Combat and the User
Interface




For many veteran MMO gamers, the combat system in style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi may come
as something of a shock. Among the few Ten Ton Hammer staffers that
have attempted the game, most of them made note of how surprisingly
simple – yet effective – the combat controls
function in Mabinogi.



Rather than gave the gamers the common options – an
auto-attack with a few special attacks thrown into the mix – style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi’s
combat is more like a giant game of “Rock, Paper,
Scissors.” Instead of simply spamming certain buttons over
and over, the mobs will display a particular attack over their head,
like “counter-attack,” “smash”
and “defense.” Each of these maneuvers has a
weakness. For example, players can break through a
“defense” maneuver with a
“smash” attack.



Each of these skills can be accessed via the games fairly simple user
interface. Rather than trying to disguise the UI with some sort of
in-game graphics, Mabinogi
comes at you without any of the fancy nuances. Set-up more like Windows
Explorer, you can access any of the relevant menus via a taskbar and/or
hotkeys. It’s an incredibly fluid and intuitive set-up.



A Few Issues


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The graphics in
Mabinogi aren't the best.

All the terrific gameplay items aside, I did have a few complaints
about Mabinogi.




Although I found the graphics in Mabinogi
to be whimsical and bright, I wasn’t particularly impressed
with the textures, models or character animations. Although
it’s easy to understand why Nexon opted to create a game with
such simple graphics – they can allow more users with lower
system requirements into the game – I find myself hard
pressed to compare the game with other free to play games that have
been released recently.



Requiem: Bloodymare and
Sword of the New World:
Granado Espada
are both in the free to play realm and they
sport some amazing graphics for their users. While style="font-style: italic;"> Dungeon Runners
may not fall into the same graphical class as Requiem or Sword, it also
vies for the lower end computer systems while still allowing players to
enjoy the vibrancy of the world around them. That said, the graphics in
Mabinogi do
stand up to the test of time, and many users will probably still enjoy
the game for years to come.



Contrasting with the timeless nature of the graphics in style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi, I found
the music and sounds in the game to be overly harsh, annoying and
simply overwhelming to my ear. When so much of a game is devoted to the
shearing of sheep or milking of cows, it pays to have sounds that
aren’t going to distract the user from their
“fantasy life” experience.



Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case with style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi. From the
herds of sheep that I had to wade through to the attacks of my sword, I
really couldn’t bring myself to listen to the in-game sounds.
Within a few minutes, I turned off the sound and turned on my own
soundtrack, one that wouldn’t make me cringe every time
another sheep bleated in my direction.



Finally, I found the death penalty in style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi to be
excruciatingly harsh, especially if a person doesn’t want to
be teleported back to the town they were previously occupying. At a
modest level 14, I dropped over 10% of my overall experience to the
death penalty, simply be allowing myself to be resurrected in the
field. If a person opts to teleport back to town, the penalty
isn’t as severe, but it’s still a solid blow when
you’ve had relatively little to complain about up to that
point.


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Mabinogi is still an
incredibly fun game, despite its faults.

If a person isn’t paying attention and is surrounded by
fierce monsters, I could easily see them losing a whole level of
experience without even blinking. Although I don’t mind a bit
of an experience penalty, the whole concept of losing experience upon
death seems like an antiquated notion compared to what we’ve
seen with the success of World
of Warcraft
. Perhaps the developers believed that style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi players
would find the loss of experience to drive those players to further
their own skills, but I found it to be a major hindrance.



Conclusion



All things considered, Mabinogi
was an extremely fun experience for me. From the very outset of the
game, I was thrilled with how many things I could do, and do without
too much trial and error. Really, almost every moment of my style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi experience
was spent actually achieving, collecting, or creating something for my
character. If a game could win awards based on pure activity, style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi would win
hands down.



Even with my complaints, I really felt that style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi
exemplified what North American publishers should try to achieve with
imported games. It was a fun experience, and I’m definitely
not done playing this game yet.


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(3.5 / 5 Hammers)

style="color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">Ten Ton
Recommendation:

style="font-style: italic;">Mabinogi is a
surprisingly intricate game that hides many unique features behind its
cute exterior. If you can get past the aged visuals and harsh death
penalty, this game is definitely worth your time.

To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Mabinogi Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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