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The Chronicles of Spellborn Review: The Chronicles of Spellborn Review - Edit
7.7
Average
| Pros |
  
|
 Excellent customization options Innovative combat Low barrier to entry |
| Cons |
  
|
 Dated visuals Disapointing newbie experience Missing many basic features |
The Chronicles of Spellborn is the latest MMOG offering from Acclaim and the first for Dutch-based developer Spellborn International. Spellborn is an MMOG that aims to challenge many of our preconceptions for what an MMOG should be like. Does Spellborn really offer something different or is it really just more of the same?
Overview
The Chronicles of Spellborn is a European fantasy MMOG set in a post-apocalyptic universe where life has mysteriously begun anew within rock encased worlds known as Shards. These shards are remnants of the Ancestor World and float within what is called the “Deadspell Storm.” The game features robust customization options and an innovative take on combat. Spellborn is also a “Freemium” MMOG, which means the first 9.9 levels of Spellborn are entirely free; you need only pay if you wish to continue past this point. There is no box to purchase, you can simply download the game at the Spellborn website and be ready to go.
Design
As a player, you choose from three class archetypes, Rogue, Mage, and Warrior, and one of two races, the standard Human, and the Daevi. The Daevi are a mythical race that is a hybrid of human and Mumia; the Mumia being the demon rulers of the Ancestor World prior to the uprising that ultimately led to its destruction. As you can tell, the availability of only two races doesn’t exactly provide the player a wealth of options, but Spellborn makes up for this with a robust character creation system. Sure, you may only have two races, but damn it does the game let you do quite a bit to customize them to your liking.
;)
Spellborn goes to pretty bold lengths to emphasize the developers’ decision to truly embrace individuality. After you’ve chosen your race, you are given the choice of some typical options, faces, markings, skin color, hair, etc, but more importantly you choose your starting outfit. This is important because of this is essentially your first experience with the way Spellborn handles gear.
In Spellborn, items are almost purely a style choice. It is quite possible to be perfectly happy with the outfit you’ve made at creation, so much so you could wear it all the way to level cap and have no issues. You even choose your melee and ranged weapons, and optionally, a shield, which again, provides no function. You will not ‘block’ more because you chose a shield at creation, versus someone who didn’t.
Items do have slots within which augmentations known as Sigils may be placed, but for the most part your gear has little effect on your combat capability. Even choosing to opt out of say, a helmet, doesn’t gimp your character. The game accomplishes this by allowing you to wear invisible items in the slots you don’t want to fill. You can conceivably be fully tricked out in Sigils and run around the world appearing entirely naked to other players. As a long time City of Heroes player, I can definitely appreciate this approach. It is certainly refreshing being able to jump into the game world looking exactly as I envisioned my character. Though be warned, this also means you’ll run into some crazy looking characters. For example, take the friend I partnered up with to play through Spellborn for my review. I’ve attached a screenshot of his character, I’m sure you’ll be able to pick it right out.
Once you’ve entered the game, you will be treated to a brief tutorial aboard a Shardship where you’ll learn the controls of the game and some basics on combat. Following the tutorial you appear on the shard of Parliament in the town of Hawksmouth where you begin your adventure. From there, you pick from one of three disciplines at level five based on the archetype you chose at creation, and by level nine you are able to join your High House.
High Houses serve as the games factions, and there are several to choose from: House Maul, House Silver, House Rune, House Shroud, and House Torque. Each of these factions has their own personality, style, and method of doing things. For example, House Maul tends to conduct business through the use of force, while House Torque tends to deal with situations diplomatically. Choosing a House is permanent and determines who you can attack in PvP (anyone in a different House than your own) and of course your House quests.
This brings us to another point, Spellborn is incredibly story driven. This is not a game where you grind mobs all day; as most of the quests are long chains that really drive your leveling track. The aforementioned High House quests really give you some insight as to how your House works, and puts you right in the middle of the storyline. This storyline eventually sends you to the Mount of Heroes where you participate in a set of instanced challenges called The Vault trials.
Combat & The Skill Deck
Doing combat in Spellborn is a pretty unique affair. Spellborn plays more like an action game where you must manually hit your targets; there are no block or dodge rolls, or anything of the sort. This applies to all methods of combat ranging from magic to melee to ranged combat. This isn’t Age of Conan; the rules don’t only apply to the melee classes.
The most interesting aspect of the games combat is the Skill Deck. The skill deck appears as kind of a tumbler-like hotbar. You arrange your skills on several “decks” and as you use a skill on one deck, the tumbler rotates to the next one.
