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Scions of Fate (Yulgang) News - Review
Posted by Jon Wood on Apr 09, 2007 | 55 comments in our forums
Adele Caelia pens this critical review of Netgame USA's Scions of Fate.
Scions of Fate, the game formerly known as Yulgang: Balance of Power is one of the most played games in Asia. It has won many awards and was recognized as the best MMORPG of the year in Korea. Hoping to reach a broader audience and the same success Netgame recently released a U.S. version.
As I browsed through screenshots while waiting for the game to download I felt the little girl in me squeal with glee. The graphics weren't revolutionary but they were cute and the characters could even be called adorable. The graphics have the cartoony anime look of most Asian games, and there are tons of color options for hair and also some really cute outfits. I was a bit disappointed to see that many of the character creation options are not yet available, but that looks like it will soon change. The only options at this point are the four classes of swordsman, spearman, bowmen, and healer. The graphics are decent enough for a game that is free to play and free to download.
;)
Read the whole review here.
Scions of Fate is no better or worse than most. I rate it a 5 - below games like 9 Dragons and Hero Online... but above garbage like Deicide Online, RAN, and Conquer Online.
It's mostly just a case of how much actual content and writing the designers put into the game to supplement their flavour of grindfest. SoF looks just like any other Ragnarok Online clone with all of the content removed and a fresh (but low-budget) coat of paint slapped on.
Come on, think for a moment. more and more companies start using this payment model, ofcourse they are profitable. if the 15$ a month tag would be more profitable, then companies would use that. this is simply the new norm among asian mmorpg's.
This review is better then Adele's last review in some points, and worse in some other points.
The good points are that she doesn't slam other games this time.
She doesn't make comments like "This is the best mmorpg out there" either. Although she obviously had a bad experience with the game, I'm glad she didn't make a "this is the worst mmorpg out there" comment.
Now for the bad points.
I read the review, and after reading it I still know close to nothing of the game at all (if it wasn't for the fact I played it).
For example, you mention there are very few quests, thats all fine and all, but what are those quests like? do they have a story involved in it? Do the quest show me the world?
And what about combat? Is there content for grouping? Is the game solo friendly? does it make use of instanced technology? Is there PVP? How about customization of characters, such as stats and skills? (other then the looks)
I have played the game myself, so I know the answers to this, but I can imagine someone who didn't play the game isn't going to find this review helpful.
I agree about reading about the community. I am so glad I have not tried this and I will not. I am going to stay away from this game.
What's good about it? It's free and if you got a couple of pals you like to just smash and chat with, totally worth being free. LoL
This review has one error in it. You cannot tab to target anything in the game, which I hope they change. But once you click on something a mob or loot or an NPC for that matter. A middle mouse click will attack, pick up, or talk to the person. Double clicking right on the center is false and makes it sound worse than it really is.
Would I suggest this game for the masses? Not at all. But if you're playing a game that's down a lot or waiting on a MMO (like Age of Conan? HMM?) Got some pals doing the same, give it a go.
Also on World 2 I've ran into some of the community issues, but I have also seen the complete opposite. Like all MMOs, it's filled with kids, ****faces, and inconsiderate fools. It's pretty easy to look over, just go to your local Wal-Mart. Same deal.
Thanks.
I downloaded and tried this game myself. It sucked as bad as all other Asian mmorpg's. I just don't understand what those people are thinking over there... wait... "MUST FARM GOLD".
While I agree, it's crap, even for a F2P ported Asian game, there were two things from the review that I disagreed with.
1) Targeting. I never had any issues with double clicking the mobs. Sometimes, if the mob was moving, I'd just follow it, without attacking, until it stopped moving, but never had to click the exact center of the mob.
2) When I played as a Spear user, I was stuck with a male character, and when I tried a Bow user, I was stuck with a female character. Or at least I believe it was female. Hard to tell sometimes, but it didn't have the spike male hair the Spear and Swords users did.
Also the mobs have no "Con" window as far as I can see - so you don't know if you have selected the correct mob or not.
Also the issue of players crowding the NPCs is something I noticed.
I have tried a few free to play games and I find it amazing the extremes some players go to trick other players out of in-game cash. ...and as its F2P - I assume there isn't too much GM support to stop them.
