Mabinogi

Mabinogi first of all is a very very veerrry well made game. Beautiful graphics and very intuitive with resolution options. I am not a "Hardcore Gamer" just a casual few hours out of the day player. So far as of right now i've progressed to lvl 17 since Open Beta has opened for North America. But even in the begining there are still lots of stuff that are presented and features i have not even scrated yet. so imma just give you the features i've used so far and what features i've seen availble. Feel Free to voice any opinions and responses.

1- Unique battling interface: Basically what you do to battle is click the monster with your mouse pointer and hope you dont die, in auto battle mode. There is also another mode that you can toggle to that is quite in depth and requires timing, skills learned in the game, and clicking ablities.

2- Very well made Maps and Graphics: The maps are amazing in this game. You get a full 3D view meaning ( your character can move forward backwards side to side, and get a 360 degree view horizontally and almost vertically.) Graphics can be slightly improved if you turn on the movie type shading, anti-aliasing (if your computer supports it), and dither motion blur (dither makes a small differnce but not much). Even with defult settings the graphics are still pretty good.

3- Many Many differnt Skills: Okay, you can learn alot of differnt skills that protain to many differnt aspects of the game (Combat, Life, Magic). Skills i've learn so far and are probably the noob skills are; Smash (combat), Defend (combat), Counter Atk (combat), Resting (life), Campfire building(life), Product Making(life), & theres a skill you need to know to learn magic skills too but i cant really remember what its called exactly. But there are many many other skills you can learn as you progress further and probably faster than i am in the game.

4- The Grind: the lvl grinding isnt too bad so far. I've hear that it isnt too bad once you get up higher but doing quests are probably the best and fastest way to lvl up.

5- Part time jobs: Yes you get part time jobs but they only last a day(in the game). and you can only do one part time job at a time. but it definately gives you a break from the grind and questing by letting you do small repitive tasks for an NPC.

6- Immersive: this game is pretty good at making you feel immursed in the game. you get nice sounds though some of the soundtracks for differnt parts of the map can be annoying but it does good by making alot of the travling by foot and by keeping the scenery not too repetitive. You can tell the map designers worked hard. Also you get titles kinna like achievements on the xbox live. Which gives you a nice since of pride when you play the game and get a nice title after your name.

The Bad: My complaints are the cursor is too small, along with loot items(makes it difficult to loot somtimes). The camera controlls can be a bit frustrating. Along with character controlling, i get stuck in corners alot but maybe thats just me. Also i get this weird repeat of motion lag, might be my connection, but it happens a few times too many for me. So many skills to learn that it might become confusing and ultimatly frustrating.

Overall: The game has minor fualts that will probably be fixed up in a few patches or just one nice big one. It is still in beta testing so there is lots of time to improve.

Very nice review...I am downloading it right now.

press and hold down alt to target items better

p.s. yeah movement and camra could be improved and more heroics needed

I also forgot to add that the download time is kinna long. the file size that is downloaded is about 800 MB and it took me about 1-1.5hrs to complete the download and installation, most of the time was to download.

Right on review, besides the minor issues of the game, which undoubtabIy will be looked over, I believe within time this will be the number one f2p game available, for me it's what has been lacking in other mmo in the past.

My thoughts:

[FYI: I was able to download the game from the Nexon website in about 10 minutes.]

(1) I think this is an "at first glance" game.  At first glance, it looks really, really neat.  Skill-based, no classes, endless customization of abilities.  I'm not sure that feeling lasts much past the first few days of game playing, however.  Or maybe it's just me.  The game feels a lot like a typical Korean MMO grind after you stop getting new quests from the birds.  That's an impression after a week of playing (as a complete newbie), however, so maybe it won't bear true in the long run.

(2) I'm having trouble forming a cogent opinion of the game because it's missing key components. Towns to which characters naturally progress haven't been introduced yet (e.g., you can't break the seal to Bangor or Emain Macha because the developers haven't yet put those towns in). The store, and its Nexon $'s, hasn't been opened yet. Certain skills, like the life skill Fishing, haven't been implemented yet.

