Character 1: Bard lvl.23 (I think)
Character 2: Berserker lvl.50(maybe 51?) item lvl. 500 (I had the means to a higher item level, but I already felt too powerful in the main story and didn't want to overkill)
Definitely fulfilled the itch I had to play a grind game. I played in a near perfectionist style, that had me leaving most regions with upwards of 80% adventure tome completion. The top-down MMORPG was refreshing and the attacks very cool. This might be able to save you from the unfortunate problem of not having many players, and seeing bots almost 50x as much as players. I'm sure I went through entire continents seeing 1-3 players and 50-100 bots. This becomes a problem when trying to play any co-op required portions of the game. Most of the time, it's simply not going to happen. That being said, many of the community that I had met was relatively nice and welcoming. I did enjoy talking to them, but there was this overwhelming consensus that it is tough to impossible to catch up to other players. The amount of grinding in this game becomes very apparent, very fast. I had also joined multiple guilds just for 95% of the guild to be nonexistent in game. I'm still unsure of the benefit of joining one aside from acquiring Sylmael Bloodstones for another merchant.
One thing is that the pacing gets very thrown off once you reach North Vern, and there's already too many seemingly pointless quests by this time. With the introduction of Chaos Dungeons and Guardian Raids, the main story becomes a chore rather than interesting. Every area has some new "talk to 5 different people" quest that will have you mounting and dismounting to run around as fast as possible. My fire for the game fizzled out around item lvl. 500.
While not exactly pay to win, I did start to feel the effects of a free to play game. It first came in when I realized you have to pay for more card slots. Not being able to acquire every card without paying was the first point, where I was starting to be turned away I think. Next up would be the grind as a FtP player on finding gold. I was able to make enough progress to participate in the Mokoko Seed event for approximately a week and generate 5400 gold. Otherwise, you will find yourself grinding out continent collection items to sell on the market making max 10g per piece.
Combat:
It was a somewhat generic "beat hordes of enemies" type of game for most of my time. I would say that the majority of the time, I would just use one of my stronger abilities to one shot a group and move on over using weaker attacks or autos. Some bosses are pretty cool, but the aforementioned "use big ability" would often one-shot many non end-of-dungeon bosses. I found myself quite bored once the novelty of how cool the attacks looked wore off. Even limiting myself to not using the heavy hitting attacks would lead to somewhat lackluster fights at times. As I mentioned earlier, I do think the beauty and variety are there and interesting. I wish the game was a little more interactive when playing with friends. There are many solo experiences that should allow you to play with others if partied up. Limiting interaction to Dungeons and Raids, many of the good ones, mind you, are locked by minimum 25-30 hours of gameplay (Chaos Dungeon, Guardian Raid, etc.) was a major turnoff to cooperative gamplay.
World:
I love the world. I think the entire system is somewhat well done. I think I have two main concerns.
- It's on rails
- Travel time
Being a top down MMORPG is cool and all, but the collisions with walls kinda sucked. The movement of the game is solid, but you have to take guided routes around everywhere. Many of the enemies are more of a nuisance than anything else, and I found myself hopping on my mount and dashing past 80% of everything I encountered. The "on rails" part refers to this in how you can't exactly just go wherever you want and explore until you have a boat. Even at this point, you are still forced to follow somewhat direct routes. This leads to the next point, travel time. Especially on boat, it is tough when you realize you gotta go get something from Shushire when you're in Rethramis. At this point, you just set the travel and leave for 15 minutes, just to learn you didn't equip Sturmbrecher and have to travel down to North Vern to switch and back up again. The travel is just an arbitrary time sink.
Stronghold:
I don't think I can express the dislike I had for this. The systems felt arbitrary and unneeded. I understand it would be used much more in the far late game, but I found stretches of tens of hours, where I could not realistically make progress in the stronghold. On top of this, we run into a similar problem of something like the boats or clash of clans. Why do I have to wait 24 hours for a tiny upgrade to finish?
Overall: 6/10
I still think the game deserves props for what it does well. It is really fun for a while and addicting for a time. I can understand why some player may continue one past where I did, but my concerns outweighed the benefits at this point where I was. I don't think I will return to this game, but I did have fun. In my final days, I felt more as though I was handling a chore playing. That is why I finally uninstalled.