Lol - I just read that Dreamlords review - I have to agree
I agree with what he said above, Flyff is the only free to play Korean MMO that is actually fun to play and has a community. I'd definitely be insterested in a Flyff review.
At what point did it become the hotness to review the review and it's reviewer? I've been seeing alot of that on this site and almost never on other sites. (Or maybe I just don't look hard enough). Is this a common thing now?
First being the community: worst damn community ever! No one hardly says a word, and when they do, it is usually in another language. Even when it is in English, it is usually just some rude comments akin to all free-to-play MMO's. Also, everyone crowding the NPC's that you need to talk to to do the FEW quests that you do have access to, is VERY annoying! As a matter of fact, as soon as you login, if you logged out in the city areas, you'll have to wait for a bit for the ridiculous amounts of people to load so you can find a small hole to click in to move. Doers anyone actually go out and play the game, or just stand around selling their crap?
The combat is annoying, too. You have to be pretty close to the mob to click on it to initiate the fight. This is, however, a minor quibble, and I can overlook it. As the reviewer said, however, people standing on top of your dropped gems is commonplace, and of the uttermost annoyance! Also, kill-stealing is the name of the game in this one. Good luck with that, though!
Moreover, enjoy the few combat skills you have, because it is going to be a looooooooooooooong grind until you get more skills open to you!
I disagree with her on the music issue, however. While repetitive, I did enjoy the different style of music in the game--it has smooth ambient overtones, akin to ambient techno which I so enjoy listening to.
The graphics are cartoony and anime-esque and get the job done. They are pleasant to look at and pretty good overall--especially if you turn up the contrast. I have no problems with the graphics in this game--so long as you aren't expecting something taxing on your card.
I play this game off and on when I just want a change of pace. Hell, it's free, so why not?! But as for a free Korean MMO that has it all in spades--and even rivals and surpasses many pay-to-play MMOs--look no further than Rappelz.
I have to agree with the reviewer, it is extremely typical of the korean MMO's.
the 2nd time they piled on my loot when something nice dropped I left the game, lol. What nonsense. From now on any click and move will be completely avoided by me.
The game reminds me alot of Last Chaos, except at least Last Chaos has somewhat of a community and has better customer service.
I echo the thought that Garret needs to take a review lesson from you.
Gameloading if you want all those details, why not add them yourself instead of whining about it!
Still, you nail everything else as far as the community is concerned and frankly, that's what makes MMORPG's. Or in this case, breaks them. The game was fun for about 5 hours and then I got rid of it. If you like nothing but grind, get this game. If you actually require a storyline or quests or skills or a community, pass.
But seriously, if you insist, I can write a SoF review. I'm currently working on a review of 9Dragons. If you want, I'll write a SoF review after that.
I have no idea how asian people can play this game longer than 30mins without dying of pure dumbness.
This game is really bad.
Don't play it!
This review tells me what I need to know if I have not played the game. It is pointless to review the reviewer, just read what Adele has to say and take out of it what you can. If you have already played the game this review is meaningless to you, only if you purposely want to pick apart the reviewer.
I see a hidden agenda in play here, why less would someone take their time to post a review of the review.
..Either that, OR it could be that I actually want to give the reviewer advice so she might actually write a more informative review next time. The review might tell you enough of the game, But if I didn't know about this game, I would not be satisfied with this review. It doesn't even touch things like combat, grouping content, questing,Player vs player, or indepth character customization (Because I played the game, I happen to know that you have to pick your skills, you can't select all of them and max them out, something some people might actually find intresting to know). oh wait, she mentioned that there are few quests. we don't know if they are fun or the usual run of the mill quests, we don't know if they are rewarding, but at least we know there are few of them.
Here, I can fix this right here.
"There are not a lot of quests in the game.A good thing is the fact the game will notify you when you have a new quest avaible. The quests that are there are not really original. Most of the quests are "Go kill XX or go find XX" tasks. it is sometimes difficult to complete these quests as there are many players competing for the same monsters. The storyline behind the quests is not very intresting, there is no real reason for you to collect objects or killing enemies other then doing NPC's a favor. quests don't have a lasting effect on the world or enviroment. The rewards are usually not worth it, and give little XP compared to just grinding monsters.
I apologize for the possible spelling and grammar errors.
