An amazing looking game but the rest of the game for the most part is been here done that.
Each character starts off in what I found to be one of the most boring, uncreative ways possible. Just riding along some guy babbling to you something "exciting" happens but all you have to do is keep clicking through the text. More boring dialog after that till your in your starting city. If you could of some how interacted during this, gotten out of the cart to help fight off the beast men, or have the pirates board the ship anything but just being bombarded with text. It just for myself set a really bad mood to start the game. Each time I started a new character I just clicked as fast as I could through the text because none of it matters, other than seeing the twins the rest is pointless and I wish it could just be skipped altogether.
After the into its pretty much your standard fare MMO. Go here, talk to him, kill her, gather this, kill a lot of those. I have read reviews were it was said that the quest text has some good humor in it. I found the text to be to small and in a bad spot to read it. I can't click through the text fast enough. When I do stop to actually see what the point of what I am being asked to do is, it just doesn't matter because it comes down to doing one of the usual things. The main story is ok, every once in awhile you will get some voice acting to poorly done lip syncing. The mouth movements do not match what is being said. I wish their was more of it though because its nice to hear the voices brings the characters you are interacting with alive and I don't have the itch to just click through.
As for the combat I find it less enjoyable that other MMO's. The effects from the abilities are nice but combat feels sluggish. I have mostly focused on caster types and the animations are well done but take a long time to cast spells. Compared to caster types in games like Rift and WoW they have a lot less action in them.
The dungeons have been fairly disappointing so far. The four I have done have been average at best. You go through usually fight the same 3 or 4 monsters repeatedly through them. As good as the outside graphics are the dungeon graphics are not on par. The main boss fights in them are interesting and can actually take some team work. Such as having to bring out a bomb to blow up a slime into smaller parts. There was nothing about them that made me want to go back into them a second time.
The FATE system is very grindy. It can give the nicest exp rewards of anything. Along with quests you can do FATES or levequests over and over. At first it was fun experiencing these FATES for the first couple times. After your 10th time it just becomes something to do. These almost become mandatory once you start experimenting with other jobs. Once you run around and do a lot of the quests unless you move to a new starting area you won't have any quests to do. Leaving one to do FATES and levequets over and over to catch up.
I have not done a whole lot of crafting or gathering but from what little I have done that system seems interesting enough. Have not done it enough to review it.
I do like being able to take abilities from different classes such as protect from conjurer. This becomes a must do to make your character more viable. You are going to want the healing and protection from some classes and damage boost from another. Some amount of time is going to have to be devoted to most of the jobs.
I know I did more complaining about the game but there is something about it that keeps me going back to log in. Will it do that after the first 30 days, I dont know. It is a game with some promise but over all its an old design in a new shiny package.
