Distribution:Download | Retail Price:Free | Pay Type:Free | Monthly Fee:$04.99
Browser Game| ESRB:E10+
Free Realms Review: Free Realms Review - Edit
8.3
Great
| Pros |
    
|
 Good for casual players Great looking game |
| Cons |
|
 Repetitive |
Writing the first impressions article was easy. Writing this review was hard.
For one thing, I'm really not sure how I feel about the game. It's an MMO in which I have not spoken with a single human being in the month I've been playing. It's a virtual world where there is absolutely no danger, either from monsters, other people, or even falling damage. It is a pool with no depth that I keep getting sucked into. It's done in a cartoony style (not something I've ever enjoyed) done so beautifully that it ends up looking more real than real life in an inexplicable way.
So let's try a scientific approach, and judge the whole by the sum of its parts:
THE LOOK
Cartoony, bright, and cheerful. Even the dark and spooky zones are fun. The skulls are the sweetest skulls you ever saw, and the angry goth girls are too cute for words.
;)
The art was so clean, in fact, that I missed the most impressive thing about it until relatively late: It was designed so consistently that it looks as though it were executed by a single person. The entire world fits together. The surfer dudes at the sunny beach (which, by the way, has a fun filled boardwalk on the north side and quiet beach homes on the south side, just like a real beach) have clearly sprung from the same design as the denizens of the dark and damp jungles. This happens without any sense of repetition, too. Each zone is wonderfully unique, and all of them work in harmony to create a seamless world.
No detail was too small, either. Winking eyes blink from tree hollows. The vines around the "you win" messaging grow organically. When you try on new shoes as a pixie, your feet wiggle. It's this little stuff that makes a game worthwhile, I swear. You can rationalize big stuff all day, but without the little details, you know the dev team didn't really... care.
Short version: Graphics are so well done that even people who hate the style recognize the quality.
THE SOUND
The "theme song" is only heard at the stage in a zone called Snowhill. Recorded by a group called The Dares, it's a poppy, happy thing about how it's your world and you can do whatever you want.
Remember Jimmy Eat World and that one song of theirs that was inescapable? I wish Sony had gotten that band instead. But I digress.
The actual music you hear most often is the instrumental theme. It's a vaguely pleasant, aurally null little tune that doesn't intrude. It was rerecorded in different keys depending on the zone. If you're in the swampy zone with sinking graveyards and criminally minded residents, it's a spooky delight in a minor key.
There's a different set of musical themes for the mini games, with a lot more urgency and rhythm to them. It gives a sense of energy and excitement to what is basically a matching game originally intended to amuse simple-minded shut-ins. This particular simple minded shut in has played a lot of them, lately, because I'm not just matching tiles, I'm *leveling up my mining.*
If there is music in the combat instances or the tower defense games, I don't remember hearing it, and I refuse to log back in and find out, because frankly, "I need to do more research" has sucked up ungodly numbers of hours in the last month and I need to stop using that as an excuse to avoid writing this review.
Short version: The sound varies from "not intrusive" to "enhances the game."
THE CAREERS
For everyone: Chef, Kart Driver, Demolition Derby Driver, Brawler, Miner, Pet Trainer, Card Duelist, Postman, and... and...
;)
Oh, yes. You'll need to become a ninja.
Members (people who pay five bucks a month) get access to Archer, Wizard, Medic, Warrior, and Blacksmith.
I suck really, really bad at driving games (I'm the Super Mario Kart player who lifts the controller really high in the air and then lurches from side to side as if that would help), so all I did with Kart and Derby careers was unlock them. After a two year interlude where I played Magic: The Gathering every single night, I refuse to touch card games of any kind. Playing CCGs... it's like heroin, man. For some reason I never found the Archer, but I wasn't really looking, either. All the rest, I gave the ol' college try.
