Saturday, May 19, 2007

Lunia Online, Darkness and Light update, and more!

Hey!

Well, I just noticed it was almost a month since my last post! I've been busy inbetween with finals and training, but I'm settled down into my summer job now so I should be able to update more often.

In the meantime I've had some time to look at Lunia Online, a new MMO by GamenGame (do they ever stop publishing?). Its based around an arcade-style RPG theme, complete with scrolling screens and big mean orcs! As a result, the graphics arent anything to write home about. However, they are done well enough to not cause your eyes to bleed, so bonus points there. My first impression of the actual gameplay was "wow". Its riddled with those classic arcade game touches, including mini-cutscenes with 2d anime characters at every "stop" in the mission. Where it improves, is the ability to level up and QUITE an expansive skill system, which albiet has many different builds.

In addition, there is combo moves, such as ->->A or AAS, etc.. that knock enemies to the ground, allow you to lunge at them and so much more. But what would an MMORPG be without items? So, they've got items of all the normal types for each class, which give stat bonuses and hidden unlockable features when upgraded by doing a quest in town. All this molds together to make a rather sturdy MMO basis, with a decent build system, actual player "skill" involved in attacking, and a wonderful story/quest system.

However, there just HAD to be a downside. The controls are done via the arrow keys, which is fine, but they're completely arcade style; if you're not going perfectly left, right, up, or down you've got a problem. The controls are VERY sloppy and moving at angle is quite difficult. To add to that, the graphics are sometimes not in tune with the ground, thus you cant move to some places you would assume you could. Since movement is SO important in an arcade style game, I found it impossible to play for long periods of time, and thus I cant recommend that anyone play this, at least not without a gamer pad.

Rating:
6/10 (movement is too crucial for its genre, and no stat system)

Advice:
AVOID

And in other news, Darkness and Light recently updated to add 4 more classes and a new map. Also lots of balance changes, check out the website for more info.

-RF