This is something I randomly thought up of doing after online game surfing a few weeks ago. Essentially, I realize that in terms of online gaming, this blog has a dominant focus on Granado Espada and Dragonica, therefore, I thought it would expand this sites information on a wide variety of MMORPGS, and as well, introduce a number of other online games to you all, both english-based and japanese-based.
The first online game I shall be critiquing is known as Divina Online, which is hosted by both Nexon and GungHo (I am not entirely sure if these are the same servers, but since GungHo has strict international IP bans on their titles, I assume they are different servers). It is not a game for very serious gamers who prefer games like Granado Espada, World of Warcraft et cetera, however instead seems to target the more youthful demographic, as shall be seen in footage shortly in this article.
What made me choose this one to start out with? Honestly, it was a completely random selection that I chose when I decided to do these articles, so the question is, was my random selection good or bad?
The First 15-20 Minutes
Personally, I find that ones experiences within the first 15-30 minutes of a game could quite easily determine if you will continue to play the game or not. Therefore, I shall be outlining the first 15 minutes of what a player can expect to see in the game.
Like a number of Japanese online games, they are required to be loaded up through the official website, which is personally a real pain since I have to load up the rustic Internet Explorer which remains my least preferable choice of internet browser. After patching the game, you are brought to the server screen, however what you do afterwards will depend on your speaker/headphone sound levels. From the moment you start the game, they play the song “True Truly Love” by Yui Horie. Whilst this is not a bad song, they have it up full blast which covers up every other sound effect in the game, so be warned that you may be ripping off your headphones.
Ignoring that, you must first create your character, in which you are offered 6 class choices which include the generic swords(wo)man and magic classes, up to a cannon-user class. This does offer a variety which can then be upgraded at level 25. Character customisation is relatively extensive, with hair, clothing colour and voice selectable, and with approximately 15 hair styles per gender. However, disappointingly, whilst there are some good face designs, the eye colours are not customizable and therefore limit the customization potential.
Note: For a female customisation video, please click here, the above video is of a male character customization.
So I create a character and load up, where I start quests with the locals of a town, which also includes a giant frog (Whatever floats their boat) and after a few of the generic missions, I finally get to go out and kill some monsters “yay!”. I played as the primary magic character which offers some decent healing and magic spells, and I can say that the animation designs of the spells were very cheery, however I did find that at the start, the quests were little more then kill X or go and see that person, and after ten or so minutes, I had already reached level 6. The combat at the start seemed very repetitive and I resorted to button mashing, and by button, I mean mouse since, whilst the character was controllable with the keyboard, I couldnt get the spells to properly work (Maybe its just me~)
and DING! The twenty minutes were up.
Thoughts
- Graphics – The graphics were very cutesy for the character and monster designs, however in terms of the town environments, the NPCs were spaced out a bit too much and having a smaller town, with more people bunched together may have given the towns a much “fuller” look. In terms of the field environments, they were interesting to look at, however I still think it was far too big.
- Music – Despite the destruction of my eardrum at the start of the game, the music of the game is pretty enjoyable. Despite previous comments, Yui Horie’s song is really enjoyable to listen to, however it would be nice if there was another song to listen too during the login and character creation process.
- Character Voices: All characters have to have a voice associated with them, and whilst there are no pitch changing, similar to games such as Phantasy Star Universe, there was a nice variety and allowed you to have anything from serious to cutesy moe girl.
- Overall Gameplay: In terms of overall gameplay, I consider it to be a game that relies on its cutesy-ness to get gamers hooked, as evident from… well, quite a bit of the game. Sadly, I was not able to dig into the storyline that much, but the storyline might change all of that. The battles are a bit slow, especially with mages since they can only really use magic to attack.
- Other Uninvestigated Features: There seems to be a number of extra gameplay features that I was not able to investigate such as: The pet system [Link], a territory system where you and/or a clan can own a region where you can place houses on the land [Link], a PvP system [Link] and a soulmate system, where you can have your own partner animal [Link].
Overall, if this game were to be released in english, I would definitely consider checking it out.
There is currently no announcement of any game company having licensed this title at this time.
And that is the end of the first MMORPG Watch review! I realize that doing a Japanese-only game was a bit hard for a new review type, so I shall announce the next title I will be reviewing is…… Atlantica Online, which I have had a bit more experience with (alongside no complications of translating Japanese –> English)
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