The medic and the combat classes level up by going into instances and killing stuff. If you grab the quests associated with the various instances before going in, you level up faster. But you only fill the star bubble by killing stuff, and you use the stars in the bubble to boost individual skills. Equipment for these classes is like the equipment in every RPG ever made - it improves your armor class, and adds bonuses to your attack strength.
The driving classes level up by going into driving instances.
The non-combat, non-wheeled classes level up by playing minigames. Your equipment here gives you bonuses to speed, and increases the odds of your tile chains being really long.
;)
So, how do they play?
Because there is no PVP outside of one on one duels, there is no real need for the classes to be balanced, and they... aren't. The Ninja at level two is considerably stronger than the Brawler was until around level five. The member-only Warrior owns them both from the first swing of an axe. They all have unique special abilities with cool animations, so much so that it's worth trying them all. And since there's no game reason to choose one over the other, unless you count the leaderboards - a warrior can clean out an instance faster than a same-level Brawler - you might as well go with the class that amuses you the most. I found the Brawler's costume choices to be the most fun, with little skulls and goggles.
The Wizard plays pretty much like the Brawler with different graphics, in my opinion. You just stand further back.
All weapons, even low level ones, sparkle and shine and look impressive.
The Medic is interesting and as well executed as the rest (your damage as a Medic isn't that great, but heals are instant and you can cast a ton of them), but I can't see why you'd bother unless you were grouping a lot, and I can't see why you'd bother grouping at all.
Non-combat careers are disgustingly addictive, but they aren't balanced to be equally easy to advance.
Cooking involves playing the matching game at different farms around the world to gather ingredients, and then playing minigames that chop, stir, flip, smash, and add. Since both activities level up the Chef, you wind up at level 20 without noticing that you did anything that hard.
Mining could level up as quickly as the Chef, since this career involves playing the matching game to harvest ore (there are mines with persistent ore nodes, and there are one-use-only nodes scattered throughout the world) and then a smelting game to refine the ore into metal bars. The smelting minigame is horrific. After four rounds of it, I was reminded of crafting metal bits in EverQuest circa 1999. It requires a level of exactitude missing from the rest of Free Realms, which is incredibly jarring given how tuned the rest of the game is.
However, I tolerated it in order to advance my Blacksmith, because the smelted ore is necessary to make weapons. Making weapons involves buying weapon parts, and acquiring ore from either your own Miner or someone else. (If there is anything like an Auction House in Free Realms, I didn't see it, so doing my own mining seemed like my only choice.) Once you've got all the parts, making weapons involves... a matching game! Smithing should level up much slower than the others, given that there's only the matching game. The designers have compensated, somewhat crudely, by giving you insane amounts of experience for the crafting quests. Seriously, it's one quest, one level.
The Postman struck me as tedious, involving either the same matching tile game as everything else, or dreadful timed games where you have X seconds to deliver Y items. It's idiot proof, with little arrows telling you where to go for your next delivery, but that doesn't make it any more fun. I don't know why it's not fun, considering the design sounds really neat when I lay it out on paper - you have dog bones you can throw down to ward off stray animals, you can throw the mail from a distance with a satisfying THWACK, and the costumes are hilarious, with shorts and knee high socks.
I didn't get far with the Pet Trainer, given that the minigame was "trace this pattern with the mouse over and over." But the people in the world who have stuck it out add a lot of fun to the environment, with their pets expressing quite a lot in thought balloons.
Short version: There is a lot to do, if what you like doing is leveling up something, ANYTHING. Whatever it is, it can all be done in chunks of time ranging from ten minutes to four hours. None of it is balanced to be exactly equal to other similar things, but then, it doesn't need to be.
I liked Free Realms but I could not tolerate the constant downloads, if you are on anything less than a very fast DSL/Cable connection be ready to stare at the message "Downloading 1mb of 10.5mb" every time you get to a new area or a portion of the map you have yet to approach, you freeze in place usually until enough data is buffered. I began to dread runing anywhere near the black chunks of my map. If they had an actual client I could download instead of the streaming system I would still be playing the game. I searched all over the options and settings for an option to download the files continously instead of on demand but I gave up. I liked the game but the streaming data system drove me and my DSL connection back to games that have a downloadable client.
