Scions of Fate Review: Painful.

Hello!

(I'll be adding screenshots later)

Scions of Fate is the western version of the hit game "Yulgang" in asia. Yulgang boasts about its 70 million registered users (free-to-play). So naturally, I had to try Scions of Fate (SOF) when it came out. So, after waiting through countless delays and tolerating bad community management, I finally got SOF downloaded, installed, and ready to go. And its all downhill from there..

Lets start with the graphics:
As Yulgang is a little old, the graphics are not at their highest potential for a "new" MMO, but nevertheless they are easy on the eyes. There was a few graphical glitches, but the visible distance was quite large, and it was still open beta; thus nothing was too bad. The graphics get a "meh" from me; as they are functional but not breath taking.

Moving onto to the core game play. This is where my enjoyment of the game went to zero. The game play is UTTERLY boring, with no innovation, and a horrible rendition of even a crappy standard MMO. There is no stat points. Infact, the levels in the game DO NOTHING but give you a wee bit more HP/SP. Woohoo! And every few levels you get to go back to town and buy store-bought gear. Woohoo! There is literally no purpose in leveling other than to get the next skill in your tree (I'll talk about that later), or to buy the next ungodly expensive weapon from the store. A total flop.

The character classe.: The game contains 5 base character classes: Swordsman, Bladesman, Spearman, Bowman, Healer. As you can see, the first three are essentially copies of each other, just change the weapon they can use. Whereas the Bowman has incredibly range, and with the proper running tactics, can never be hit. An important imbalance in PVP. The good part is each of the base classes can choose between one of two paths at the first class change. (There is 4 class changes total). For example, the healer can choose Holy Physician or Dark Physician. Which is a system I do enjoy.

To add insult to injury, the item system was poor at best. The items dropped from monsters almost a full second after you killed them, so it was common to walk around and see items all over the ground. As people killed mobs, they would run onward thinking nothing dropped, when something does indeed drop 1-2 seconds later. To cap it off, the idea of customization in the game was the dropping of "rare" gems. Sapphire, Ruby, etc.. Thus, you would commonly have to turn around and check if your monsters dropped anything after you left! You then used these gems at the local blacksmith to "upgrade" a weapon/armor. They did offer a wide variety of customization in the equipment, but they were limited due to the expensive nature and unpredictable results. Since many of the gems sold for incredible amounts of money to NPC's, it simply is not affordable to enchant every time you get a new weapon. (The weapons are purchased based on GOLD ONLY, so if you're level 1, you could have an insane weapon provided you had the gold). But, in SOF's defence, the enchanting/enhancing process offers customization and a semi-build for your character (since they have no stat points.) Although it makes the game far too item-based (IGE anyone?).

The skill system is almost the poorest I've ever seen. You get a new skill every 5-10 levels, and its generally incredibly stronger than your previous one, so there is basically 1 skill you ever use; depending on your level. That aspect of it gets very boring, very quickly. For example, by the time you were a level 60 Beast Slayer (After 2 class changes from swordsman), you would have a TOTAL of 9 skills (8 being useless). That is if you could afford to/wanted to purchase them. There is really nothing more to say. It is simply the worst skill system of any MMO I've ever played.

Moving onto the general game atmosphere, such as quests, leveling etc.. The quests are poor. No other way to say it. You go out and kill X monsters, return to Y NPC, receive Z award. Most of the monsters they ask you to kill are in obscure locations, and thus you need to keep the website open to search for them at each quest. There is nothing innovative, nothing exciting, and definitely nothing fun. I already did my rant on the leveling system, but I'd also like to say that the grind is too hard for the first few levels. It should take minimal amount of time to get to level 10 and get into the game. Past that, I'm fine with increasing leveling time, but at the start, things should not take long. In SOF, it takes a while. And to finish off this segment of the review; the pet system. I WOULD use the pet system as an interesting feature of the game, but its horribly explained in game; and as it turns out, the Cash Shop (real money for in game items) is the prime way you get pets. And not to mention, the Cash Shop causes other broken features.
Such as:
"Gold Supremacy Charm: lasts 30 days"
1. 20% increase in the experience gained by hunting.
2. 150% of the Ki points from hunting.
3. 120% of gold gathered from hunting.
4. You may participate in premium quests.
5. 1% decrease in the experience you lose from your character dieing.
6. You may save up to 4 locations on your Charm of Passage.
7. 120% of the gold from selling items to NPC shops.
8. 5% increase in item enchantment success rate.
9. 5% increase in item strengthening success rate.

As you can see, that's grossly overpowered. Most importantly the "premium quests" which offer godly rewards and can be repeated as many times as you'd like. Essentially FORCING you to "pay" for the game if you want to play competitively.

Overall, I have to say the game is a total flop. With the only interesting part of the entire system being the item enchanting/enhancing. I'm losing faith in F2P MMO's quite quickly. Into the MMO Trash bin you go SOF.

Advice:
AVOID

Rating:
4.5/10

-RF