I have just installed it and applied one of the dozen beta keys I received. I open the launcher, and see this: Is it just me or does this remind you of something that you would expect from Mu? You know, like 12 years ago. I guess visually it doesn't look too bad, but that is part of the problem. That whole area is nothing but a (failed) attempt at being flashy, but ignores the actual point of what it is designed to do. I guess the main complaint I have here is just that it makes you select the server you want every time. Oh, and the window title is in Korean.
I guess the launcher doesn't matter, right? As long as the game is good, it isn't a problem. I click launch and then am immediately greeted by this: Seriously, Frogster? Seriously? There is a reason that every other game company is removing or avoiding worthless bullshit like that in their game. Don't you think that is for a good reason? Don't you think that if botting and exploiting in the game are a problem that perhaps, just perhaps, that is a problem with the game that should be fixed instead of slapping a band-aid on it that will do more harm than good? I've already stated my opinion on this in the past so I think that is enough for now.
Moving on: Character creation! Hopefully something redeeming here. While checking out the different classes, I noticed that Fighter was sometimes grayed out and sometimes not. What is this all about? Well, see, first thing you need to notice is that each class has a default gender. When selecting a class, it forcefully sets your gender preference to that default. You will see that I have selected Mage and it defaults to female. Now, the Fighter does not have a (completed) female option, therefor it is grayed out if you have selected the female gender. The Fighter defaults to male. "But, if the Fighter defaults to male, then why can't you select it? Shouldn't it let you select Fighter since it defaults to Male and that is available?" you might ask. That is a good question. Very good question. It makes no sense.
You want to see the Fighter? Yeah. That's right. You're a panda. Sound familiar? I think I've said enough.
In case you haven't noticed, besides gender, there is no character customization. I decided I wanted to try Druid. Selected female. Then this: Wow. What happened there? I guess I managed to get both male and female. They are like Siamese twins. Well, I guess druids are shape-shifters, so, whatever. I'll pick that.
So now I finally enter the game. I have to admit, I am a bit disappointed that I'm not some sort of monstrous amalgamation of druidness as per the character creation screen, but I suppose this will do. The graphics aren't terrible, but they aren't good. They feel dated. I even upped the graphics settings to as high as they would go, not that there were very many settings to even change. You know what was annoying, though? Resolution. The game defaults to windowed mode, and only showed (very) few resolution options. I want to increase the resolution and make it full screen. How do I do that? Well, here's how: first you need to check the full screen check box. Now apply your settings. Now open the graphics settings back up and you have a bunch of resolution options. Select one and apply again. Why can't this be done in one operation? I don't know. I guess that would make too much sense.
As I begin trying to navigate the newbie zone, I quickly realized how terrible the controls were. The first thing that stood out is that although you can move with WASD keys, you are still locked to a grid system. That is, the movement isn't very fluid like in other, far more popular MMORPGs (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess which these may be), but instead it feels like a click-to-move game where you are locked onto certain walkable tiles as used to be the standard 10 years ago. Speaking of click-to-move, you can't turn it off. That's right. Every time you try to select which monster to attack, you'll somehow misclick and begin running at it instead. But, hey, at least you can press the space bar to get spammed by some weird Korean talking to you. What is he or she saying? I don't know. Probably "Stop pressing the space bar."
Apparently, some people are still too stupid to tell the difference between 'drood' and 'druid'. Then again, I guess 'druid' is a pretty difficult word to spell. You know, with how long of a word it is and all. But I digress.
At least I got to be a pirate. Now, I know a fair number of players are going to be male, but don't you think this is just a bit too much? Those aren't breasts. Those are canon balls. With skulls on them. I am so disappointed.
We started questing. I figure, sure, it is only the start of the game. All of the quests can't be this bad, right? No. They are that bad. Every quest is kill x of monster y or kill x monster, collect y item from them. Yeah. Pretty much every single quest. So, you may be questing, but it is still all grind. The most original quest I have seen in this game is that you need to walk up to a rock, click it, then go back to the NPC. Yeah. Fun, fun! And it is even Friday. To avoid having a dozen other players standing on top of a spawn point and everybody attempting to tag it as soon as a monster spawns from it, just go to Fairyland. Terrible name, I know, but nobody is there. Can't imagine why. It does feel really bland without 27 other players not stomping on your face, but you'll get used to it.
