Hello, I am Lobcat.
My IGN is Kawamori, I am a level 43 Wizard (Wizard > Cryomancer > Linker). Played all the game together with Kawakami and this is my review about this closed beta.
(yes I did indeed steal his intro)
This topic will include my review and Redoaxe’s, we made each one ours and each review reflects one’s opinion (obviously).
Attention, If you don’t want to read our story day by day just jump down to the next “Attention”.
The stats and rankings you’re about to see were taken the last time I logged in, the rank may as well not be the same anymore. http://i.imgur.com/Scu8V6m.jpg
My items and stats http://i.imgur.com/m9WNc2O.jpg
My adventure journal rank http://i.imgur.com/aCofgSt.jpg
My char and Redo’s
Day 1:
Was the hypefest and happiness, fought with some bosses thinking they’re easy, once we were in the mines, we found and fought the “Spectre Lord” feeling good after defeating it, we then procceeded ahead to Srautas Canyon, stopping at lv 20 and somewhat confused since the quests were lv 30+ and we were 10 levels under with no sidequests. http://i.imgur.com/JXK7YcQ.jpg
Day 2:
After looking the foruns 1st thing in the morning, came to find the word “hidden quests” somewhere (was some IMC_(one of them) post), we then decided to test every class up to lv 10 and see if we discover something about those hidden quests, we came to understand how to play and then re-rolled our characters, those you see on the screen shots, the Crystal Mine boss was relatively weak compared to our day 1 try, since we were more lvled now, even possessing Rank 2 (which were obtained in but 2h of play), we continued to play until lv 26 and with some quests to finish.
Day 3:
We saw how ppl were complaining about the grind on the foruns, and once again proceeded to our adventure, we then continued our quests quickly and pleased with the flow of the game to then get lv 35 on Tenet Garden and face before ourselves our newest challenge, grind from lv 35 to lv 40, since it took too much time and resources to kill mobs on Tenet Chapel B1, we ended the day there.
Day 4:
Started the game already feeling down since ppl were saying the grind from 30 to 40 was an 8h process, we tried to grind on Tenet Garden to find ourselves spendind more resources than we’d like to and all channels flooded with players on any grind spot imaginable, we switched our grind spot to Nefritas Cliff since the xp difference was merely 30 xp aprox, after 5 hours grinding, and 5 blues (couldn’t kill our 6th before someone else, blues put us lvl 37) we finally got our lv 40 and went to Tenet Chapel B1 did some quests and finished the day there.
Day 5:
Last day we played and last CBT day we used this day to get lv 43 and our Rank 3, aprox 12h after our Rank 2 change, and proceeded without grind only doing quests to see how far we could get, then getting “stuck” since the story quest required lv 45, after that we embarked on na
adventure to see other maps, higher lv maps, to listen to it’s music and explore, our final objective was the 2nd city of the game Fedimian, even after getting there we explored some more to find some NPC’s had no dialog but some kind of unreadable thing (check img below). http://i.imgur.com/iYe5PBl.jpg
Attention for those who didn’t want to read the day by day, it starts here
1- Leveling
It was good until the grind wall, even after re-rolling our characters, the most tiresome thing to do was to grind with rank 2 and it might’ve been worse if not rank 2, I as a cryomancer had only 4 skills to really use since the 5th one was necessary for the enemy to be frozen, and perhaps is m play style or my stats but I usually had no mana after two or three rotations (I often missed ice pike cuz I suck D:) which made even slower to kill huge groups of mobs, thus making lvling a chore while in need of grinding, especially since early on the progression was extremely linear, making it even more boring to stay in the same map for 4 and a half hours with the same music which I eventually muted to listen to my own since it was starting to get repetitive.
I honestly believe that IMC does not plan to make this the official rates for the international server and if this was what took them to try to hide the non translated parts of the game, then I have no problem in accepting, even tho it was the most boring part of the game.