Oof. I guess I should have mentioned I game off a Fios connection, and so I never noticed any problems.
Though I did play at two different airports without pain - maybe because I tended to play minigames? I did quest, but mostly in one area.
Awesome review Sanya...this game is my daughters (who is Eight) and my game dujour..I missed a Ulduar raid last night because we were working on our Ninja Careers...My EQ 2 guild is pretty much decimated ..everyone went to FreeRealms, honestly if the rumors are true and SOE is building EQ3 on the FR model....then Blizzard has a lot to be concerned over....heck I think Blizzard has a lot to be concerned over FreeRealms itself.
I'd love to stay and talk further but I just found the Medic trainer.
Thanks for the wonderful review Sanya! It really brings the game to life and makes me want to give it an immediate try.
I've really missed the way your wonderful flair for writing livened up the Herald, so it's been a real treat to read you columns, and this review, here at mmorpg.com.
Thanks again - I'm off to give Free Realms a go and I'll be anxious to compare notes.
Sanya Weathers you write well. Thats a first here on www.mmorpg.com. Most often the writing here is sub-par and very often hands down misinformed. You do what you do well. Keep it up and hopefully someday you can replace certain other writers.
Tried it out just for the racing aspects. The game has a nice flow to it, and has fun career paths, but I found it hard to compete against actual people. A lot of the racing events you are just playing against npc's, as it is quite empty. And if your any good, you should win every time. Also, though I haven't played for a week, I noticed you couldn't level up racing career paths which was dissappointing.
Anyways, a younger age group shouldn't notice the above and will probably enjoy it. I would love to hop on and play once in a while if they gave me more of a reason to. Hopefully they release more content in patches.
Wonderful review, regardless of what one may think of the game it was well written and very enjoyable, thank you.
I am actually a subscriber, 5 dollars a month is well worth it even if you, like me, spend only an hour a week in the game.
Still play my other MMO's though, and pretty hardcore at that, but as said, this is not an MMO in that sense.
Its more like an hour of "me time" now and again, in a beatiful and fun world.
Never grouped, ( well once when I was checking if there was a "inspect" function and accidentally invited someone ), barely talked to anyone, because honestly at 34 I could probably be the father of most of the players, not much in common so to speak.
Like an hour of therapy each week, for a measly 1.20, ( divided ), one could do far worse.
Loved the "short version"'s - I'll definitely give it a try when I have a break between a hardcore MMOG and the next. Cheers!
At the risk of being redundant, I too would like to thank you for the review. Very nice!
Am I alone at being a bit put off by the fact that you can max out on levels in a matter of a few days?
On a positive note, my 9 year old daughter absolutely adores this game.
So there you have it. Daughter 1.....Dad 0.
*peeks over his shoulder as little hands reach into his wallet for the credit card*
Is this some kind of a joke? The "reviewer" (and I use that therm loosely) admits that he/she hasn't spoken to anyone in a month and that it is not an MMO yet it gets this high score for something that is obviously a childs game and not even an MMO on a site called MMORPG.COM?
MMORPG.COM really needs to get some professional reviewers that got the guts to slash games like this and Darkfall that are crappy MMOS (or not MMOS at all) instead of worrying about giving bad grades and lose some ad income. Otherwise it will never be taken seriously as a review site.
Excellent review, Sanya.
The only thing I'd quibble with, and it applies to all the reviews I've seen, not just this one, is that no-one seems to be looking ahead much. Free Realms has only been out for, what, a couple of months. It has, by all accounts, a massive development team and SoE seem to be betting the farm on it.