Your skill deck must be arranged so that you don’t have holes in your attack chain, and so that skills on differing decks compliment the ones preceding it. It’s not just a “rotating hotbar” you can’t go back to the first deck or down to the third at will. In most other games you can simply select any ability on any hotbar by clicking it or activating it through a keybind. Choosing when and where your skills appear on your deck will ultimately determine your performance in combat. If you set it up improperly you may be staring at cooldowns and have to wait around for something to come back up or for the deck to reset.
The deck also provides excellent options for combinations of abilities. For example, Amplify Fear lowers your targets Morale stat, and another skill, Spirit Strike deals more damage to the target based on the difference between you and your targets Morale. In most games, you could simply line these two up on your hotbar, but in Spellborn you would have to place Amplify Fear on a deck preceding the deck you placed Spirit Strike on to get the full effect. You must manage your deck to have the most options for the many scenarios possible within the restrictions of the slots and amount of decks you have available. This is the strategy of combat in Spellborn.
;)
To start, you only have two decks, with three slots on each deck. By level cap you will have five slots per deck, and five decks total. In the teens, you also gain access to Combo openers and finishers. Using a combo opener initiates a combo sequence and grants an immediate effect, with each move used after an opener providing a combo point, which you then spend on a combo finisher. The amount of combo points stacked before executing the finisher move will augment the effect or damage of the finisher. If you miss any move done after the opener, the combo is then cancelled and all combo points built up are lost.
Another thing to consider when doing combat in Spellborn are your state ranks. In addition to your health bar you have three state ranks consisting of Physique, Morale, and Concentration. Physique governs your movement speed, and since there aren’t any traditional snares in Spellborn, the only way to “snare” your target is by using abilities that essentially debuff their physique. Increasing run speed is done in the opposite manner, by using abilities that increase your physique. Your Morale state affects your damage, the higher the better. And finally, Concentration determines your attack speed. Attack speed is basically how fast the skill deck will rotate after an action has been made.
Lastly, you have the Bodyslots system. When you choose your discipline at level five, you will have access to a new hotbar located at the top right of your screen. Every discipline can make use of items called bodyslots. You equip these items to the bodyslots hotbar and then utilize them in combat to various effects. The types of bodyslots vary widely in scope and function. Depending on your discipline you will utilize anything ranging from different pets, shapeshift forms, gadgets, even magical body scars and tattoos.
Nice review. I wish all the reviews on this site were done as well as this one.
Thanks for the compliment!
It's indeed a good game, your pro' and cons are also what I think.
It's sad the servers are so empty ... and with empty I mean empty, I met no-one ...
Very nice review. I am officially bored again and prowling about for another game and this review helps me sift through the options. I think it sounds interesting and maybe something I will try at some point, however, I do not think I will enjoy it in its current described state. No matter how good a games basic features/ideas are I do require some basic functionality that you describe as missing. I will wait another month or two and see how things are going.
This is perhaps the biggest thing most developers still have not learned. You must put out a complete game, no matter how small it is, if you wish to survive and be a success. You can always add more features and content later but the first bit at release must work and be complete in itself to make the players happy.
I believe that most developer know this, but budget leaves them not much choice. Spellborn is a complete game, but just barely. Functionality beyond the basic game play is kept very minimal. And there is not much more to do beside questing and fight in the Arena. Crafting has been made an unappealing aspect of the game. There is too little group content. But for the rest it is a great game in the making. I hope it survives. But every marketing decisions they made so far has turned against them. Some of those decisions were too stupid for words and still affect the player population in a negative way. If they continue to shoot themselves in the foot my hope for survival is not high.
Fantastic Review. Hit the Nail Right on the head.
Good review with a fair score for the product.
Very nice review, I agree with almost everything you said in there, but I would like to add one thing having played the game for 2 months.
The combat features is what makes this game interesting...just for a while though...Yes fighting in an mmo is a very important element, it is actually the most important element. And they just got it right with this game.
But does having a good fighting system enough for an MMORPG to be a success? Imo the answer is no, and TCoS does not have anything to offer to the player other than an interesting and engaging fighting system and a good lore.
If you get bored of killing stuff, then there's absolutely nothing else to do. People barely talk int his game if you are not in a guild, the crafting system is so basic that you don't even want to try it out. The auction house interface is so bad that there's no one using it and also because the weapon and armor recipes drop for everyone pretty easily, there's no point in using the auction house. There aren't enough dungeons to run if you feel like running some, there isn't enough PvPing going around because of the fact that classes are extremely unbalanced and there aren't enough people in the game.
