So to begin my post, I'd like to briefly introduce my gaming experiences, from history, to what I like/dislike in games.  I've played every major MMO title out there, it would take me too long to type it all out.  Not to mention I've played a ton - of F2P games (Silkroad, 9Dragons, Flyff, KnightOnline, etc.). 

I came across this game the other day surfing this website's list of games.  The first things that lured me in was the graphics.  They look great.  I mean, if you're into cartoon-esk graphics, this game will definitely not for you.  But if you don't mind, you should find the graphical portion of this game to be quite pleasing.  Anyways, on with the other stuff..

So I went to the website, signed up for an account and downloaded the game.  I was pleased it took only an hour and thirty minutes for the download with a quick update once it was installed - I was able to get my game on real quick.

So for a F2P, you can expect minimal character detail creation and a small choice of classes - well Fiesta follows this trend.  There's about 5 faces for the male and female, and 4 classes.  Fighter, Archer, Cleric, and Sorcerer.  Personally, I like games that have a huge variety of classes (EQ2/VG), but I was fine with the choices Fiesta gives, since it IS F2P - I was concentrated more on the content/lag/language. 

I logged in and was...surprised.  The interface was good looking, the buttons are clear, with descriptions - and a bonus - there's a "Help" button with very clear instructions on basic gameplay and features of Fiesta. 

Now I know I have a decent computer (Core2Duo E6300, 2G Ram, Radeon X1600), so I wasn't surprised I didn't get any lag, even with the MASS amount of people in town (I'd say there was a thousand people in town, either running around or that have set up shops).  I ran around with the familiar controls (WASD or Click-To-Move) with no choppyness and actually smooth movement. 

So far I'm impressed.  The game looks nice and has a good feel to it.  Now I'm going to touch on something that bothers me with most F2P asian games.  The horrible Chinese -> English translations.  Games like Knight-Online came into the English market with HORRIBLE, and I mean like...the worst English you have ever seen in game.  But Fiesta - is a totally different story.  The English in that game is perfect, and even has a fun factor in it.  You actually feel like you're playing a English game, instead of some copy-paste Asian MMO that just tries to suck all your money.

Anyways, so I run out of the town with a small smile on my face with high hopes, and ofcourse, the out-of-town popular was just a dense as the in-town population.  I killed a few things with my Sorcerer and found it pretty fun, the animation looks good, and has a nice effect to it.  You have these things called HP and SP stones, and act has potions - but they're really cheap and are an effective way to stay alive.

After I leveled - I decided to go back to town since on the top-right corner of my screen it told me that some NPCs were looking for me in town - I imagined they had some business with me.  I opened up my map using "m" and to my advantage, the map clearly showed me which NPCs were where and if they had quests for me.  This made the game very accessible and fast-paced.  You didn't have to "look" for anything, even in the Quest Descriptions, they literally told you where the mobs are.

It seems like I've only been talking about the positives for this game so I will touch on some things I didn't enjoy.  First of all, the gold advertisements were annoying in town...constant spamming of "Cheap Gold @ www.goldforyou.com".  And I found the server to be overly populated, but what do you expect.  It seems to get better the more you level up, since the mass number of people are in the starting area.  Another thing is the botters, sometimes you don't even know if someone is just trying to KS you, or they're botting.

For some final thoughts - if you are like me, an aged gamer waiting for AoC/War and want some instant addiction/eye candy, play this game.  I can bet money you'll be more than pleased with this game than any other F2P Asian MMO.  This game won't be for everyone, because it has some grinding - but which game doesn't?  I actually find grinding to be fun, since it's fast paced and offers good rewards.

Oh ya, woo for first post

-Vin

Cool, thanks for the review. :D I just found out about this myself and I am downloading it now. It looks decent, and I could tell from the website that they actually give a crap about the translations, because it really does feel like someone who actually knows English did it. Glad to hear the game is the same way, it's one of the major turn offs of these games.

I am hope when I play that it'll finally be an F2P that makes me rethink F2P games as being cheap piece of crap side attractions to the real games (P2P), that are nothing but grinds with so little content and effort put into it that they don't even deserve the money they do end up making.

I am instantly attracted to this game for the graphics, and while I am always disappointed with F2P character customization, it's better than nothing, and I can only hope the gameplay itself is good enough to make up for it.

Originally posted by Gajari

Cool, thanks for the review. :D I just found out about this myself and I am downloading it now. It looks decent, and I could tell from the website that they actually give a crap about the translations, because it really does feel like someone who actually knows English did it. Glad to hear the game is the same way, it's one of the major turn offs of these games.

I am hope when I play that it'll finally be an F2P that makes me rethink F2P games as being cheap piece of crap side attractions to the real games (P2P), that are nothing but grinds with so little content and effort put into it that they don't even deserve the money they do end up making.

I am instantly attracted to this game for the graphics, and while I am always disappointed with F2P character customization, it's better than nothing, and I can only hope the gameplay itself is good enough to make up for it.

Glad to hear.  I feel the same way, since F2P games have smaller budgets than the big title MMOs, they are limited to what they can create, but at least Fiesta brings it to the audience in a pleasant and polished way.

My Mage is level 15, and I'm still having fun.  The grind can sometimes be redundant, but like I said before, it's very fast paced and rewarding in terms of items, I'm going back to town each time and making more and more money.  Let's see where this game can take me in about 2 weeks.