Character 2: Berserker lvl.50(maybe 51?) item lvl. 500 (I had the means to a higher item level, but I already felt too powerful in the main story and didn't want to overkill)
Definitely fulfilled the itch I had to play a grind game. I played in a near perfectionist style, that had me leaving most regions with upwards of 80% adventure tome completion. The top-down MMORPG was refreshing and the attacks very cool. This might be able to save you from the unfortunate problem of not having many players, and seeing bots almost 50x as much as players. I'm sure I went through entire continents seeing 1-3 players and 50-100 bots. This becomes a problem when trying to play any co-op required portions of the game. Most of the time, it's simply not going to happen. That being said, many of the community that I had met was relatively nice and welcoming. I did enjoy talking to them, but there was this overwhelming consensus that it is tough to impossible to catch up to other players. The amount of grinding in this game becomes very apparent, very fast. I had also joined multiple guilds just for 95% of the guild to be nonexistent in game. I'm still unsure of the benefit of joining one aside from acquiring Sylmael Bloodstones for another merchant.
One thing is that the pacing gets very thrown off once you reach North Vern, and there's already too many seemingly pointless quests by this time. With the introduction of Chaos Dungeons and Guardian Raids, the main story becomes a chore rather than interesting. Every area has some new "talk to 5 different people" quest that will have you mounting and dismounting to run around as fast as possible. My fire for the game fizzled out around item lvl. 500.
While not exactly pay to win, I did start to feel the effects of a free to play game. It first came in when I realized you have to pay for more card slots. Not being able to acquire every card without paying was the first point, where I was starting to be turned away I think. Next up would be the grind as a FtP player on finding gold. I was able to make enough progress to participate in the Mokoko Seed event for approximately a week and generate 5400 gold. Otherwise, you will find yourself grinding out continent collection items to sell on the market making max 10g per piece.
Combat:
It was a somewhat generic "beat hordes of enemies" type of game for most of my time. I would say that the majority of the time, I would just use one of my stronger abilities to one shot a group and move on over using weaker attacks or autos. Some bosses are pretty cool, but the aforementioned "use big ability" would often one-shot many non end-of-dungeon bosses. I found myself quite bored once the novelty of how cool the attacks looked wore off. Even limiting myself to not using the heavy hitting attacks would lead to somewhat lackluster fights at times. As I mentioned earlier, I do think the beauty and variety are there and interesting. I wish the game was a little more interactive when playing with friends. There are many solo experiences that should allow you to play with others if partied up. Limiting interaction to Dungeons and Raids, many of the good ones, mind you, are locked by minimum 25-30 hours of gameplay (Chaos Dungeon, Guardian Raid, etc.) was a major turnoff to cooperative gamplay.
World:
I love the world. I think the entire system is somewhat well done. I think I have two main concerns.
- It's on rails
- Travel time
Being a top down MMORPG is cool and all, but the collisions with walls kinda sucked. The movement of the game is solid, but you have to take guided routes around everywhere. Many of the enemies are more of a nuisance than anything else, and I found myself hopping on my mount and dashing past 80% of everything I encountered. The "on rails" part refers to this in how you can't exactly just go wherever you want and explore until you have a boat. Even at this point, you are still forced to follow somewhat direct routes. This leads to the next point, travel time. Especially on boat, it is tough when you realize you gotta go get something from Shushire when you're in Rethramis. At this point, you just set the travel and leave for 15 minutes, just to learn you didn't equip Sturmbrecher and have to travel down to North Vern to switch and back up again. The travel is just an arbitrary time sink.
Stronghold:
I don't think I can express the dislike I had for this. The systems felt arbitrary and unneeded. I understand it would be used much more in the far late game, but I found stretches of tens of hours, where I could not realistically make progress in the stronghold. On top of this, we run into a similar problem of something like the boats or clash of clans. Why do I have to wait 24 hours for a tiny upgrade to finish?
Overall: 6/10
I still think the game deserves props for what it does well. It is really fun for a while and addicting for a time. I can understand why some player may continue one past where I did, but my concerns outweighed the benefits at this point where I was. I don't think I will return to this game, but I did have fun. In my final days, I felt more as though I was handling a chore playing. That is why I finally uninstalled.