Forsaken World is a game from Perfect World Entertainment with a fantasy world theme to it, which makes it different from many of their other games. It might seem like a rather typical title at first: it has Humans, Dwarfs and Elves as races to chose from, but what makes it a bit unique is that it also includes races called the Kindred, and Stonemen.
Choosing a race is somewhat important depending on the class that you want to play. Humans can play warriors, assassins, mages or priests. Elves can play warriors, priests, or bards. Kindred can play assassin, mage, or vampire. The biggest restrictions are with Dwarves who can only play marksmen and Stonemen who are stuck as protectors. Each class also will show some stars near it to show the level of difficulty expected to play, which could be a nice hint for beginners.
Aesthetics 9/10
The graphics in the game are really quite amazing. While I usually play on my desktop, surprisingly, what I really appreciate about all the PWE games so far is that I can still play this game on my seven-year-old laptop. The lag is very minimal since there’s a handy option on the screen to cut down on the graphics when in a busy main town like Freedom Harbor, or in an instance. A quick drop down menu and I can choose to hide all other players, pets and monsters. Another quick pull down off the same button and you can restore everything to high graphics.
I wasn’t very impressed by the music, it can sound quite dramatic at first, but after it loops a few times the repetition can become boring. The sound effects during combat are rather acceptable however.
Gameplay 6/10
Combat in this game is pretty typical, melee is melee, ranged is ranged and the classes don’t tend to sway to far from what they are designed to do, and what most players will expect if they’ve played an MMO before. In my opinion whatever class you pick, killing mobs can be a little on the slow side. Even something 10 levels below you still might take three or more shots to kill unless you happen to critically strike which is something that rarely can be predicted.
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Crafting and Jobs are pretty synonymous terms used in the game to mean pretty much the same thing. When you’ve reached level 10 doing the quests from your home race area, you’ll be able to move on to the city of Freedom Harbor. After talking to a few people you’ll get 3 Job points, which you can apply to learning the Jobs of Botanist, Alchemist, and Chef. Botanist is one of the first and foremost things to get so that you’re able to do the other two jobs – since Botanist allows you to harvest plants, and you’ll need to be able to do that in order to complete the quests from the Alchemist Tutor and the Chef Tutor. As you learn these, you can then make the potions and foods you’ll need for replenishing your HP and MP, because one very different thing about this game is that there is no sitting or resting in this game. All replenishing is done through eating and drinking or potions. Later on as you acquire more job points, you can learn other jobs such as fishing and weapon and armor crafting.
Forsaken World does not have a lot in the way of tutorials: most things the player learns in the game are learned through doing quests. There are quests that are called tutorials at the chef and the alchemist, but they really don’t teach you crafting. In order to craft you will need to either get recipes from quests, or buy them.
Another thing you will get when you reach level 10 and move on to Freedom Harbor is your first pet. You can choose between a Sheep, a Turtle, or a Wolf. The longer they ‘incubate’ the better your pet will be. They will help you fight, or you can put them into a defend mode and there’s various ways to make the pet more advantageous to your character. Each day you can pick up more free pets from a short quest, and try to get a better one of those basic three. After hitting level 30 you can start learning how to tame new creatures as a pet. Players will also get a free mount at level 20, but it only lasts for five days, although others can be purchased later, including race specific mounts.
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There seems to be little grind in this game, at least as far as killing things for experience goes. Most experience is gained by questing and instances. Almost every quest is displayed like a page from a book, and in fact a consistent underlying theme of the game is collecting cards which result in rewards when a section is completed. Despite the wall of text that usually accompanies the quests, there were far too many that were difficult to figure out and needed a trip to the forums for help. The nice thing about the quests is that they will automatically track on the side of the screen, and the auto routing is very good. The bad thing about the quests is that many of them are very repetitive, and often have you running from one side of the map to the other over and over.
Innovation 6/10
I had looked forward to this game for the fact that it introduced races that were out of the ordinary. However, after playing the game, they are just ordinary. Even though each race starts in their own home town, so little time is spent there that it doesn’t seem to have much to do with any sort of story line. Even going out to the PWE site tells a back story that really doesn’t seem very relevant to game play. While I did like the idea of collecting books and so on, it got very tiring trying to read all of it. It’s just not that engrossing.
Polish 7/10
This game still has some bugs, mostly related to questing. As mentioned earlier, I found several that were very hard to complete based on the information given in the game. Oddly there is also a book that comes from a quest early on after reaching Freedom Harbor that’s an encyclopedia that hasn’t been fully translated yet, so while it seems like a great in-game feature, it’s often of little use. However, PWE has wonderful forums and a Wiki so most questions are easily answered by searching through those.
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Longevity 6/10
This game also has several servers available, including PvP and PvE. They also have servers based on time zones from US East and West, as well as EU, FR, and DE, and each server includes several realms to choose from. This might seem great at first unless you’re a night owl or an early riser and then you might find yourself pretty much alone in the game. However, during prime times the game seems moderately populated. It will be interesting to see if realms start dropping from the game as the player base decreases.
Leveling in the game starts out pretty fast, and it’s pretty easy to level a character up to level 20 in a casual 4-5 hours or less. After that however, it does slow down considerably, and many of the quests are repetitive.
As with a lot of free to play games, cash shop items are often key to really buffing up gear and weapons. This game seems no different. Some items are strictly cash shop items, and while there is a trade system in place in the game, it might be hard for the novice player to build up the kind of in-game cash needed. There are several guides on the web that can help with ideas for making money for the ambitious player. But the wealthy or willing player will wind up the one with the best stuff. And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Luckily Forsaken World is mostly a PVE game.
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Social 8/10
Casual and solo players will likely find themselves losing interest in the game as a lot of it does require instances and guild questing to further them in the game. There seem to be plenty of guilds recruiting and there are usually announcements going on in the world chat pretty frequently, so there does tend to be plenty to choose from. What seems to be a common complaint among the player base is the amount of time needed to build and maintain guild bases, and the casual player might get annoyed spending their limited game time doing guild quests.
Since the game is heavily quest based, and the quests don’t require killing forty monsters at one time, it may be more of a downfall to the game since it’s unlikely people will form a random party while out doing regular quests. However, instances do require parties, and there is a feature in the game to find a party pretty easily. Really, the game almost demands players be social with each other after reaching level 20.
Value 9/10
Forsaken World is a free to play game, and it is quite possible to progress in the game without spending any money, though doing so takes far more time. While I did not notice much in the complaint department about a cash shop imbalance among players, I have seen many games end up that way. Will this game be any different? It’s hard to tell at this point. For now, I feel it’s one of the better games at making sure all players have access to items either through in-game money or their own cash.
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Conclusion
Forsaken World is a visually stunning game, but tends to lack a lot in terms of content. For the player that enjoys role play and instances, this might be right up their alley. But for the player that likes unique quests and casual play, interest may fall off fast. Is it a game worth trying? Sure, but don’t expect too much or it’s likely you’ll be disappointed.