According to Adele, it is not really important for me to know how the game actually plays, but what I do need to know is that she had a bad experience with the community, something that is next to impossible to judge as everyone's experience with the community is diffrent, since it depends on who you meet, what circumstances you meet people, your own behavior and even which server you play on.
Adele says more about roleplaying, something that isn't there, then she does about combat and grouping.
I mean come on, How am I supposed to get a good view of the game like this?
if you don't have anything constructive to say, then please stay quiet.
Please get some manners before you post again. I'm tired of this 12 year old mentality.
if I was a troll, I would write short posts that insult people for no reason.
Hey look at that, Both of your posts are short and both times you have insulted me, I wonder what that means?
On sidenote, you can stop spamming my blog now, you have shown your maturity level by now.
Now, do you have any other insults to throw at me, or can we get back on topic?
and why do you keep making weird assumptions that I don't have a job and life? I'm satisfied with my life, and I have a job for 38 hours a week. I'm not trying to prove anything, I merely put some time in my posts so that they actually have some content.
If you have no reason to insult me, then stop it.
It's not mentioned, but despite the chibi-ness Yulgang does have some pretty decent armour designs. :o
I'll have to agree with the review on this one.
After playing Wow, Eve and CoH/CoV, I wanted a break till WAR. I thought back to a few other Asain MMOs i'd played, and for F2P, they wern't bad. Scions of Fate though, its bad.
Dont copy this floppy, if you're bored, go try puzzle pirates, or some Free trials.
EDIT - Btw, Great review.
I played it for a couple of days and couldn't stand it.
As long as the review makes everyone stay away from it I couldn't care less. =P
i dont feel like reading all 5 pages so ill just post this thought/question. hopefully its not already be answered.. ill think about reviewing the other pages later.
but is the host company a NA/Euro company? or is it an asian company hosting it for inter/na players?
the reason is, unlike NA/Euro companies Who accually demand their GM staff accually work. asian companys have ZERO staff. they will host 5 servers and only hire 2 gms for 24hrs on all servers. *look at conqueronline... no gms at all*
when it comes to item mall stuff and customization. was there much free contect or was it all locked to the item mall for too costly to be of use prices?
again asian hosting companies milk people on their item mall stuff. they say you can buy 5 items for 1USD but turn around and make it that for 1hr you have to use all 5 items ( look at PKO for fairy food. super cheap but they use up about 50 pots out of 100 per day.or half a day which makes it costly)
i looked at this game for something to try before WaR goes live but now im glad i didnt want to :/ reminds me too much of CO and Rose online :/ rose is a great game just wish they didnt charge such lame prices per month for it...
With so many people surrounding me often it would take me ten minutes or so to find a spot to click so that I could move!
BS. You can easily move out of a crowd by clicking off in the distance.
To attack the mob, I had the option of right clicking on my attack button, or double clicking exactly on the center.
There is a reason you have that bar with numbers on it on your screen. It's called a hotbar, and I'd love to know where you've been hiding all these years if you don't know how to use it. You also have the option of clicking your mouse wheel. There's a phrase that fits rather well here, RTFM.
http://fate.netgame.com/guide/to_pl_ep_10.php
At one point I had 15 players on top of my drop! I asked politely that they move and let them know that it was my drop, but no one responds.
This actually made me laugh. See above, you can loot any item in the area by clicking the mouse wheel, or using the "pick up" action which can be placed on your hotbar.
Oh and by the way there are only a handful of quests.
Unless you mean to redefine the word "handful" that statement is false. There are quests almost every level, and they are very rewarding. It's hard to miss them since the game tells you when you can get a new one.
This is where the company makes it's money, and while people spend money on some pretty strange items, I have a hard time seeing Americans handing over this kind of cash for these items, especially when they can play another mmo for $15.00 a month and get these items for free.
That's because you have no idea what you are talking about. Most people will not buy anything from the shops, but then there are people that will spend several hundred dollars. This system has proven very effective and is the reason the vast majority of games use these shops these days.
There is no role-playing at all that I could find in this game.
I'd like you to "find" roleplaying in any game without a dedicated RP server. You wont, because it's done entirely in private chat. There are plenty of options to RP in this game. You know, if you didn't skip all the quests. Did you even read the background story on the website?
