Pros and cons? Considering getting, considering it is only £6

Comments

• Hopfrog Member Posts: 90

  November 2012

  Definitely not traditional tab target button mash, that is one of it's positives. Much like in GW2, positioning plays a big role in many of your abilities and the semi-flying/jumping around is useful in many situations. In many ways it is similar to the GW2 skill sets with different weapons equipped. Different weapons and fighting styles will grant you different abilities. You can use others you have learned, but say you use a staff skill and then want to use a fist skill, there will be a cooldown so it is not instantaneaous. The closest analogy for MMO combat I can make is GW2, and imo that is not a bad thing.

  Pros

  • Large, gorgeous living world. As someone who has been to China, they really capture it. They're Chinese programmers in China, so no big surprise there. But it truly is majestic climbing some of the mountains and looking at the scenery.
  • Dynamic skill based combat and outstanding combat animations. It really feels like a kung fu battle when you pvp.
  • Lots of open world sandbox features. You actually farm your food, process it, and make it. When you go offline your character stays in world and can have a stall setup for people to buy stuff, and you can even be kidnapped.
  • Unique training system. You can level your skills by 3 different methods. You use XP as currency and then can internally meditate to progress skills, have a solo training session, or what is really cool... Team Practice, where you get together with other players and do really cool choreographed kung fu moves together that results in the fastest way to level. In a way, the leveling is a lot like EVE (another good thing imo), where you can go to a secluded spot and meditate while you are offline to train skills.
  • Cool dueling/PvP/Arena system. Outside of the major city of Chengdu there is always dueling/tourneys taking place. Really cool seeing different schools of kung fu going at it and flying around.

  Cons

  • The game just feels clunky. I don't know any other way to describe it. The translations are bad, the interfaces are confusing and counter-intuitive, and while it functional it just lacks polish and is often times confusing and clumsy to deal with.
  • Zone walls. The areas are zoned which I can't stand in any MMO, but thankfully there is just one version of each zone. The zones have funnel points with zone travel icons much like GW2.
  • Weird minigames to level skills. To improve any of your main skills such as cooking, you will have to play a Bejeweled minigame. Once you figure out how to play it (confusing crappy instructions), it actually is kinda fun, but it just feels weird AsianMMOey... wtf does playing bejeweled have to do with cooking??

  The really bad

  • One of my cons for the game is so bad, I gotta give it a separate category. The questing is terrible. Taking the bad translations out of the equation, they are just unbearable for me. So many of the quests revolve around talking and running back and forth between NPCs with just terrible dialogue (translations aside) and interaction. You gotta click on the NPC and open the dialogue again after each sentence and you will spend a good 30 minutes doing this, running back and forth between NPCs, in what amounts to being an errand boy. There are a ton of these quests in the game. It is odd because a really nice sandbox is there. No need for the awful drawn out quests imo. It almost feels as if they said, hmmmmm..... it's an MMO so we need to cram quests in, let's just grab some examples of the worst rat killing, errand boy delivering quests from the last 10 years and duplicate it!

  Is it worth 6 pounds?... oh yeah absolutely. It is worth checking out. You may love it or hate it, but it is certainly worth what they are charging to see for yourself.
• Cakeisyummeh Member Posts: 194

  November 2012

  hmm, the idea of it being clunky has put me off a little, it seems like one of those games that would only be fun if it were smooth.

  Thanks the reply ^^ helped a lot.
• Hopfrog Member Posts: 90

  November 2012

  Well don't get me wrong. It's not clunky where it matters, which is the fighting. That part is pretty smooth.

  It's clunky in its layout, menus, interfaces, NPC interactions, instructions...... you get the idea
• Rimmersman Member Posts: 885

  November 2012

  Originally posted by Cakeisyummeh

  hmm, the idea of it being clunky has put me off a little, it seems like one of those games that would only be fun if it were smooth.

  Thanks the reply ^^ helped a lot.

  I see you are from europe, you might want to wait for the european version which is still going through the change over. And let's not forget that this was the first western beta so the game is not a released game or the end product.

  As for the above comments, i can say the quests are not that good but the rest of the features make up for it ten fold. Beta finishes on the 25th until the 5th December so if you are going to drop the small fee of £6 i would do it now.

  The characters movement and combat is very nice indeed, you have to remember that AOW is not a western game really.