What's most interesting to me is not what Free Realms is today, but what it could be in a year. They've announced housing for the Fall and the introduction of the Soccer job, but other than that there seems to be very little leaking out on where this title is headed. It's certainly not an MMORPG now (although it certainly is an MMOG), but there's no reason it couldn't, in time, incorporate a whole slew of gamestyles. As you say, it doesn't need to be balanced, so they can pretty much add anything.
I've not logged in for a while but reading this just decided how I'm going to spend some of my free Friday. I just need to avoid the Checkers tables (you didn't even mention those!) or I'll never get anything else done.
This game is not a MMO, it's even featured at miniclip.com.
Is it not a Massively Multiplayer Online game?
In what sense did the reviewer use that part with saying it's not a MMO?
Are your trying to say that if a reviewer don't slah games that you find bad then they are not professional. I mean I like this and that game and some have had bad reviews and some games that I don't lika have had god reviews.
To make a review bad (or good) for the sake of it, makes it to look pretty unserious.
This game is not an MMO in the traditional sense of the word. If I had been grading it as one, I'd have given it a lousy score for having no discernable community building, no sense of persistence, and no balance... all things I mentioned in the review.
But the game isn't trying to be a traditional MMO. It's trying to be its own unholy mixture of an MMO, Club Penguin, MSN Game Zone, Pogo, and more. And it succeeds very well at those things.
Saying it fails at being WOW or EVE is like looking at a beagle and saying, "You don't purr, you don't climb trees, and you are totally unaffected by catnip! You are a failure at being a cat!"
I wanted to make the review a full look at the game, so anyone booting it up would know exactly what they were getting into.
Thanks for all the pretty words, guys :)
I thought the review was spot on. She's right, it's not really an MMO in the traditional sense and one has to wonder if you can properly rate this game (especially on this site) since it doesn't really have the criteria for an MMO, other than there are other people in the world (which to be honest, could just as well not be there since you hardly ever talk to anyone). If you judge it for what it is, basically a collection of mini games set in a virtual world, then it does that very well. I think the fact there is no client appeals directly to those that would be into this type of game (the Pogo crowd).
There's many ways to improve it but I don't think they should change it to appeal to the MMO crowd (if that makes sense) since that's not really the point of Free Realms. They could take the card game a step further and incorporate things like tournaments, make it more competitive like 'Magic' but they may not be wanting to attract that kind of player. The game is obviously aimed at younger people and I think it's a great way for parents to play with their kids.
One thing that isn't mentioned in the review is how Sony continues to dangle the carrot in front of you to subscribe while your ingame. Anywhere you go you constantly see these quests that have a symbol around them which means they are for subscribers only. They intermingle these npc's with the free ones. This is marketing genius, since the average 10-14 year old sees this, wonders why he/she can't take the quest, notices the nice bright 'upgrade' icon in the bottom right, and goes to mom/dad to unlock with $5.
Free realms is okay, I found even a couple of hours a week I got bored real quick.
Is it a MMORPG? Yes but only just, it could easily not be.
Is it fun? For me initially yes, got old very quick.
I don't play it anymore but I am sure it will appeal to the mass market.
It boggles the mind that people think that this is not an MMO... Traditional? no but MMO none the less.
Massively Multiplayer Online is exactly what it is.
Able to support a large number of players on each server? Yes - also, players are not locked into a set server.
Players able interact with each other and form groups? Yes - Forced grouping however is not a MMO requirement.
Must be online to play? Yes
Character development? Yes
Great review. I haven't subscribed as a full member to this game (YET!) but I like playing it just for the little mini-games. There's just disgustingly addictive!
I had a chance to experience their chat once and found it to be a tad annoying so I ignore it now. If I want 5 year old barrens chat with a filter I'll go back to WoW or AoC!
An excellent review of Free Realms.
My 7yr old daughter and her friends are enjoying the game immensly, and I've had a go once or twice but still prefer my quota of grown up MMO's.
If SoE has any sense they should definately expand on Free Realms and try to capture a more mature audience with a new MMO, would be a shock to most if the 3 million subs for Free Realms could be transposed onto a Adult SoE MMO in the future.