I am surprised that you did not get into the fact that there is not much to do in this game other than go fight 20000 raptors in your gameplay paragraph, imo the lack of content and depth is something extremely important in an mmo.
My score personally would be a 6/10
And I commend you on the review, it is a very well written review.
Nice review. It's certainly one I'll try just a question of when. I figure that it might be one thats worth waiting on.
Dated visuals? Aren't they stylized, WoW would have dated visuals, if it weren't for the fact it was so stylized.
Nice review fella. :)
Dated visuals? What computer are you running it on? Granted it is the Unreal 2.5 engine, they did a HELL of a job with the art style and lighting effects to make it look just as appealing as any other modern MMO out there.
This game is pretty. It has its flaws but graphics I would never think to be one of them. Just my two cents.
Nice review mike,
I played TCoS since it's CB stage and agree with alot of your points. Even though I've been playing other games it makes me curious to see how the game would've fared at higher lvls. SInce I only had a handful of characters that I took to the lower F2P cap of 7.9 just to test the game out, your review made me curious enough to want to subscribe. I feel now that maybe I didn't give the game 100% of a chance, but I'm cheap and picky.
~Ink
From the review the UI definatly needs a patch and the netwroking issues are unpardonable. Sort that out and I think its worth a punt.
Yeah, nice review.
I'm subscribed to Acclaim servers and enjoining it a lot... i'm a bit worried about server population but this game is incredible so I hope this problem will be solved soon :(((
Another big problem is the server distribution. For some stupid territorial war against acclaim and Mindscape-Frogster I was redirected to acclaim servers (US servers) and i'm from Spain (all spanish people will be redirected there).
Now i'm level 20 and i just discovered the EU server (Mindscape-Froggster servers) and i can't switch because they are independent servers.
So european community is divided. It sucks :(!
Concerning to the game, Spellborn worth a try. I'm sure you will love it :)!
MikeB thats how you write a review my friend! Kudos, and I hope this is a formula you do not stray from as most reviewers have!
Only problem I had with your review was the less than honest quibble about the look, or graphics. Stellus hit it on the nose, this game looks pretty amazing for as old as it is, and it looks even better than some of the newer games already out! If I said anyhting positive about TCOS it would be the combat and the Graphics for sure!
Personally though, I think with all that Spellborn Int has gone through with this game, and Acclaim picking up the title as P2P, its just not gonna fly. To little to lat imo. This game will survive though if they decide to either lower the monthly fee by half, or spin to a F2P. Right now though, no one wants to pay for a beta, and this is what the game feels like all the way around! Hopefully in time that will change, but till then no one will flock to pay the $15 a month fee, when they could be paying for a number of better designed games for that price. Only thing I see going for the game is the client is free, but thats just not enough imo at this point.
Thanks for the nice review, Mike. I will definitely give this game a try. I am jsut bored as someone else here. Tried Runes of Magic and just ran into series of quests where you have to grind trees for hours. Even though it sounds like TCoS has similar quests and maybe even worse I read that it is also very story driven which attracts me the most in MMOs. Thats why I liked LOTRO and still play it for over 2 years. But need a break, so I am giving a try to TCoS this weekend. Hope my ride will be fun :).
After reading MMORPG.com's re-review of D&D Online I had given up on this website. This review has renewed my faith in MMORPG.com and their ability to put out quality reviews.
I think the Author needs to be given credit here, not mmorpg.com
It does seem like a fair review, I like that fact that he hasnt shyed away or 'salt pettled' the truth about its negative points.
But unfortunatly the content of the review leads me to conclude, as I do with most newly released mmo's, that it needs to mature a bit.
I'll be skipping this for now, there are a few other 'must-play' MMO's coming out in the next 6 months which appear higher up the 'must-play' scale.
Final score is a bit generous in my opinion, about a 6/10 I would think. And yes the game has dated visuals.
Wow's visuals are dated, stylized or not.
If you're referring to Champions, Fallen Earth, Earthrise, or Jumpgate then I think you'll be better off waiting for them to mature as well. They are all going to be quite rough at first.
Also, you could probably make level 50 in Spellborn before even one of them is released.
Good review, fair score for the product, overall a worthwhile read without a doubt ;)
Nice work MikeB.
good review =)
same pros and cons as me.
good review,
tho the cons arent really cons imo
i love pvp, so crafting i couldnt give two shits about lol and its saying the quests are the same thing over and over...isnt that with almost any MMO? go out, kill something, get rewards, rinse & repeat...
other than that, it was good :)
They are actually quite nice as you can see in the screenshots provided. Technically though, they are dated. Unreal, or even Unreal 2, is quite an old engine by todays standards.