2- Bosses
I’m positive we did all bosses we could until lv 43 but I can be wrong, but as I’ve read before, the game lacks challenging bosses (and I don’t even know how to make them challenging), most bosses would have the same atk speed a basic mob has, making it more than easy to dodge, or even cheese (as redoaxe did with his dodge master build), most bosses would be unable to react if you kept going around them jumping and atking, others would be just plain boring or laughtable, so far apart from “Spectre Lord” the 1st day the only other trully fun boss was the
“Necrovanter”, which was too strong for us, and made the experience exciting (but still by no means making the bosses ridiculously strong and having hit-kill skills should mean the boss is challenging) it was our own mistake to start the quest not on it’s level, but still we did it after using some ressurects, maybe it wouldn’t be so “hard” if we were on the boss level, but then again it’s up to lv 43 so all I can say is that early on the bosses are “lacking”. (also the slow debuff totem does not work if you jump as you attack, making it just easier)
Adding to this tab, Field bosses were fun, it is trully sad that we found only 2, they surely add something to the game, seeing all those players together killing that boss you may neve find again, it was really fun. https://youtu.be/YSULQO5tj5Y
(this was by far the most boring boss probably because of the link but it just made us not dodge skills)
But I believe the bosses would indeed feel harder or better if I couldn’t resurrect instantly on the same place, even though I only used on like 3~4 of them.
3- Equipments and Items
I can try to understand that there are 400~500~600 levels (not really which) but I sure could dig changing my equips every 15 lvs since I was almost dying to get new ones, and when I got they were lv 40 or higher.
Now about usable items/pots I was extremely confused/mad why the mana potion gave less regen than the health one and was more expensive, it truly makes no sense, is there something special about using mana? Is it to force me to put points into SPR? Is it to make me use more autos and not only magic? Is it just cuz someone really hates mana in the staff? It really makes no sense to me, but it’s not like I couldn’t afford them or that it was too hard to make money, but it was really expensive and money consuming to buy mana pots. (check images for price and regen quantity)
So far the game gives you a somewhat “secure” quantity of gems probably to use it or either level up another gem and then learn to use it, it may even be one of the reasons I had low mana most of the time, or low regen, or even the reason we’re given new equipment only in those huge sets of levels, but I barely used my gems, maybe once or twice,
since I was “afraid” I changed my equip soon, I think maybe some more incentive is needed to use it or maybe you are indeed suposed to hold them until higher level equipment appears.
And I don’t really know what to say about boss cards, they can be upgraded just like gems, but instead of being able to use any material or item you can only use other cards to level it up, so far I found literally no use for cards other than those card battles and looking at the bosses you’ve beaten and of course using on necromancer’s necronomicon and sorcerer’s grimoire.
4- Gameplay
Overall it was pretty solid, you hit the mob, it feels pain, you’re hit you feel pain (strange huh), I played since day 2 onwards with the controler, I tried once the mouse and came to hate it, using the keybord was pretty good and easy, but once I came to experience the controller, oh my oh my, it was just marvelous, I dare to say this game was made to be played on the controler, I only used mouse and keybord to navigate the UI.
The target system is pretty good apart from some times it would still hit the mob behind the one so close it could kiss you, and when you would hit tab but the selected mob wouldn’t change, making it really annoying on bosses when you’d run away from some boss skill and when you came back you’d hit the traps and needing to remove the target lock and activate it again to lock on the boss.
Keybord still needs some love and it’ll be as good as the controler, tho it may never be more confortable to long time play.
Even though I didn’t really use the mouse, it is really bad, to the point I tried the keybord just to not use the mouse, it need some real work on it since lots of ppl want it (I’m sticking with my controller).
It is indeed better and more rewarding to jump to cancel some animations but it is still silly to atack and jump over and over, and I did it more than once, believe me when I tell you it was the only way for mage’s to attack and not be old when the next atk comes out, but the game can be played without the bunny strat, yet I’m unsure if something should be done about it.
5- Music and Art
The game is just gorgeous and to me especialy the music is just heavenly, the only thing I got to say about it is that it’s somewhat repetitive when grinding for some time on the same map.
The character design is just beautiful (as expected of Maggi)
Overall it’s a gorgeous game.
6- Some bugs I encountered
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I too had that flicky head, whenever I walked dianagoly down right or up left: https://youtu.be/sAmAaet-tCA
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Parts not being translated on higher levels or even when making an action.
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Mages (not just mine) wouldn’t put weapons on their backs (at least I think it’s a bug)
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Bosses stopping all they’re doing at random
(and mostly bugs Redoaxe had too)
7- Overall opinion
There is indeed space for improvement even tho idk if it’s like this in the korean servers, but the game just need to fix one thing or another, make it less grindy (yes I HAD to say it) and make mana pots something a mortal being can buy.
I, myself, enjoyed the beta (yes apart from the grind, geez gimme a break), it was fun and exiting, an honor even, it was an oportunity playing in the beta and I thank you IMC.
