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Throne and Liberty Review: Very Much A Lineage Successor

Kazuma Hashimoto Posted:
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A golem lumbers forward, arms slowly swinging by its side as dozens of players swarm around its thick legs. A woman, slight in frame and wielding a staff, transforms into a wolf as she dives into the chaos of the battlefield, closing distance between her and another player. I see her form shift, slamming her greatsword against a man wielding a tome and book. He goes down after a few hits and our group follows suit. I cast healing spells in frantic succession as our guild leader directs us closer to the castle wall.

Our push forward only lasts so long. Within minutes another surge of players pushes forward, a large group now, and we’re overtaken. We lose, we die, we taste defeat. But there’s something exhilarating about it, as Throne & Liberty harkens back to an age of open-world PvP, of coordination and communication between players and tenuous alliances that I sorely missed.

I remember watching footage of Lineage Eternal on YouTube in 2014, excited that NCSOFT would be expanding upon an MMORPG series I had grown to love despite all of its flaws and rough edges. The footage that was shown through the course of Lineage Eternal’s development was more in line with Diablo or its then direct competitor within its own region, Lost Ark. Dungeons would be procedurally generated, character classes were set in stone and harken back to both the original Lineage and Lineage II

It would simultaneously be familiar and new — something that would appeal to the small pocket of Lineage players that existed in the West and perhaps continued the series success within Korea. However, the project unexpectedly went dark after a series of closed beta tests in 2016. As NCSOFT continued to churn out mobile versions of their MMORPGs that are still relatively active, it seemed like Lineage Eternal was dead.

Throne and Liberty

Yet the game resurfaced as Project TL in 2017. It still seemed like the game would continue to go in the direction of the isometric RPG, only for NCSOFT to reveal more footage down the line that showcased another shift in direction. There would be no classes, the top-down angle was discarded for more general MMORPG camera controls, and the combat was overhauled to appeal to modern sensibilities. I was fine with these things, mostly. The removal of classes had me skeptical, as one of the finer points of previous Lineage games was the sheer volume of them and the individual skills players would have according to what race they selected. Those unique races were also removed, or at least the ability to play as a High Elf, Dark Elf, Orc, and so on. Which meant that aspect of that series was flattened significantly. But I continued to remain optimistic, even if the closed beta test for North America didn’t impress me. I wanted to believe.

Unfortunately, Throne & Liberty did not. Divorcing my feelings about the Lineage series from NCSOFT’s latest foray into the genre, the introductory cutscene and subsequent tutorial that followed didn’t impress me. Throne & Liberty opens up with a cinematic featuring a village being assailed by monsters and a mysterious dark priestess that has come to wreak havoc for one reason or another. A wizened old mage simply known as the village elder hurries children into a church, desperate to protect them before he’s hit with a bolt of dark magic. As he’s hit with the spell, the child closest to him is flown back, shouting, “Oh no!” and that’s when I knew what kind of game Throne & Liberty was going to be.

You can generally tell the quality of a game based on its localization. I had interviewed Amazon Games about their localization efforts to bring Throne & Liberty to the West and was more or less assured that, unlike Lost Ark, the localization for this would be different. It would be better. That is not the case. The localization for Throne & Liberty is perhaps as bad, if not worse, than Lost Ark, which wasn’t all that impressive to begin with — but I’m going to chalk that up to a lot of weird voice direction, which Throne & Liberty also suffers from. Even the bits of conversation you experience in the tutorial are rough and unrefined. 

As someone who has worked in localization and done localization passes on games, it’s clear that these were more or less direct translations that weren’t quite given the time to be refined. A character tells you he can’t assist you to the fullest because his arm hurts, and while it is in a sling and it probably does hurt, that seems like such a strange way to convey that he seems severely injured. This was for the main scenario. Side quests don’t get any better. This would also be easy to ignore if I didn’t have to directly interact with the narrative or anything else surrounding it. For example, every time you progress in the story, a narrator will give a brief two to three-second recap that can get old extremely fast. And due to the poor localization, I just wasn’t interested in listening to it as I started to skip through cutscenes.