Nice review, u took words out of my mouth. Personally i think this is good start, but need tweaking to be a good mmorpg. Fix pvp lag issues, made some more things to do other than questing and crafting. More group friendly things and most of all, make some daily events (more than demon chest). I like this game very much after 1month paying and im gonna pay for other month too (lvl30 so far). Its fun to play what is important thing to me. I never had that feeling "o my, i paid for this mmorpg and now i HAVE to play" with this game. No, so far is have been only good time.
- Oldcshool player, newbie mmorpg player
They are actually quite nice as you can see in the screenshots provided. Technically though, they are dated. Unreal, or even Unreal 2, is quite an old engine by todays standards.
The engine is the Unreal 2.5 engine that they have modified to fit their game. I hope you also realize there are only a handful of games if that which use an engine that is not dated by your standards. Although I agree with the score, I'd suggest fixing this so it doesn't seem like your information is misinformed.
Hit all the issues and bonuses right on and honestly. Though it should def have a rating higher than 7.7 compared to what some of this sites other ratings, sure 7.7 is in tone with the writing but not with the ratings of other games(side effect of different reviewers i guess).
I don't really concern myself with the opinions of others in my ratings. I felt the game ultimately was a 7.7, so that's what it got. :) If I cared about what other reviewers scored games I wouldn't really be doing fair by you all, would I? I imagine you guys don't want us to just be an echo chamber.
Though, just to indulge you, the Metacritic rating for The Chronicles of Spellborn is 76. Well within the realm of what I scored it.
I played a couple of classes up to the f2p cap, but I just felt the game wasn't worth $15/month. If I want to spend time on lame quests where I'm gathering 10 boar meats from boars that have a 1 in 3 chance of having meat on them, there are a few decent f2p mmos out there with the same type of quest grind. The game does have some nice points and if they just had a competitive pricing structure I could see myself playing this a bit.
I love the fluff reviews this site gives . No idea how they came up with such a high score with so many admitted CONS.
I don't really concern myself with the opinions of others in my ratings. I felt the game ultimately was a 7.7, so that's what it got. :) If I cared about what other reviewers scored games I wouldn't really be doing fair by you all, would I? I imagine you guys don't want us to just be an echo chamber.
No, but it would be nice to know what this rating means as compared to other ratings on this site. From what you are saying it means little. Is that a new policy? It might mean that the rating means nothing. A better game might get a lower rating or vice versa. On the other hand, what is better? But still when this site lists games according to its ranking people are led to expect the rating means something for one game relative to other games.
No, but it would be nice to know what this rating means as compared to other ratings on this site. From what you are saying it means little. Is that a new policy? It might mean that the rating means nothing. A better game might get a lower rating or vice versa. On the other hand, what is better? But still when this site lists games according to its ranking people are led to expect the rating means something for one game relative to other games.
Ratings dont matter, even a completely average MMO gets a 7 on this site.
No, but it would be nice to know what this rating means as compared to other ratings on this site. From what you are saying it means little. Is that a new policy? It might mean that the rating means nothing. A better game might get a lower rating or vice versa. On the other hand, what is better? But still when this site lists games according to its ranking people are led to expect the rating means something for one game relative to other games.
Sorry, I misread your post. I thought you were referring to other sites.
I cannot say anything in the review was innacurate ,but the OP perception of each detail is not one i agree with.
The hotbar is one that totally turned me off.It offers nothing more than a inconvenience,because yes you can preset the hotbar to use it exactly the way you would a normal one,so why the fuss to make it more complicated than need be?Then you have to rearrange the whole thing when you get new abilities,lol again waste of time,oh well one opinion versus another,i just look at the facts.
I have no idea where the hitman thing comes into play,if you did not know the Hitman developer/artists,NOBODY would have a clue that they are anything alike,not even the sounds or music.Hitman was a console game designed for tight corridors and small view areas,to keep poly counts down.Even so on the note of music,the FFXi artists utilize orchestras and renowned ones at that,so again a console game beats out TCOS here.
The combat system is nothing unique really it offers some buffs debuffs,nothing special,it could never be compared to FFXI's combat system,but then again all other games take a back seat to FFXI's combat system.The mobs try to avoid taking their back in an unrealistic fashion,they look like automated mobs rather than anything that moves realistically.No rooting is a real step back in combat play,as pretty much every game offers it.