On the other hand, I do find the game kinda fun, though I notice my play sessions are much shorter than in other MMOs.  In Everquest2, for example, I would play 4-8 hours a day whenever I could.  For Mabinogi, I'm only playing 30-60 minutes tops before I'm kind of ready to do something else with my time.

(3) The community is very, very young.  This is not a criticism, just an observation.  As a mid-30s adult, I feel very out of place. 

(4) The combat system is fascinating.  It's unlike any MMO I've ever played.

(5) The graphics are rudimentary in some contexts, and fantastic in others.

(6) I hate the UI.  It's unfamiliar to me. Change is bad, mmkay?

(7) Picking up items is silly hard.

The limitations like, lack of quests, the seals to the next towns, and the skills that have been promised but not yet deliver'd are more than likely because that the game is still in beta testing so you cannot  really bash on the game simply because its not done yet ( and im not saying that you are bashing the game, you obviously have vaild points ).

And as for the being mid 30's is going to be generally feel awkward because most players are comming from Maple Story and im sure just one glance at their graphics (which are quite nice for a 2D) you can tell its gonna have teens and pre-teens alike playing and dominating the community for a while. i myself am 19, so yeah.

I play just because i like the classes setup. and how there is so much potential for this game to be great F2P

So far I've been playing for 4 days and enjoying myself. It does have a charm. However the limited view range (you can only see a few feet around you, then it fades to a 2d background) is a bit annoying.

1. I want to be able to click into the distance and have my toon run not have to use the minimap like an RTS becase it only renders whats immediatly around me.

2. There's really no way to duel-class in some aspects. Like I can't pull with a bow and switch to melee. Even when the creature gets into melee range my character auto-ranges each attack. Hitting W to swap to my melee set dosn't seem to work. Its a bit of a let down. Best way seems to either rush with smash or use ice bolt to pull.

3. I invested some AP earlier on into some skills I wish I hadent' as I didn't then realize that the skills got more AP expensive as they raised in rank, plus leveling was so fast the AP was flooding in. Then I seemed to hit a wall where I couldn't kill mobs above a certain type. I didn't know where to go next or why I was getting owned by 1 mob and could breeze through another.  This might just be class/mob balance so it's not a big deal. But money seems to come slowly and noobie armor is really expensive.

4. There is ALOT of clicking, even talking to 1 NPC they chop every bit of into into 12 pages of text I need to click through. I just want to advance the quest but I had to click through 20 pages during the magic lession quest. Yeesh. I'd rather have more text per page for less clicking.

5. The UI is very spartan, and limited to 10 hotkeys. Balance issues aside (like heal kits healing you for 1HP, woot). It is a charming game, just seems very raw still.

(On a side note I dunno what the OP is so jazzed about the terrain for, it's a low-rez tile system just like diablo2 but on a low-rez height field. Many of the terrain textures have obvious seems which make the ground look tiley. This is par for the asian MMO course, simmilarly found in Flyff, PrisonTale and other asian MMO's of that same calibur.)

Side note, I don't see any motion blurr or anti-aliasing options in the UI settings. There's dither but it dosn't create any sort of motion blurr effect as far as I can tell. All the models are very very low rez so it runs well on low-end systems as is common for asian games (lots of PC's in asia but many are 4-6 years older then todays standards, so to have a big user base the game companies over there tend to target lower specs).

played this game for a few days now. my impression/comments so far:

1 - for an f2p, it is a very neat game. compared to other f2p out there.

2 - a first glance, it looked like it is a sandbox mmo, but it's not. it does have some traits of a sandbox mmo though.

3 - as stated before, combat system is unique. but i wonder how it works in pvp?

4 - this game is stil in OB, thus there are a few bugs. eg. if you're using defence skill you're movement is hampered. but this doesnt apply on mobs (those damn wolves).

5 - dungeon exploring is fun, either you're doing solo or party (at least i'm enjoying it). but sometimes i question the purpose of it, just another grindfest or do you actually get something out of it.