I was fortunately given the opportunity to participate in the second Closed Beta Testing for Tree of Savior, and I have to say that I was overall not very impressed. My history is about a decade-worth of Ragnarok Online, and I was hoping that ToS would be utilizing similar concepts, but branching off of them in new, innovative, fun ways. Unfortunately what I discovered instead was something that has a great deal of visual appeal and a fun beat-'em-up style hack-n-slash fighting mechanic, but is significantly lacking in the substance department.
LEVELING
Going into this after playing RO, one of the things I was hoping for most was that the grindy-ness would have been mitigated, but that doesnāt seem to be the case. The level cap has been increased when compared to RO, so the numbers rise more quickly, but this was a closed beta where last I heard the exp was significantly increased for testing purposes (someone please correct me if this is not true). If this was the case, I imagine it is going to require leveling be a full-time job to reach max level in any reasonable amount of time. Which is not terribly appealing to me. This may not be such a big deal if it wasnāt forā¦
CLASSES
When I was first reading about the class system, I thought, āWow! This is really interesting and incredibly customizable! Think of all the ways you can design your character by utilizing different amounts of each circle! Sooo cool!ā
This is one of my biggest disapointments: classes are incredibly restrictive and not very diverse at all. Several classes either have such specific niches that it makes the class useless in any situation outside of their niche, or the only skills the class has access to are incredibly boring: the fact there is an entire class dedicated to making different bodyparts larger for the sake of buffing different stats seems neat in theory, but after realizing how longer you have to go through that class, only learning skills that increase body parts, makes the progression sluggish, boring, and most importantly uninteresting. There is no intricacy to this classāyou point and click a character, a part of their body grows, and they get stronger in some way. It is linear, there are no subtle or nuanced effects to make it any more interesting, thatās all it is. Even adding some mechanic that allows you to prolong the growth by doing somethingālike you have to use 4 different skills within a time limit to reset the timer or somethingāthat would not only give you something else to think about, it would promote the use of more than one ability and give people a reason to use skills they may have otherwise been ignoring. Speaking of whichā¦
So many skills quickly become obsolete, or even start out at obsolete when compared to other skills in the same tree. Why would I want to use a time-bomb arrow on a Ranger when I can just kill those monsters with a single Barrage? Or with several Oblique Shots? Why would I ever use Bash or Wagon Wheel on a Swordsman or Highlander when I can just auto attack or use Carter Stroke? There were so many skills that were not anywhere near SP-efficient when comparing the damage they deal and the SP they take to just normal attacks.
One of the saddest things I noticed when reading about optimal builds was that most of the time, the most stat-efficient builds for late-game situations basicaly REQUIRE you to get 2-3 circles deep into an incredibly boring class. I understand that there is a compromise a player makes when choosing to make a character that way, but a player shouldnāt have to make a choice between being viable late game or in PvP, or actually having fun leveling.
The differences between classes are almost indistinguishable in several cases, where the biggest difference is whether you can take a few hits while running into large mobs before using your strongest AoE attack, or whether you have to kite things around before casting your best AoE attack. How do you play a Ranger? Gather up mobs and use barrage. How do you play a pyromancer? Gather up mobs and use flame ground. How do you play Highlander? Gather up mobs and use Carter Stroke. Maybe you can get a slight variance in your rotation, and the effects look a bit different, but youāre doing the exact same thing with most of the classes. Worst of all, if you arenāt doing those things, youāre penalized by not being able to level as quickly since the quickest way to level is to kill the most monsters as quickly as possible. This severely hinders the ability for single-target classes to level well. What if there were zones with very powerful monsters that give significantly more exp and donāt mob heavily at all? So that you could either solo it as a strong duelist class, or take them down with a large party, etc. This would at least create some form of diversity in leveling outside of mobbing things and AoE blasting them.
WORLD MAP/EXPLORATION
One of the best things about Ragnarok Online was that the world was not only HUGE, it was incredibly diverse and fun to explore. With how beautiful the art in ToS is and the intricacy of the terrain and detail in the environment, I was really hoping it might be comparable to the world of ROā¦but it wasnāt at all.
Instead of being an open world with lots of nooks and crannies to explore, weāre stuck in a word of alleyways and pathways that direct your travel and hinder exploration significantly. Getting lost is part of the fun of huge, open worldsāitās impossible to get lost and find anything fun or interesting when every section of every map has a clearly defined direction and doesnāt let you blaze your own path. I feel like Iām being babied and corralled into a specific direction and feel severely inhibited when it comes to exploring the world. Itās never been a challenge to get anywhere because there are only so many places you can look before the map shows you the pathway to get there.
CONCLUSIONS
I definitely feel like ToS has some very positive traits: the artwork is beautiful, the style is charming, the hack-n-slash fighting can be exciting and immersive. But there are some significant aspects of ToS that were very lacking in my opinion: Grinding necessity, class diversity, exploration.
Iād love to hear what other people think about these critiques, and if anyone has any counter-points to make regarding any of my points, Iām all ears!
Oh also Iām sad thereās no fast-attacking stealthy class, at least not for early levels, or anything specifically dedicated to it. :< I just wanna weild double daggers or katars or something, man! BOPBOPBOP!!