It has been quite awhile since i played TCOS,but i don't remember customization at all,and if it offered anything unique in that area,i would have remembered it for sure.The class selction seemed ho hum as well,nothing trhat screams out play me i am different or better.
I know many people at the time of beta tried to convey how amazing the game looked,i saw it as curvey buildings the same as WOW and all were static as F2P games do it,with NPC's standing out front.
IMO the game is decent but not a 7.7,i would rate it a 6 at best,just because there are a ton of games that do everytrhing the same or better.When you build a game to garner new clients,it has to offer something the other games don't or you will not get anyone to play the game.The ONLY thing this game offers really is the cumbersome hotbar,hardly an idea worth exiting your favourite game to play TCOS.I could give the game a 7.5-8 on graphics,but that would be the ONLY part of the game that garners a score higher than 6.However if i wanted just a better looking game,i would play AOC or Vanguard or several other games that utilize nice shader work.
A very well written, informative and fair review.
However I have to echo what other people have said........dated visuals? How did you reach that conclusion? Slightly cartoony with a touch of Tim Burton to offset potential performance issues does not = dated visuals. On my machine those "dated visuals" outshone anything else currently on the mmo market.
A well written review, tho judging from my ealier beta experiences I feel the verdict is a bit overrated. I would not give Spellborn more than 6/10 myself.
For once, I totally and fundamentally HATE kiting, and games having kiting as possibility, and Spellborn goes far beyond that, it encourages kiting. Actually kiting is the only real combat strategy. Forget your skills, just kite around. Usually that will get you along much more than anything else.
The other thing is, you'll love or hate the graphics. They were totally not my thing, which is of course subjective. As bored as I am, I am certainly going to skip that game.
The game has great combat, a nice story, an interesting enough world, some fresh ideas - altogether, very worth checking out except it has no population whatsoever.
This review came too late. The game is already effectively dead. Unless they try a new marketing blitz, it's hard to believe it will ever have more than a few hundred players.
Its a shame, as i really liked this game. But dead MMO is dead MMO.
Fluff reviews? The guy writes a decent review and rates it appropriately according to how the other games are rated(high scores are the norm in this industry, get used to it) and that is all you can say?
Great review! I might give this game a try. Although, I'll wait a few months for them to work out the bugs.
I didn't mind the graphics so much, technically, they could of been better, but artistically and the style, they were great.
But you nailed the Kiting thing right on. Kind of makes that nifty skilldeck everyone claims is a god-send to combat a mute point. Regardless, tho, the combat system wasn't bad. Ranged attacks are far too common in terms of how much they are used in general throughout your career in killing stuff and really killed the combat system for me.
I just wish the leveling would of been more than delivery and kill quests. And that the XP rates for quests made more sense, the rates for rewards don't match up at all with the risk involved in half of them. Some of the hardest quests in Ringfell gave virtually no experience compared to one where you just run across the bridges on the trees to the other side of the map to deliver something. I wish it would of been less theme park, more opened ended, but I guess that was just the dev's vision.
It's worth trying out, but the lack of subscriptions isn't just because of the advertising. They lost many, many people who subscribed and played from the beta already. There's no lasting appeal past max level, no replay value. But it's worth checking out, if only to play through it once.
Some minor mistakes made by the reviewer corrected:
This storyline eventually sends you to the Mount of Heroes where you participate in a set of instanced challenges called The Vault trials.
The Vault of Trials is located on a separate shard called Atheneum.
By level cap you will have five slots per deck, and five decks total.
The total number of decks at level cap is six.
Other areas, like the Mount of Heroes, simply float within the Deadspell Storm itself, which appears as beautiful vortex of light.
Atheneum, Exarchyon and Rawhead Landing just float in the Deadspell Storm like that. Mount of Heroes does not. But the author probably never got as far as Mount of Heroes. I doubt he even got beyond Quarterstone and the first two trials in the Atheneum, but then that was probably not his job.
The review was informative but in a factual, boring sort of way. I give it a 6.5.
Whoops, sorry about that, I'll have those bits corrected. Got the names confused.
Just out of curiosity, how many reviewers make it even half way to end game content in an initial review? From my experience they are given a deadline to have the review written (often within a few weeks). I don't know where any of those places you list fit in the overall game world as I haven't played it. Overall, you'll be pretty hard pressed to find an initial review out there that covers from starting spot to end game content. Often follow-ups are added or second looks are done to include new data, if anything is done.
