Aries’ thoughts on International Beta1
I went through a few different stages during this test, first of liking it, then becoming unhappy with some things, then growing use to them… I went back and forth a fair bit but all in all I’d say it’s a good game.
But going into more detail:
Controller (Joypad) Gameplay.
I found the controller gameplay pretty decent. But I definitely would need to customise the key map if I was going to play for longer than a week, and as far as I could see there isn’t an option to do this in game. I feel like this is one area that would really benefit from some additional customisation features!
I think the controller screen needs to be a user customisable feature, that gives players the ability to adjust the “joypad” controls to suit their preferences.
Basically I think that having customisable keybind functionality in-game would be a good move, but having said that. If it isn’t supported I’ll just try to achieve the same effect via peripheral controller software.
One area where I feel the controller support falls short is when interacting with in-game windows. I basically need to play with a mouse next to me for when I open a inventory or skill type window. I think a “smart tabbing” or “snap-to-button cursor” type feature on one of the controller thumbsticks might be a good way to go. Whatever the case, there currently seems to be no way to navigate in-game item/skill type windows with a controller that I can see.
General Gameplay.
Key bind nit-picking aside. The gameplay is generally pretty smooth, except for one issue with auto attacks stopping your character’s movement. I’m sure everyone pretty aware of the “bunny hopping” in the game that people do to try and get around this (movement halting) mechanic. Even I do it a lot, and I’m basically a full support cleric >_<. I thought about a lot of possible reasons for why this mechanic is still in the game despite the amount of people complaining about it being annoying/looking silly… and I do see a few possibilities. Bottom line is that I don’t really like it but if IMC think it’s necessary to have it then I’m willing to live with it. =P (I don’t think it’s ‘gamebreaking’)
The overall game playing experience in Tree of Savior is pretty nice! The NPC interface, access to in-game features and GUI are all pretty smooth, painless and convenient and I think there’s a lot of clever and innovative design/ development here. 
Levelling Progression.
(Blue monsters, EXP Cards, Grinding, ect…)
I’m sure everyone would be aware of the large amount of discussion around the topic of experience rates in the beta. My opinion so far has been pretty up and down. At the time of writing this my level is mid 30’s and I’m currently questing in Tenant Chapel.
When I first hit this first EXP wall at around level25 I kinda balked, but up until that point I was basically soloing the game as a support cleric, so I ended up looking for party and found that the levelling sped up a bit. Not so much because of faster monster killing, but because with a large party, you have a higher chance of getting EXP from a ‘blue monster’. For those who don’t know, blue flashing monsters are rare spawns which yield insane amounts of experience. They are an interesting addition to the game, but my opinion on them is that, at the moment they are basically a requirement if you want to level up, due to normal monster experience being too low. I think grinding would be more enjoyable if the normal monsters gave more EXP and the rare blue spawn’s EXP was lowered to compensate.
The EXP Cards are an interesting addition to the game. I think they add a bit of fun control over your experience gain. Although I do think they probably contribute too much to experience gain and similarly to what I’ve suggested regarding the “blue monsters” I think the levelling experience would be nicer if more of the EXP gain ratio was put into monsters and the EXP cards were reduced to compensate. With the EXP sources as they are now, the grind feels deceivingly hard until you receive one of the two EXP boosting methods I’ve mentioned above.
Quests and Maps.
I really like how I have to explore and talk to different NPC’s you find to locate quests. I think “hiding” most of the quests was a really good move and it seems to be working well. Most quests I’ve come across so far are pretty simple to understand and accomplish.
In regards to maps and variety of places to level. I think I read somewhere that it was IMC’s intention to offer a few separate levelling maps to choose from for each level bracket? But so far (between levels 0-30) there seems to be very little choice in terms of different areas to level and the progression so far has been pretty linear. I assume that there will be more variety at later levels.
(The Dandelions swaying in the breeze with ‘dandelion fluff’ blowing around, is a nice touch.)
(My favourite ‘lodge skin’ so far.)
I’ve done a bit of exploring and I’ve seen (not played through, ‘ran through’) roughly 1/6th of the world maps. The maps I’ve seen so far all seem to share a similar “ant colony” structure which I haven’t really formed an opinion on yet but map structure aside, some of the art in these maps is beautiful
Monsters and Bosses.
I actually began to feel ok about how the monsters attack and react overall, towards the end of the beta. Weighing up what they do and how that compares with other games out there, I think they are ok… and I’d encourage anyone who is not liking how they work to give it a week before making up your mind like I did. As an INT Cleric attempting a lot of solo grind, I thought I was going to be in for a bad time… but actually I was able to find areas with suitable monster spawns to match how my class/build kills things, and found that I actually did better than some other classes leveling in those areas who weren’t well suited for it.
The bosses I’ve been able to find so far unfortunately have all had rather repetitive attack patterns IMO, slow movement and seemingly low intelligence. Generally were not challenging for me pretty soon into the beta, however I have seen people saying they found certain bosses hard for various reasons so it may just be the class I played and how it fights bosses which affected my experience. Or just me in general, but as they are now, I find the boss encounters a bit dull. Some things I thought were particularly repetitive and uninteresting were the “traps” and “adds” which bosses tend to spawn throughout the fight… I feel like these boss encounters would be more exciting if the boss was livelier, moved more, attacked faster and relied less on traps/adds. But as these are relatively low level bosses I’m talking about, I’m still optimistic about higher level boss encounters.
Game depth and Customisation.
I can’t say I fully understand all the choices at the moment, but from what I’ve seen so far ToS looks like it can easily match other games like Ragnarok in terms of character depth/complexity.
The fully customisable stat point system is nice, and the different armour and damage types look like an intriguing rock>paper>scissor type of system. It seems like there’s a lot to think about regarding your equipment choices. The gem system looks interesting but unfortunately I wasn’t able to experience much besides “Gem Enhancement” as I didn’t see any Alchemists during the beta.
I liked that different monsters have multitudes of factors which determine what damage you do to them (and vice versa?), and the weapon type, upgrade and gem systems seem to allow you to maximise your effectiveness against certain things if you wish.
OPTIMISATION
This is where I think the largest problem with Tree of Savior lies at the moment. The game is prone to large FPS drops. If I was alone I was fine but as soon as a heap of people were in the area FPS began falling… And those monster explosions when you kill them… I really don’t think the “Low Mode” does enough to make the game easier to run. I can raid in World of Warcraft with dozens of players shooting millions of spells at 100m tall monsters in a full 3D world, but my computer dies when I warp into Klaipeda. If there is one thing I would like to stand out in this review, it’s that I feel the high system requirements for ToS are a huge drawback.
Anyway that’s all the thoughts. Thanks for letting me in to the beta, I had a lot of fun
Links to other beta posts:
