On my journey through the world of MMORPGs, I happened upon Perfect World [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_World]. Yet another fantasy MMORPG but with flight as a default ability either as a winged elf or flying mounts. This seemed interesting enough, so I downloaded the client.
Installing and getting this thing to run was like a breath of fresh air compared to some big name licensed games I had been trying of late. The game hasn't crashed yet. It gets two stars for that alone, albeit my opinion may be tainted by recent disappointments and frustrations.
But what little joy I felt at playing a stable game for a change was short lived as I ground myself stupid. I've been trying this game out for the last two weeks and I hardly played at all for the last week because all I'm doing is running around and killing things. And it's not just ten things, either. It's twenty or twenty five things. It got repetitive almost immediately.
Anyhoo, I made a female winged elf chick because I'd rather look at a hot chick than a sweaty dude. The character customizer is present. I will say that the resulting character was fairly nice-looking, unlike my Dungeons & Dragons Online or Lord of the Rings Online characters who looked like they put steroid on their breakfast cereal, if you follow me.
And while I like looking at an attractive female form as much as the next guy, I think it's a little odd that every piece of armor has a bare midriff or a mini-skirt. I'm all for cheesecake for the sake of cheesecake, but that's a little silly. Unless flying elves have belly buttons made of iron, making armor redundant. Somehow, I doubt it.
Combat works although it's nothing special. Click on an enemy and whack it with a stick until it's dead. The spell I gave the most mileage to was a psychic arrow thing which did four-to-five times as much damage as a single sword blow, although I could typically hit a baddy three or four times in the length of time it takes to get the spell off. So it's a trade off, really.
Equipment degrades in that most annoying of game mechanics, so every once in a while you need to visit the merchant to have your stuff repaired before your sword starts doing only one point of damage when it was doing 10-17. Frankly, this feature can go away anytime. I wish developers would stop using it. It's not fun. It's annoying.
Health regenerates automatically between fights and you can meditate to regenerate at a faster rate. There are also healing potions but they take a few seconds to work, so you need to use they before you really need them.
Overall, it's a nice game with a pretty if somewhat cheesy aesthetic, in regards to how my character dresses like a slut. But gameplay is just yet another monotonous trudge. Worse, there are crafting skills, so this will no doubt play like a higher-end cousin to Runecape. I can't tell you how much time I spent in Runescape mining for ore, smelting ore, fishing, cooking fish, chopping down trees, burning wood. And Perfect World seems like it has much of that as well. So while it looks nice, it doesn't have much in the way of gameplay to entice me to continue playing, much less pay for it.
Installing and getting this thing to run was like a breath of fresh air compared to some big name licensed games I had been trying of late. The game hasn't crashed yet. It gets two stars for that alone, albeit my opinion may be tainted by recent disappointments and frustrations.
But what little joy I felt at playing a stable game for a change was short lived as I ground myself stupid. I've been trying this game out for the last two weeks and I hardly played at all for the last week because all I'm doing is running around and killing things. And it's not just ten things, either. It's twenty or twenty five things. It got repetitive almost immediately.
Anyhoo, I made a female winged elf chick because I'd rather look at a hot chick than a sweaty dude. The character customizer is present. I will say that the resulting character was fairly nice-looking, unlike my Dungeons & Dragons Online or Lord of the Rings Online characters who looked like they put steroid on their breakfast cereal, if you follow me.
And while I like looking at an attractive female form as much as the next guy, I think it's a little odd that every piece of armor has a bare midriff or a mini-skirt. I'm all for cheesecake for the sake of cheesecake, but that's a little silly. Unless flying elves have belly buttons made of iron, making armor redundant. Somehow, I doubt it.
Combat works although it's nothing special. Click on an enemy and whack it with a stick until it's dead. The spell I gave the most mileage to was a psychic arrow thing which did four-to-five times as much damage as a single sword blow, although I could typically hit a baddy three or four times in the length of time it takes to get the spell off. So it's a trade off, really.
Equipment degrades in that most annoying of game mechanics, so every once in a while you need to visit the merchant to have your stuff repaired before your sword starts doing only one point of damage when it was doing 10-17. Frankly, this feature can go away anytime. I wish developers would stop using it. It's not fun. It's annoying.
Health regenerates automatically between fights and you can meditate to regenerate at a faster rate. There are also healing potions but they take a few seconds to work, so you need to use they before you really need them.
Overall, it's a nice game with a pretty if somewhat cheesy aesthetic, in regards to how my character dresses like a slut. But gameplay is just yet another monotonous trudge. Worse, there are crafting skills, so this will no doubt play like a higher-end cousin to Runecape. I can't tell you how much time I spent in Runescape mining for ore, smelting ore, fishing, cooking fish, chopping down trees, burning wood. And Perfect World seems like it has much of that as well. So while it looks nice, it doesn't have much in the way of gameplay to entice me to continue playing, much less pay for it.