It's a nice review, and mostly mirrors my experience with FR.
I will say that there's one impression of Free Realms that I've had that you didn't mention - that the game is a game-sized testbed. Sometimes I just get the vibe that this is Sony's trial run of their planned RMT games as much as an effort at a self-contained game. It feels somewhat like a Beta, not of content, but mechanics and "style" for future games.
Edited for grade-school typos - bleh
God this is sig worthy!
Thank you for the review. I agree with all of it to. I went in to this expecting some type of cheap clone, but was actually really suprised at how "fun" the game is. It will not appease hard-core gamers but if you are looking for something diffrent and stress free then it does it's job very well.
Not trying to argue with you, but why would anyone that does not have a fast internet connection even bother to play online games?
Anyway nice review, I did enjoy the game a little, but overall I personaly felt it might atract their target audience more then it atracts me. Overall it's a fun type of game.
Some of us from another game are playing and enjoying Free Realms. We want a place to socialize and have fun, and yes, we are all adults. We are looking forward to the Guilds - we want a separate chat channel and, ideally, a guild hall.
That's what we are waiting for - that and the ability to add a friend to your friend list if the friend is not in game - not sure if that's fixed yet. We like Free Realms for what it is, and think it will work very well for us.
While the review was fairly accurate and well done, there is one comment that is completely incorrect and probably deserves a correction or retractment.
"which is ironic given that accessing the microtransaction stuff requires a membership"
Sorry, but no. The Marketplace does NOT require you to be a member to partake in it. The TAB you were on, which is the first tab the Marketplace open up to, does indeed require membership, but only those items listed in that tab.
If you look at the bottom of the Marketplace window (and it's shown in the full screenshot) there are 8 buttons (tabs) of catagories you can choose from that most of the items in them are membership free. Again, the only items that are member only are the ones listed in that first catagory. When looking at other catagories, those member only items get shuffled into them as well but everything else in the 7 other catagories, are for everyone.
DOH.
Thanks... /blush.
hehe NP. Just didn't want any misconceptions going around about that is all.
As I said though, the rest was pretty spot on and a good write up. ;)
Well you said it yourself. No discernable community building, no sense of persistence.. Those are cornerstones for MMORPGs and this game may very well be a good GAME but it is not a good MMORPG, since it is not even an MMORPG. And that is the name of the site, is it not?
Maybe it would be more suitable to not review the game at all instead of giving it a bad score. But I do come to this site to learn about new MMORPGs, not some weird hybrid mix for 8 year olds. And this is just one example of poor reviews this site has done. Many times in many reviews, or first peaks, they fail to mention anything about PvP and such so my reaction is not targetted just towards this review but reviews on MMORPG.COM that I don't feel give a good view for standard MMORPG players.
As for your beagle example. If I go to a site which is about cats and then I see reviews about dogs then that would be quite weird would it not?
Well you said it yourself. No discernable community building, no sense of persistence.. Those are cornerstones for MMORPGs and this game may very well be a good GAME but it is not a good MMORPG, since it is not even an MMORPG. And that is the name of the site, is it not?
Maybe it would be more suitable to not review the game at all instead of giving it a bad score. But I do come to this site to learn about new MMORPGs, not some weird hybrid mix for 8 year olds. And this is just one example of poor reviews this site has done. Many times in many reviews, or first peaks, they fail to mention anything about PvP and such so my reaction is not targetted just towards this review but reviews on MMORPG.COM that I don't feel give a good view for standard MMORPG players.
As for your beagle example. If I go to a site which is about cats and then I see reviews about dogs then that would be quite weird would it not?
Funny that in fact the game offers more MMO playstyles then current crop of limited MMO are delivering.
Anyway this game does fit this website perfectly, else we could scrap about 40% of games that call themselfs MMORPG but also are not really MMORPG in the way I see it, but hey I just know that not every game might be THAT game for me, doesn´t mean others might not be intrested in it.