The community is indeed awful, the game doesn't deserve a 1 for that though. Any reviewer that gives a game a 1 in anything should not be reviewing games. I had no problem finding nice people to play with when I played this game. Just because a lot of people don't talk or speak English doesn't mean everyone in the game is horrible.
I'd like to request this review be deleted and redone by somebody competent. Preferably somebody that has played a MMORPG before. The game is far from fantastic, but it is above average for the type of game it is. It doesn't deserve the kind of abuse given to it by somebody who can't even read basic instructions, ones that are easy to find and well written. I'm sorry if this was harsh, but I'm really getting tired of reviews like this.
i agree with Darq on the review, though i personally havent played the game. the review did kind of set me off from playing.
too many mmos today have really bad communities which make games unenjoyable. if i wanted a craptacular community i would download CS:S and play with hackers and automatic snipers...
from my experiance NO game on this planet past or presant should ever get a 0 or a 10. if the ranking is 0-10. there is no such thing as a perfect game nor is there such a thing as a game so bad it shouldnt have been made.
i really dislike MMORPG's reviews most are bia's i think they should stop playing WoW and US made games and accually play MMOs from other countries. maybe then they will beable to give an unbias view of a game instead of rating it like they would if it was 100% yankie
Well, as i was playing this game i noticed something...
about 97.5% of the time your doing quests.
there is absolutely NOTHING else you can do besides quests.
When your done with the quests from a certain area...
you go to another area to do MORE quest.
This part of the game became very boring and since this was
97.5% of the game, it made the entire game boring to play.
When you start to notice this, the only thing your thinking is
"What is the point of this?"
I would recommend this game for softcore mmo gamers.
Everything in that post is false. Ignore it. Just another troll. One of the problems with both of the games mentioned is that they are too crowded. 100-150 people? That's just a flat out lie. You'll see that many people in Ares just in the starter town, on each server. It's a horrible game, but it's free so it's swarming with people just like every other F2P game.
BTW I had had to contact CS twice while playing SoF, I got replies to both in under 24 hours. One was due to a player harassing me and they were promptly banned. This was using the websites 1:1 CS inquiry system, which I believe you are told to use. If you used some sort of in-game support, it's no doubt flooded due to the number of people playing. They probably have to ignore the ones that don't look like real issues. Like people complaining about others standing on their drops so they can't loot them.
Had to laugh at this one comment from Darq: "BS. You can easily move out of a crowd by clicking off in the distance."
Shows me that A. he has never played the game and B. he has no clue what he is talking about.
Logging into any of these games is a huge task to get out of the main area, trying to click on something that can move you is like finding a needle in a haystack.
Um, the distance at which you can select a target location to move to is far greater than the maximum distance the game will even load players onto your screen. You can click outside the city while you are standing in the middle of it and run out there.
Further, people are not so densely packed that you can't easily move around the city using closer clicks. Even in tightly packed areas there is usually a good 3-4 "tiles" between people.
So who doesn't know what they are talking about? Oh, right, you.
As far as I know there is no sub-section for just korean grind fest mmo's. All these games being reviewed are compared and contrasted against today's standard in MMORPG. Taking that into account, this game cannot possibly hold a candle up to your WoW, your LoTR, hell even your Vanguard.
To say that it's a decent game for a korean import, or a f2p, means absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. It's a crappy game with a gimmick that you can play for free. It deserves the score it got because it's a bad game. This becomes more and more clear when people that defend it use sentences like... "Well, it's a free game...".
If it was truely worth playing and truely worth getting a higher score you would be able to find more good points to it.
Like I said Darq, you have not played this game to make a ridiculous statement like that. I found most of your commentary to be rather weak. Next time pick a subject you know something about.
Click and move is about as primitive as the pull down windows menus and just about as annoying. All these korean grind fests employ this method making them jokes as far as gameplay.
That is why they are free, no one in their right mind would pay money to play this kind of garbage.
More and more games switch over to a free to play item shop model. now lets stop and think for a moment. would they really do that if people wouldn't pay for items in the game? Ofcourse not. there are many people paying items.
I also don't see how Point & click is primetive. Apperently, Western Grindfest have the illusion that they are a first person shooter that involves twitch based gameplay, which is obvious not the case. WASD movement just makes things unnecesary complicated.