The narrative of Throne & Liberty isn’t exactly riveting. You end up learning that you are the child the village elder was protecting and you are imbued with a special power that has more or less made you the protagonist of the story. Because of this you are sent from one area to the next, solving major and minor problems and uncovering the going-ons of a cult that has arisen around the dark sorceress that threatened your life in the first place. I think this could be compelling if it was written better, because these things aren’t necessarily bad but I found it really hard to care about anything due to the localization. Maybe Throne & Liberty actually has a compelling story and the characters are more interesting and better written, but I’ll never know.

Throne and Liberty

Granted, I think what most people are enticed by and probably enjoy most about Throne & Liberty is the large scale PvP. Like its predecessor, players will contest for castles and engage in massive sieges to retain control of Stoneguard Castle. So much of the game is focused around PvP that I would honestly say it’s impossible to play alone. You will need to find a guild, and an active one, that is already actively forging alliances with other guilds to make any kind of real progression. If you are not interested in the social aspect of the MMORPG, Throne & Liberty is not for you. This was something I was most excited about, especially seeing hordes of players throwing themselves into the fray, from watching trailers leading up to release. I was not disappointed.

When the siege eventually rolled around I was fortunate enough to be in a guild that wanted to participate, even if we knew we had no chance of winning. We were swarmed by dozens of players, all desperate to breach the castle walls, pillage what they could, and attempt to claim victory and effectively control the area's economy. If you’ve played Lineage II, you know exactly what I’m talking about here, because these sieges are functionally the same and just as hectic. I was not prepared for how frantic it would be, or how geared up other players were, and in a matter of moments I was dead. What did surprise was to see the tag of the old Lineage II guild, Blood Pledge, that I used to play with, and there was something nice about seeing them alive and well. Even if they were stomping other guilds into dust.

What threw me off during these encounters was how Throne & Liberty handles the skill system. Much like Guild Wars 2, your skillset is determined by what weapons you have equipped. You can swap these at the fly, and even save specific loadouts, but it felt a bit clunky by comparison. This is probably because of the way the user interface is laid out, with how your skills are divided and locked to your numerical keys. 

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There are also two different control schemes, a click and target and a more action-focused style that uses a targeting reticule. I opted for the click and target since it was more comfortable and familiar to me. Yet I found myself fumbling and using the wrong skill at the wrong time more often than not. I did eventually find my groove and ended up leaning into using the greatsword and wand and tome, which surprised me given that I loved the daggers when I previewed the game back at Summer Game Fest.

The greatsword allowed me to effectively take out groups of enemies for your run-of-the-mill side quests that require you to kill any amount of some specified creature, and has a nice gap closer. Wand and tome is the weapon that sets you up with support skills, like healing, which is always in short supply when it comes to finding groups for dungeons. Each weapon also has more than a handful of skills you can pick and choose from and subsequently level up to increase their efficiency. If I wanted to increase my healing, I would need to grind materials to keep up with content, and grind out gear as well.

This is where a lot of players will probably be turned off to Throne & Liberty — the grind, mainly because you will need to do a lot of grinding to get gear to even compete in PvP and castle sieges, which is a bulk of the end game. You can buy items in the shop to speed up the time it takes to level up, but you will spend a lot of that time grinding for materials and gear that it doesn’t matter all that much. There is also the option to swipe your credit card and have the advantage in PvP. For example, you can just flat out purchase tokens to upgrade  your weapons, armor, and accessories, bypassing the need to farm these materials. This goes for skills as well. Obviously, this will give you an edge in PvE, but naturally will affect your capability in PvP.

throne and liberty

There is, of course, a battle pass like most live service games have these days. You can get lower rarity equipment upgrade materials through the free version, with the better upgrade materials available through the premium pass. It’s more of the same, and will be the same song-and-dance MMO players that dabble in Korean MMOs will be familiar with. Those who are jumping into this style of game will more than likely be turned off to this system and its obvious advantages. There are also what I like to call “non-obtrusive” purchases, which are just cosmetics. And they honestly look really nice but won’t give you an extra edge in combat in any discernible way. You’ll just look really nice while you’re farming or eating dirt during castle sieges.

