Games thread!

[madwilliamflint]

Originally Posted by Bill86

Explain the game to me, it seems like they mashed every popular game I have seen in the last 5 years into ONE game. I see mages, assassins, monsters, robots, dragons, swords, AK-47's......the trailer is crazy and I understand absolutely none of it. Did they take bits and pieces of every game and make it an MMORPG or something?

They did something relatively clever. There's no class system. It's all skill based. The skill tree divides at the first level into ranged/magic/h2h (3 weapons each.) So you end up with 9 top level skill categories. You can equip two 'weapons' at a time, so that gives you some flexibility. You earn points to build up into whatever kind of spec you want. You can't really gimp yourself since you can conceivably rank all the way up in everything. Many (most?) of the quests are replayable after a 1 day lockout for more xp.

However, taking a page from GuildWars, you can only have 7 active and 7 passive skills 'live' at any given time. So, while your capabilities keep building, your actual load-out has to be tweaked. There are recommended profiles that you can use (pure dps, ranged, support, heal, tank, etc. or hybrid), but you're under no obligation to.

crafting is there, but the mechanic is sparse. based on deconstructing items into raw materials then using 'toolkits' (which determine max quality level) to build items. There's no "trade XP" notion at all. Still not sure how it'll pan out. I'm ending up with lots of raw materials from deconstructing things I don't want to bother going to a vendor and selling.

Combat mechanics are pretty fluid, a little button mashy. But there's some nice complexity that doesn't get all AoC.

The setting is "modern fantasy" and in the PvE zones, the three different factions are intermixed transparently. Starting zone is the same, etc.

There are also some puzzles involved in the side quests. Not "minigame" nonsense. Actual puzzles that you have to exercise some brainsauce to figure out. They give you an in-game browser to do 'research'.


I think I like it. But I'm not going to get really addicted to it. Skill points come pretty fast and the more advanced stuff takes some willpower to save up for (rather than just spending them wide and shallow.)

I think they've layed the groundwork for some interesting stuff. The base mechanics are there, the questing is solid without being overly grindy. The plot chain is solid, and some of the npc conversations are absolutely hilarious.

7.5/10 ? maybe 8?