-Vin

Originally posted by vinceh

 

Originally posted by Gajari

Cool, thanks for the review. :D I just found out about this myself and I am downloading it now. It looks decent, and I could tell from the website that they actually give a crap about the translations, because it really does feel like someone who actually knows English did it. Glad to hear the game is the same way, it's one of the major turn offs of these games.

I am hope when I play that it'll finally be an F2P that makes me rethink F2P games as being cheap piece of crap side attractions to the real games (P2P), that are nothing but grinds with so little content and effort put into it that they don't even deserve the money they do end up making.

I am instantly attracted to this game for the graphics, and while I am always disappointed with F2P character customization, it's better than nothing, and I can only hope the gameplay itself is good enough to make up for it.

 

Glad to hear.  I feel the same way, since F2P games have smaller budgets than the big title MMOs, they are limited to what they can create, but at least Fiesta brings it to the audience in a pleasant and polished way.

 

My Mage is level 15, and I'm still having fun.  The grind can sometimes be redundant, but like I said before, it's very fast paced and rewarding in terms of items, I'm going back to town each time and making more and more money.  Let's see where this game can take me in about 2 weeks.

 

-Vin

I also wish they would have (could have?) done the WASD controls a bit better. I find in these increasingly progressive asian games, they'll add it in, but it's never done very well, so I just use the point-and-click way instead. :(

Is it in OB? or ?

I have to agree this game can be addictive early on. Only thing that makes me not want to play is the amount of people. Your right in that there are TONS of people in the starting area... which made my first quest of killing things a little hard. Id get to a mob and suddenly some one else is attacking it after me. Id give up and move on. After about 2 hours i was able to get my first quest done and decided to be "mean" by kill stealing or KS.  After that I didn't want to go into the town due to the sher number of shops that go from the log in point after character creation until you leave the area to go to a higher level area. Once into a higher level area the game was still just the same a grind session. I love my quests personally and story line.  I know other people like their grinding session. Now the chinese to english i can agree was done very good. Another thing i noticed was that the map or some areas were windy maybe to compensate for the size of the map? Which was very small. Great for making sure your computer doesnt really lag out even with huge numbers of people. Now I did lag even with a 2.5 64bit cpu, 2 gigs of ram, and 512 vid card. When i came across the shops... about 50 in one small area... Other than that. Can be a very addictive game from the start. But id have to say youd love it or not. Not much character creation and not many classes to choose from. But then that can make a game good.

Great review and thanks for telling everyone about it in DETAIL!

Ive been playing for about a week now, when my schedule permits and ive enjoyed every minute of it.

The game isnt nearly as high stress as other mainstream mmo's like WoW(of which i was a long time, hardcore 70+hour a week player).

What server do yall play on though?

P.S- If you wanna kill lag in towns press Shift+z, it makes everyone in the game other than yourself and the npc disappear so that you can run through towns with no hassle. to turn it off simply press Shift+z again or it will auto-disable if you warp to another area. BE WARNED, monsters WILL NOT appear if you have this option turned on.

Hi!!  Does any1 know any games identical to fiesta?  Cos mine doesnt work anymore.  Im trying to fix it but it still cant work, so im trying to find another game that is as fun to play and has good graphics.

Any1 who knows please tell me, k?

Thx

This game is fun, yes, but it sometimes gets annoying  grinding too much and the goldsellers advertising (too bad there is no option to ignore people, or is there?). Killing the same monsters with same spells. But other than that, it's enjoyable.However, I don't recommend playing it for countless hours a day. Perhaps a few 2 hours a day if you have time.

Originally posted by zeta4100

This game is fun, yes, but it sometimes gets annoying  grinding too much and the goldsellers advertising (too bad there is no option to ignore people, or is there?). Killing the same monsters with same spells. But other than that, it's enjoyable.However, I don't recommend playing it for countless hours a day. Perhaps a few 2 hours a day if you have time.

The game is not ment to be ONLY for grinding.. Quests and Alchemy is fun as well.. A goal you can look forward to is KQ.. yes it gets boring after a while.. but you get good rewards and exp.. at lvl 14.. You may explore a little more and at lvl 12 it started to hav more variety of monsters to kill.. I'm lvl 6x+ and there are over 50 monsters i can grind on to lvl. I hope you make it there ^^..

If you need help.. i put a new topic for that.. i will help you.

Originally posted by vinceh

 So far I'm impressed.  The game looks nice and has a good feel to it.  Now I'm going to touch on something that bothers me with most F2P asian games.  The horrible Chinese -> English translations.  Games like Knight-Online came into the English market with HORRIBLE, and I mean like...the worst English you have ever seen in game.  But Fiesta - is a totally different story.  The English in that game is perfect, and even has a fun factor in it.  You actually feel like you're playing a English game, instead of some copy-paste Asian MMO that just tries to suck all your money.

Dude...its not an Asian MMO...its a US based company lol.

taken from the outspark site:

"Located in the SOMA district of San Francisco, Outspark is positioned to become a leader in the rapidly evolving U.S. casual gaming market."

English game=good English translation...cause there is no translation part *chuckles*

remember always to check before you assume, just because its cartoony doesn't make it asian.

Nice review otherwise though, Fiesta is an amazing game :D

oh and i just wanted to add one thing which makes the game fun...

-the monsters yell at you as you are trying to kill them...always cracks me up.

No, it is asian based. It just has a different name than it's overseas counterpart.

See Shine Online for further proof

Also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiesta_Online

...it's still run by an english company...hence the good english lol