Well, the first CBT is over, and so far, the game leaves a rather mixed impression - a lot of ups and downs, so to say.
Graphics - while largely resembling Ragnarok Online, on multiple occasions I though some of the art was a bit too desaturated, even bleak sometimes. Could be a case of acquired taste, but I sure hope later areas are more vibrant.
Sound - next to no complaints here, awesome OST. Sound effects are somewhat plain, but I can live with that.
Gameplay - I don’t think I need to say EXP curve was far from perfect - tons of topics about this. Hitting the grind wall as early as level 30 with barely any skills to work with and clearly not enough grinding spots to choose from is bad, really bad. Due to that combat feels bland and repetitive, and could turn off a lot of people.
Balance - could be just me, or could be because it’s a rather early stage, but so far it seems there’s no reason to roll anything aide from full dex highlanders/barbarians. Caster mobs are few and far in between, and aside from that and maybe an occasional high-dex archer mob you don’t even have to worry about getting hit - just auto-attack everything with those high-crit cleaves.
Skill design is also very questionable - while there are quite a few if you look at the skill calculator, if left as is, many characters will turn into one-trick ponies eventually - no thanks to how horribly most skills scale/come off long cooldowns compared to simply auto-attacking. Unless there’s a great diversity of mobs later on, with distinct resistances to certain damage types or abilities that require careful countering, I can’t see how any setups aside from “One Peltasta tank to spam Swashbuckling, one cleric to heal and a horde of barbarians to cut everything down” are going to be viable.
Also, flat numeric increments to most skills means that vast majority of them will become useless very, very quickly. Why would I even bother using a skill that adds +10 to damage when a monster has 5,000, 10,000 or more HP? Or why would I need a skill that adds 200 to damage but has a 40-second cooldown and an awkward hit box? Skills need to be percentage-based, otherwise most of them will become obsolete and fights will become boring, really fast.
Crafting is really, really bland and poorly implemented. It reminds me of early Lineage II days, when you had to carry every recipe as a separate item, turning your inventory into a real mess. Recipe book where players can register known recipes is badly needed. Also, we need a bigger recipe diversity - it’s a shame when there’s barely any use for all that loot monsters drop. Food items with minor buffs/stuff to speed up rest mode recovery, that sort of thing.
No gathering nodes of any sort is also a letdown. Seriously, even RO1 had colored herbs, and that was ages ago. We need some other activities apart from mindlessly clicking mobs to death 100% of the time. I’m not saying “Fishing” yet (although, personally I’d love it) but any sort of player activity to relieve the numbness after several hour long grind sessions would be welcome.
Some other things I noticed:
- Party barracks could use a shared storage. It’s a hassle to transfer items to your own characters now;
- Skill/attribute descriptions need more depth. It would be nice to know precisely how much every upgrade is worth.
- Chat system needs tweaking - custom tabs, easier-to-read text/font size - stuff like that.
- Repair cost is not dependent on how much durability is missing - not nice, considering it’s quite costly early on.
There’s more, but I hope much of that is going to be fixed in the coming betas.
So far, I still hope the game will live up to my expectations - sooner or later, that is.