But I feel like joining a guild is more important in the grand scheme of things. You can more or less get these materials from group activities, though it will require a lot of dedication. Because of this, it definitely seems like players could at some point have problems keeping up, just because of how much time Throne & Liberty will require for the end game, and a lot of people aren’t really into dedicating a specific time during the day to participate in a siege or other open world PvP activities like non-instanced dungeons.

Concerning PvE content, dungeons are mostly just alright. They appear in two forms, instance and non-instanced dungeons called Abyss Dungeons. Instanced dungeons are exactly what you expect. You group up with six players to dungeon crawl and fight a boss for rewards. These dungeons are stock and standard with some interesting mechanics built in. Maybe dangerous terrain appears and you need to use your traversal mechanic, which is a grappling hook, to get away. But that’s kind of the jist of it. Boss fights are slow and mostly uninteresting by comparison to Final Fantasy XIV and World of Warcraft

This is something I hope NCSOFT adjusts in the future, mostly because PvE content should be just as engaging as PvP. Abyss Dungeons are more or less open-world zones where players can kill specific enemies to get rare drops. Ants Nest (which was also in Lineage II) is one such area that functions as an Abyss Dungeon, with PvP enabled once sun sets. This makes Abyss Dungeons both exciting and anxiety-inducing, because as you’re waiting for a specific enemy to respawn, an enemy alliance might be waiting for the sun to go down to strike and steal your kill. Again, it’s all very Lineage II, and I think this game will live or die by its community for that reason. 

However, perhaps one of the biggest gripes I have with the game is its user interface. The font is small, even when scaled up, and there are so many menus. It’s menus on menus on menus, and it’s honestly too much. The fact that opening up your menu will take up a good chunk of your screen because of all of the different options you have to cycle through to find exactly what you’re looking for is a pain. 

Then there are the performance issues I faced during my time with Throne and Liberty. I’m running an NVIDIA GeForce 3080 Ti, and the MMO was chugging on ultra. I turned the graphics down to medium and, weirdly enough, still had issues until I bumped it up to high. I cannot explain what happened and why. Other than that, the game ran mostly alright, but it seems like there are some optimization issues there that NCSOFT might smooth out in the future, because, despite everything, it still ran weirdly alright during those massive sieges.

 

Throne & Liberty was a game I wanted to love. It was something I had anticipated for roughly a decade with the hope in my heart that it would be good. I see the skeleton of something I adored — the massive PvP battles, the caution that came with entering places like the Ants Nest to get rare jewelry and a social component that I honestly sorely miss. But the poor localization, an uninteresting story, and the reliance on PvP for progression makes the game a hard recommendation. It’s a shame, because there is a glimmer of something great there, but Throne & Liberty just isn’t that.

Full Disclosure: An Early Access Ultimate code was provided for the purposes of this review. Reviewed on PC.

6.0 Okay
Pros
  • Old school MMORPG social components add an extra layer to the overall experience.
  • The traversal mechanics like turning into a wolf or otter are fun
  • Castle sieges are the highlight of end game content, putting your guild to the test
Cons
  • Reliance on active guilds will prevent players from making any real significant progress in the end game
  • The game will live or die by its community due to its reliance on PvP
  • Bad localization and uninteresting story make questing a slog


kazumahashimoto

Kazuma Hashimoto

Performing odd jobs around all sectors of the industry ranging from translation, narrative design, and consultation, Kazuma spends his time playing a variety of games ranging from farming simulators to classic CRPGs. In his spare time he raids with friends in Final Fantasy XIV, role-plays in World of Warcraft, and jumps back into old-school Korean MMORPGs when the mood strikes.