We continued onward in our journey and bumped into some familiar characters. You blatantly stole Chocobos and Cactaurs from the Final Fantasy series, and Merlocs from Warcraft? I'm pretty sure those are trademarks. You've got balls of steel that Duke Nukem would be proud of. I mean, you didn't even bother changing the names!
We stumble into a town and mingle with the locals. But I must warn you. See this asshole? Yeah. Avoid him.
The Asshole wrote:M'lady! I sell the finest wares in town! You look like you could use a good quality whip. Normally I charge 300 gold for this whip but since I'm such a nice guy, I'll sell it to you for only 200! I promise you'll find no better. Whataya say?
2 minutes later, I turn in a quest and get the same whip for free and with better stats! That chubby bastard just ripped me off.Me wrote: Fuck it. You sound legit. Here's 200 gold, good sir.
Dieing in this game is not a problem. At all. The only time I died was in a duel, which I'll cover later. Still, you'll be stacked on potions. I guess that is OK because health and mana regeneration in this game is practically non-existent. It basically comes down to just spamming potions, which are dirt-cheap and readily available. Well, I guess it worked for the Diablo series.
I have no clue what is going on here, but I like it. This is how the game should be. I mean, look at that guy. He's a skeletal dragon warrior with an axe and also demon horns and check out those stylish boots! Why am I fighting wolves instead of this guy?
And now that we're on the subject of combat, let me break it down for you: it is terrible. All you do is spam one skill. And when you kill them, you gain soul. What is soul? What is it used for? Where do I keep all these souls I am stealing? I don't know. Monster aggro is practically non-existent, but it's not like that matters, anyways. Monster aggro is also very inconsistent. Sometimes when you're fighting an enemy, if you deselect them (ie. click off of them), apparently they understand that as you saying, "Hey, come on now. That isn't very nice. We should be friends. Lets not fight, OK?" Yeah. They instantly stop fighting you when you switch or cancel target. But only sometimes. The enemies are ridiculously weak and you will probably kill them before they even reach you. Even if you had 10 of them on you, you probably wouldn't take more than 10% damage before killing them all, and that is without even using the butt-load of potions you carry in your back pocket.
Then, sometimes, you'll find some jerk that just won't take any hits. Every attack you throw at him will just display "Miss." At least this counts towards your skill levels. Since the target will walk around aimlessly as you do not score a hit, nor will enemies ever seem aggressive, you can score tons of free skill points. Oh, right, I forgot to mention, you level up skills by using them x number of times. What I'm saying is, get ready to see people AFK spamming skills in town for free levels. It will happen.
At this point, we started screwing around. A lot. Decided to try the dueling system. I actually found something really cool. You get to bet on the loser's title. Whoever loses the duel will have to hang their head in shame with a title above showing the world just how bad they are at this game. But here's a tip: Have your friend invite you to a duel, but do not accept. Now send him or her a duel invite. Kill them, laugh, then as soon as they respawn, accept their invite and kill them again before they have the chance to regain any health.
Ok, the gathering and crafting in this game can't be bad, right? I mean, that is pretty hard to mess up. Well, guess what? They managed to do it.
Let me explain how the gathering works. First, you do a quest to get a scroll which teaches you how to gather. Why do they give you a scroll instead of just outright teaching you the skill? Well, does anything else in this game make sense? No? That's why. Anyways, once you do that, you'll need to buy a mining pick or whatever item is required for what you are attempting to collect. Now there is one place on the map that you can go to gather that specific item from.
You'll see some shiny rocks or plants. I know your immediate reaction is to click the rocks. Nope. Double click? Nope. Spam click like 10 times really fast and you might be lucky enough to begin harvesting. Now that you've started harvesting, walk away and go make a sandwich, watch some TV, and brew some tea. When you come back, you'll have a few hundred items gathered. Yeah, I didn't bother attempting to craft anything. I think this was bad enough.
I probably spent more time writing this review than actually playing the game. It is just plain bad. Maybe if this game came out 10 years ago, it would be decent. Overall, I give it a 3/10.
- Graphics are OK - 7/10
Settings and customization are bad - 3/10
Controls are clunky - 3/10
Combat is boring and 1-dimensional - 2/10
Skills are lame and uninteresting - 2/10
Unoriginal and rips off every game - 0/10
Asshole vender - 10/10
Invasive counter-productive game "protection" - 0/10