Point&click movement can never be as precise as WASD movement for the average player. WASD actually makes it less complicated because your character moves exactly where you are telling him to go. Point&Click will get your character to the point you clicked on, but pathing can create difficulties. Pathing problems have been seen in most Point and click games from RTS to MMOs. It is something that I have heard and read complaints about for as long as I have been playing PC games. While WASD movement is actually a newer style of movement.
Also, unless I am mistaken L2 added WASD movement because so many people were asking for it.
Ok, the things is, it's not a "bad" game at all. You just don't like grinding. Many people do like grind fests, this is as much a subjective quality of the game as art style or whether it's heavily PvP or not. To compare a grind MMO to a non-grind MMO and say the grind game is bad because it's not like the other, is completely ludicrous. SF would be a very good game if it was localized and policed better.
Ok, you aren't even making any sort of point. I have the game installed, I logged on this morning and played for an hour. What is it that you think I'm wrong about? What ever it is, I assure you I am correct and you can check for yourself.
Get used to point and click, it's going to be around for a while. If you like destroying your wrists by holding down certain keys all the time and jamming others repeatedly, have fun. Point and click is infinitely easier, and the more preferred control system world-wide. WASD MMOs make up like 2% of the market, and they are almost entirely US/EU based.
You're the one making the distinction between gind MMO and non-grind MMO. I am saying that a review is a review based on the genre MMORPG only. There is no sub section just for korean grind games. You're using it as a cloak to protect SoF from scrutiny.
Is there anything innovative about SoF? Does it do anything different and better than other games?
No and no, right? It's just a game that helps pass the time if you've already played other games. It's not a bad game, but it's not a good game. A 5.1 is right where it should be, average at best. Poor if you put it up against most MMO's.
The reviewer may not have been very familiar with korean type games(most of them you cant pick gender, it picks it for you depending on class). But she does sound like she knows about MMORPG. The things I should know about this game she delivered. I got a good and solid picture of what the game was about.
So you would call EVE, Auto Assault and WoW all the same type of game? Give me a break. The MMORPG genre is even more vast than the normal RPG genre, which FYI is split into many sub-genres. You would not get the same person reviewing Oblivion and Disgaea 2 and making comparisons between them.
And considering Asian grind MMOs are the most popular by far, it could stand the reason they are the norm and everything else is doing things wrong. That doesn't make much sense now does it?
Wrong actually. There's a great PvP RvR element based on light and dark players and classes, including castle sieges. There's a great item enchantment system. The ability for all players to use pets, and mount them. If you compared it directly to say Lineage 2, SF has everything L2 has and more. Oh wait, none of this was in the review was it? That's right, because it was a sucky review.
No she doesn't. She didn't even know how to use the hotbar. And no you didn't get a good picture of the game, you obviously think it's sub-par, where you can easily see the user review score is much higher. There's a good reason for that you know.
Ever wondered why so many people type team blu g rght we ned ur helpwwwwwwwwwwwww in a raid or pvp focused area? there is your answer. it WASD movement
Lineage 2 indeed added WASD movement, But it was released many years after release, so obviously it wasn't that demanded. and the counter arguement to that is the fact that World of Warcraft also added Point & Click movement.
WASD isn't that new anymore, it was used in the first first person shooters. and has been around for years, even in the mmorpg genre.
I can understand the need for WASD in Twitch based gameplay, but many MMO's don't have twitch based gameplay. I don't see the point
Actually, point and click movement has been in WoW since beta. So it wasn't really "added" it was an intended feature right from the start. There's very few games with WASD movement that don't have point and click movement as well. This is because they don't want to alienate so many people. You rarely see many point and click games adding WASD though.
The other problem I have always had with Point and Click is the path that your characters will take isn't always the best possible way to get somewhere. Which leads you to need to make many clicks for small distances at a time. While I can precisely move my character using WASD movement exactly where I want to go.
A Good example of this is the Game Asheron's Call. In that game Point and click movement would of been impossible. Trying to do the fire dungeon where you had to jump from platforms to platform and walk along small beams that you could fall off of and fall down to your death. I enjoy things like this added into my games and you just can't do it with Point and Click.
IMO Point and Click is good for RTS games. Where I want to look down on my troops from a 3rd person "general" perspective. MMO games should be played in FPS perspective or close to it like over the shoulder. And in these views in my opinion point and click just doesn't work well.