This morning in Taipei at the Gamania Game Show the US press group sat
down for some hands-on time with Gamania's upcoming MMOG, style="font-style: italic;">Tiara Concerto.
From watching the brief trailer of the game, I became immediately
interested. The game promised a deeply moving musical soundscape in
which to play an action-combat-based RPG. I was quite curious to see if
the team was able to victoriously integrate the powerful soundtrack
with engaging combat.



Tiara
Concerto has set the stage
for what could potentially be one of the most emotion-evoking gaming
experiences we've seen in the MMO field. The characters move in motion
to the continuous musical score and music itself empowers players to
perform magical attacks and combos.



First showed at the Tokyo Game Show last year, and met with much
interest, Tiara
Concerto has set the stage
for what could potentially be one of the most emotion-evoking gaming
experiences we've seen in the MMO field. The characters move in motion
to the continuous musical score and music itself empowers players to
perform magical attacks and combos.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/168548"> style="border: 0px solid ; width: 600px; height: 320px;"
alt="tiara concerto"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/168548">

Though the game has been somewhat localized to the English language,
some work remains to be done as the translation is still a little
broken and loose. Discarding that, though, the hands-on experience was
a captivating one.



For my play session I played through the demo first as a Ranger class
and then a second time through as a Composer. Between the two classes I
felt more of an affinity with the Ranger and I was a little
disappointed that I didn't "feel the magic" of the Composer.



The Ranger had several gun attacks, including a powered up sniper shot,
a thrown bomb, and a couple of ranged attacks that doubled as dodges.
It was a fast-paced class  that felt very much like a dance,
which Gamania claims to be one of the main intentions of the game.
Unfortunately the volume on the PC was a little low and the room had a
lot of ambient noise so I wasn't able to fully enjoy the "dance" but
even still, after a bit of practice, I found I was able to weave
comfortably between the attacks and almost felt my fingers dancing
across the keyboard to perform the combos. It was a rewarding
experience overall.

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border="0" cellpadding="6" cellspacing="2">

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alt="tiara concerto"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/168566">

Composer

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/168543"> style="border: 0px solid ; width: 200px; height: 293px;"
alt="tiara concerto"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/168543">

Tuner

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alt="tiara concerto"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/168542">

Performer

The Composer is more closely comparable to a wizard or mage class from
other games. The attacks are music (or magic) based, and elemental. The
most powerful attack did a lot of damage but the downside was that the
casting time was so long that I found if I was trying to solo the
attack would be interrupted more often than not, making the Composer
most powerful in a group setting but left a bit wanting in solo play.



Class preferences aside it was difficult not to enjoy the demo. The
play session was a scripted event in which the airship transporting the
player came under attack by a war-like dog race. The goal was to defeat
the invaders, board their ship, and disable their cannons. During the
mission we also had to activate the ship's cooling systems and rescue
some prisoners. Despite the often-awkward phrasing, the goals were set
quite clearly and were easy to follow. The instance itself presented
some puzzle-solving in the way of activating the cooling systems.
Dodging steam vents and enabling the cooling valves became more
challenging as the enemies would run back into the room and turn off
the valves if you didn't act fast enough. This, too, was much easier to
do the first time as I was in a group, whereas trying to solo it the
second run-through made it much more challenging.

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alt="tiara concerto"
src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/168545">

I quickly became enamored with the art of the game. The world is split
up into floating islands and the main means of transportation is done
via the afore-mentioned sky ships.  The open sky scapes along
with the charm of the pirate-style ships brought me back to memories of
Final
Fantasy and style="font-style: italic;">Ratchet & Clank.
The experience was only enriched by the anime-style characters and rich
musical score (as quiet as it was).



Once again we wrap things up here with the question of "how will the
game translate to a North American audience?"



I think this game has a chance, maybe even more so than the previously
viewed href="http://tentonhammer.com/langrisserschwarz/ggs/2011/first-look"> style="font-style: italic;">Langrisser Schwarz.
It may not appeal to a massive core MMO audience but the sheer beauty
and action of the game is surely to capture the interest of some gamers
in our little corner of the world. Best of all, the game doesn't feel
like a game trying to be something that it's not. Often with exports
the games feel a bit contrived, trying to force-fit itself into some
sort of bastardized hybrid of a game in attempt to appeal to a wider
range of regions. That's not the case with style="font-style: italic;">Tiara Concerto.
It embraces its style and does a wonderful job of maintaining its
theme. Sure, the English needs a bit of work before it gets shipped to
North America, but apart from that, I believe the game will be most
enjoyed by celebrating what it really is: a beautifully expressed
magical, musical MMO.