the respawn rate in
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is insanely fast, so you can find yourself constantly being attacked by
a respawning foe if you stay in the wrong place.
Overall, the game mechanics will feel familiar to Western players, but
there are some differences that show its Eastern origins.
First, there is a huge emphasis on pets in the game. Starting out, a
player can have two pets and this number can be expanded later on.
Before you can use a pet, you have to incubate it for at least 10
minutes. The longer you leave it in incubation, the stronger it will be
when you bring it out. Incubation only occurs while you’re
logged into the game. Once you have your trusty pet by your side, it
will fight and defend you. You can even have your pet learn skills to
enhance its ability. I had to fight off the urge to yell out,
“I summon you, Pikachu!” as I summoned my pet ram
for the first time.
There is also a great deal of running around to do the quests. Some
quests required me to run back and forth between a few NPCs a dozen
times, which I found extremely tedious. There are daily events and
quests that open up, but those are timed for specific days and specific
times. If you prefer to play late at night (like me), you’re
out of luck for events like the Nightmare Carnival.
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My dwarf marksman fighting
some undead!
Another interesting bit is that the zodiac is used in the game. Your
character can pray during the day with an hour between each prayer. The
first four times you pray, you are rewarded with experience, a buff,
and items. After the fourth time, you gain only a buff. If your
character’s sign (chosen at character creation) is currently
active when you pray, you have a greater chance of receiving items.
I must make note of one big negative that I hope will be addressed in
the future and that is the Encylopedia in the game. While some lore and
quest entries are put into the book for you to read over later, the
remainder of the entries is in Chinese. There’s a nice table
of contents and a search function, but everything you click on goes to
a page filled with Chinese script. I can’t read Chinese and
neither can most of the gamers in the West. I found this surprising as
that the quest text and other written parts were clear and in proper
English.
Finally, while the game plays like most other Western MMOGs, there is
one area that it does differ remarkably: money. There are two types of
currency in the game, which I will go into detail in the Value section.
The gameplay is extremely solid overall, even with the gripes
I’ve listed above. There are some issues that need to be
addressed, but the game is very polished from a design standpoint and
offers players all the bells and whistles that they’ve come
to expect in today’s MMOGs.
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Anime-inspired architecture?
Check!
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A dwarf male and dwarf female.
Can't you tell they're the same race?
On the negative side, there are two items. The first is that you must
use an item to speak on the global chat channel. Otherwise,
you’re only speaking in “nearby” mode,
which means that only somebody standing close to you will hear you.
(There is guild and party chat.) You can get the global chat item
(World Flute) for the cost of 4 cents each from the cash shop. It does
not sound like much, but it can add up really quick. Text messaging
ring a bell? On the plus side, it totally negates spam from gold
sellers!
The second negative is the fact that there are two forms of currency in
the game. There are soul coins that you get from killing enemy
creatures, which you can spend at NPC vendors. The other coinage is
normal gold coins. You have to use normal coinage (non-soul coinage)
for the auction house and if you want to buy something from another
player. You cannot trade soul coinage. The only way to get normal
coinage is to exchange your cash shop credits or to sell stuff to other
players. As a player, you can create your own vendor shop which other
players can click on and buy items that you listed for the prices you
decided on.
Cons: