This game, for me at least, was fairly frustrating to get into. I consulted a friend of mine and found he as well had problems, though his were far worse. He couldn't even get it to install.
First of all, the system requirements are a bit steep for a free game. 1 gig of ram available; which means you really need about 2.5 gigs of ram or higher since windows is a bit wasteful with your ram just running background programs, and if you don't want to play full screen, the smallest screen resolution it will permit is 1024X768 meaning if you do not have a large enough screen, you just can't play windowed mode.
As well, though the game installed to my computer, and runs from the computer, and puts a quick play button on the desktop, you can't just run the game. When you click the quick play icon, it loads up your web browser and takes you to the home page of the game, so you can click play from there, then it opens the game locally on your computer. I am uncertain what purpose there is for doing it this way, but my bets are on getting the chance to bombard you with ads for features they are selling in the game.
Game play
This game calls it's self an MMO, but is about as much an MMO as another game of theirs; Dungeon Fighter. You can meet random people in town, but that is it. Classes are gender locked, and there is little customization to be found. You can choose between 4 similar colors for your features, one of a few very slightly different textures on the same base outfit, and a few hairstyles.
When you leave town, there is a maze of what amounts to a series of tiny instanced areas, some being so small that only one or two NPCs are standing around and you can run from one portal to the next loading screen in a matter of seconds. Blue portals mean you are going to another peaceful zone, red ones mean you will enter a dungeon, and black portals are blocked until you level up higher.
In dungeons; much like in Dungeon Fighter you select a difficulty, and play a now 3D version of a beat-em-up where your main objective is to kill all enemies as you progress from room to room in real time 'physics based' combat. Unlike Dungeon fighter, these dungeons appear to be far more linear, and do not get randomized.
This means you can get dreadfully bored on certain quests that require you to repeatedly enter the same dungeon until you randomly complete the objective (such as finding X item in a destructible container)
Story
The game's story appears to be fairly sarcastic. Unfortunately, your character's back story has already been filled in for you. For example, the Sorceress' storyline is that she was given money to head to town to get training, and she ran away, blew the money, got millions of gold in debt, and is crawling back now to get trained and avoid her debt collectors.
Yeah. That is exactly the back story i want my character to have. She also has a very lazy and dim witted attitude in conversation which you are forced to 'choose' to continue the dialogue.
For most of the opening plot i was trying to recover from the repeated mental injuries caused by the massive stupidity of my character and several characters around her.
Graphics
it is 3D; however, the textures are all blurry for some reason. It makes me wonder if they saved the skins in a low quality JPEG. This is less noticeable with the monsters; as they are supposed to look 'bad' but looking at characters with clothing, it looks more like the cloths are painted on at times, and the blurring makes it look like a much older game than it is.
In a way, it reminds me of the old paper doll look primitive 3D games had; where everything was painted on the body, rather than any of it actually being modeled. The eyes in particular bug me, as the blurring makes them go from an eye to a fuzzy color.
Oh and this is with graphics quality on high. I actually did not notice much change when i switched to low graphics so I would stop lagging. Graphics options are pretty lacking, if you've played many MMOs you are probably accustomed to options such as 'shadows' 'water effects' 'weather effects' and other options that you can toggle to improve your graphics. they don't have that. they have low, medium, and high graphics quality, and a few bars such as gamma and brightness that don't really effect lag.
Overall
I won't say anything about the music, as my taste in music can easily differ from another's so I find that to be an unfair point most of the time. Overall I can tell what they are going for; which is an MMO experience that incorporates the game play found in single player games.
What they end up giving us however is a game that plays like a single player game with all the bad parts of online gaming good MMOs try to avoid; Excessive loading screens, ads, and lag.
Blog post location: http://www.novacorp-online.net/blog/?p=161
First of all, the system requirements are a bit steep for a free game. 1 gig of ram available; which means you really need about 2.5 gigs of ram or higher since windows is a bit wasteful with your ram just running background programs, and if you don't want to play full screen, the smallest screen resolution it will permit is 1024X768 meaning if you do not have a large enough screen, you just can't play windowed mode.
As well, though the game installed to my computer, and runs from the computer, and puts a quick play button on the desktop, you can't just run the game. When you click the quick play icon, it loads up your web browser and takes you to the home page of the game, so you can click play from there, then it opens the game locally on your computer. I am uncertain what purpose there is for doing it this way, but my bets are on getting the chance to bombard you with ads for features they are selling in the game.
Game play
This game calls it's self an MMO, but is about as much an MMO as another game of theirs; Dungeon Fighter. You can meet random people in town, but that is it. Classes are gender locked, and there is little customization to be found. You can choose between 4 similar colors for your features, one of a few very slightly different textures on the same base outfit, and a few hairstyles.
When you leave town, there is a maze of what amounts to a series of tiny instanced areas, some being so small that only one or two NPCs are standing around and you can run from one portal to the next loading screen in a matter of seconds. Blue portals mean you are going to another peaceful zone, red ones mean you will enter a dungeon, and black portals are blocked until you level up higher.
In dungeons; much like in Dungeon Fighter you select a difficulty, and play a now 3D version of a beat-em-up where your main objective is to kill all enemies as you progress from room to room in real time 'physics based' combat. Unlike Dungeon fighter, these dungeons appear to be far more linear, and do not get randomized.
This means you can get dreadfully bored on certain quests that require you to repeatedly enter the same dungeon until you randomly complete the objective (such as finding X item in a destructible container)
Story
The game's story appears to be fairly sarcastic. Unfortunately, your character's back story has already been filled in for you. For example, the Sorceress' storyline is that she was given money to head to town to get training, and she ran away, blew the money, got millions of gold in debt, and is crawling back now to get trained and avoid her debt collectors.
Yeah. That is exactly the back story i want my character to have. She also has a very lazy and dim witted attitude in conversation which you are forced to 'choose' to continue the dialogue.
For most of the opening plot i was trying to recover from the repeated mental injuries caused by the massive stupidity of my character and several characters around her.
Graphics
it is 3D; however, the textures are all blurry for some reason. It makes me wonder if they saved the skins in a low quality JPEG. This is less noticeable with the monsters; as they are supposed to look 'bad' but looking at characters with clothing, it looks more like the cloths are painted on at times, and the blurring makes it look like a much older game than it is.
In a way, it reminds me of the old paper doll look primitive 3D games had; where everything was painted on the body, rather than any of it actually being modeled. The eyes in particular bug me, as the blurring makes them go from an eye to a fuzzy color.
Oh and this is with graphics quality on high. I actually did not notice much change when i switched to low graphics so I would stop lagging. Graphics options are pretty lacking, if you've played many MMOs you are probably accustomed to options such as 'shadows' 'water effects' 'weather effects' and other options that you can toggle to improve your graphics. they don't have that. they have low, medium, and high graphics quality, and a few bars such as gamma and brightness that don't really effect lag.
Overall
I won't say anything about the music, as my taste in music can easily differ from another's so I find that to be an unfair point most of the time. Overall I can tell what they are going for; which is an MMO experience that incorporates the game play found in single player games.
What they end up giving us however is a game that plays like a single player game with all the bad parts of online gaming good MMOs try to avoid; Excessive loading screens, ads, and lag.
Blog post location: http://www.novacorp-online.net/blog/?p=161