I've tried the game, but couldn't last for more than 1 hour. Feels unfinished and to be honest just doesn't feel like an MMORPG. It feels like my friend made it on the weekend and gave me a chance to try it out...
This is a pretty good review. stunning game both in originality and graphics, but not worth paying for
Hmm, LOTRO is stunning with DirectX 10 on max graphics, Sacred 2 is quite stunning on max, Dawn of War 2 I'd say is quite stunning on Ultra High... Spellborn has 'decent' graphics I 'd say. But when you take in account everything else that decency kinda diminishes.
Am I blind, or did the Spellborn forum get deleted? I'm pretty sure there used to be one. I was going to check it out after reading the review....
Edit: Nevermind, I'm blind. The forum is in the "T" section ("THE Chronicles of the Spellborne").
denial is a river in egypt
I would never suggest that popularity = quality, or Britany Spears would be Mozart.
But in this case, the numbers do indeed....... speak for the product.
Just out of curiosity, how many reviewers make it even half way to end game content in an initial review? From my experience they are given a deadline to have the review written (often within a few weeks). I don't know where any of those places you list fit in the overall game world as I haven't played it. Overall, you'll be pretty hard pressed to find an initial review out there that covers from starting spot to end game content. Often follow-ups are added or second looks are done to include new data, if anything is done.
There are many ways to answer this, but let me begin by saying I never expected the reviewer to get to half way the game. That is what I meant by saying that that was not his job.
Next: it is not stated that this was an initial review. Maybe this should have been stated or explained, but I don't think it was meant to be an initial review, like you say.
Now, the reviewer from what I can tell never saw Ringfell Hearth; the place where the game starts to become more challenging. I would have loved to read the reviewers experience with that rather harsh zone that was not really made to be soloed, but still plenty of people do that and can tell a story or two about it. Maybe it would have made the review come a bit more alive. You can go to Ringfell Hearth at level 14, but level 18 is recommended, which is not even close to half way the game.
Last: I do not claim it is a bad review because of it. I do not even say it is a bad review at all.
There are many ways to answer this, but let me begin by saying I never expected the reviewer to get to half way the game. That is what I meant by saying that that was not his job.
Next: it is not stated that this was an initial review. Maybe this should have been stated or explained, but I don't think it was meant to be an initial review, like you say.
Now, the reviewer from what I can tell never saw Ringfell Hearth; the place where the game starts to become more challenging. I would have loved to read the reviewers experience with that rather harsh zone that was not really made to be soloed, but still plenty of people do that and can tell a story or two about it. Maybe it would have made the review come a bit more alive. You can go to Ringfell Hearth at level 14, but level 18 is recommended, which is not even close to half way the game.
Last: I do not claim it is a bad review because of it. I do not even say it is a bad review at all.
If Ringfell was the big foresty place, then yes, I did that as well. I got to level 20-25 if people are curious. :) The cap is 50, so I guess you can say I got pretty close to halfway through the game. I didn't end up in Ringfell (if thats the place I'm thinking of) until probably 18 or 19.
And yes, that place was pretty rough. :)
I also did not solo the game, I played through everything with a friend.
Hope that helps! :)
I am glad that some find this game enjoyable. I didn't.
I really like this game. I think the one part I really enjoy is that the combat isn't boring point-and-click and less passive than most MMOG.
Also, I found the graphics to be really stylish even if they are running on UE2. Same with the music, really nice.
So I find it a real shame that so few people are playing because this game has the potential to appeal to a slightly different type of MMO player too - as it does a few things quite differently.
I would really urge people to try it... nothing to loose :)
This is deffinately a marmite game. Started playing about a week ago, I will be subbing, loving it so far. Good review.
Ive been playing the free client and seriously considering buying this game, for everyone who loves MMO's but is looking for something different then WoW/WAR/EVE/EQII,..... should try this one. Why? 'Cuz u can try it free for as long as u want (until a certain lvl) , the combat system is innovative, well thought, and most of all fun. The somewhat negative aspects are the quite empty servers (hope they will grow soon) the little bit dated graphics altho the design is very ok and the absence of good PVP. But when the game becomes a succes, these problems will no doubt be solved when the time comes. =)
The game is fun and all.. but its frustrating how some of the bugs is not fixed yet... Like i can not play on the first town Hawkmonth cause as soon as it loads up, it dissconnects me, i tried everything i could think of to fix the problem, even downloaded the maps by themselves but still i can not play the game cause of that problem... no one seems to have a solution either.