Housepets. Cats being further down in the semantics.
If you get bored with this game than it is truly a mmorpg..It follows with the 100s of mmorpg bored games allready..Buy if the youngs kids love it..Why should the mid teens/adults really care?
ill guess the mmo content will come later.
maybe it will be neccesary to group to achive something higher?
As it already been said, this game has an amazing flow... the art style makes it feel real,but its obviesly not.
i can play the minigames for days and not get tierd! the jobs are amusing, and for overall i really have alot of fun in this game >3
I played Freerealms in Beta and it still has major bugs. Everytime I take a new toon out of the tutorial and into the accual game world I crash within seconds. Sony Online is the worst game makers and has the worst and laziest Devs in the business. SOE ruins every game they touch. Thats why a simple shallow game like WoW can beat the pants off of a game like EQ1 that has soo much more content then any other game on the market but because SOE is in control the only reason to play EQ1 is if you allready have a max lvl toon. Any way just like all the other SOE games this one is a big bomb and deserves to be forgotton like so many other SOE games like EQ1, the matrix online, Vanguard just to name a few. And with SOE's track record of producing buggy suck fest of games we are garanteed DC univers online will be a piece of junk. Anyway the only thing good about Free Realms is the fact that it is free to play.
Great review.
I will say that it depresses me a little bit that this game is successful. Sony's had a hard-on for RMT for awhile now, and if this catches on, it won't be long before the rest of the market follows.
Ah well. Guess there's older games for those of us feeling left in the dust of progress.
There is a standardized set of criteria that a game must meet to qualify as an MMO. An MMO is simply defined as a game in which many players can simultaneously interact in a persistant world. Like it or not, Free Realms is an MMO.
The game might not have any discernable community building but the game DOES allow for it. This could be a side-effect of the "for kids" aspect of FR - I know many parents who don't allow their young children to talk to strangers online. And while it doesn't give the feeling of a persistant world, it IS a persistant world.
I've only played the game here and there over the last few weeks.. I decided to scale back my playing after my first "What do you mean it's 3am?!?" moment. Personally I felt the review was dead-on, though I can't comment on the Member Only content since I haven't subscribed yet. I found it to be a fun little time-filler. Especially great when I'm trying to wind-down for the night. It doesn't hurt that I'm a sucker for collections....
I found that this is a great way to start young children out on the MMORPG front without much risk to the child of being confronted by unfriendlies. It also provides in game parental controls with is another feature i like as a parent. I've played it myself so i know what to expect when my daughter is playing, and though it is repeatitive, it's rather addicting. There is plenty of missions and games to play for those who choose not to pay which is another wonderful feature.
I played FreeRealms and I think that the review is spot on - for the audience the game was intended for, children and their parents.
I know, I know, many adults enjoy the mini-games, and hey, I like them too. My point is aimed at all those self-proclaimed "hardcore gamerz" who just don't get it.
Not all games NEED, or should, appeal to all audiences.
I liked the beagle analogy, fairly apt. These guys that put down games outside of their favorite genre are the same ones who hate "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" because there was "no gunfire, car chases or bare boobs!"
They just don't get it.
Same folks that don't get that high school matters for piss once you're done with it - same with rankings in MMORPGs.
I don't bother to think about the idiots in high school and I never bother checking ladders or leaderboards. Why? Next month I could care less.
This game, FreeRealms, is NOT trying to be the netboiz next big thing. They are not trying to be a clone of WoW or GW, or any of the so-called "popular" games. I'm glad they're not.
Keep up the conversation about the future though, because I think, and hope, that this is where they're all going.
Nice to get the kiddos their level of game to learn in so they demand different as they grow up, and quite possibly, will develop different, and highly engaging as a career choice.
Now then, if they would only fix that unfortunate Delete button on the Profile. ;-)
Great game with a great review.
My 6 yr old Daughter Loves this game.