Forsaken World Review #3

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And now, watch as I pull the end of a review out of this... ummm... hat! yeah, that's where I got it from!  For those of us just joining in, I've been regaling you with stories of my exploration of Forsaken World, an RPGMMO from developers Perfect World.  So far we have looked at four of the six scores, and here is what you missed:

SCORES

Playability: 4/5 A very solid tutorial system, easily used and modifiable keysettings, and a good HUD makes this game easy to learn and fun to play.

Atmospherics: 4/5 Beautiful design went into most of what you see, from the characters to the scenery, and although I think that some of the character designs are a bit too frou-frou (frou-frou: From the pig-latin freoua-freoua, meaning sissy or weak.  See also: namby-pamby and pansy-boy)  for my tastes, there can be no denying that they are visually stunning.

 Learning Curve: 3/5  Character development is smooth, even, but narrow and ultimately did not allow me to try my own style of play due to the strict adherence to class roles.  The fact that all races had only some of the classes available to them was annoying, and the amount of options within the role was not enough.

Community: 2/5  No interaction, despite attempts to reach out, ask for help, or at least talk to others.  Everyone seemed to be off doing their own thing, and with the combat system being so easy to wipe out most enemies without trying, I can see why.

And now the final two scores, Support and Cash Shop:

Support:  5/5 Not once did I have any reason to  submit a trouble ticket, and with a regularly updated game and constant attention, I don't see that you would have reason to save for Deus Ex Machina type events.

Cash Shop: 0/5  There's permanent stat boosts in them thar shops, and I ain't havin' none of it!  Huge amounts of Pay-to-Win violations put this score into the bay with cement shoes.

OVERALL:  18/30  Overall the game is solid, but not my cuppa tee in combat, style, limited development paths, and definintely this game is not a true Free To Play (FTP) game.

If you want to go back and read the reviews that led up to here, here's the links:
http://flatbrokegamerreview.blogspot.com/2012/07/forsaken-world-review-1.html
http://flatbrokegamerreview.blogspot.com/2012/08/forsaken-world-review-2.html

On with the rest!

SUPPORTING YOUR GAME

Her aim, flawless.  Her fashion sense, mmm not so much.

Perfect World does a dynamite job of keeping all of their games up to date, well supported for problems, and in general they really do care about your experience.  You may have read my earlier review of their brawler, Rusty Hearts, and there I did need to submit a trouble ticket with quick results, but this game ran like a sharp knife through hot butter.  I will definitely be reviewing more of their games in the future for this fact alone.

IS IT FTP OR PTW?

The biggest stumbling block that this game has is the fact that there are clearly permanent boosts available in the shop.  As this game is driven by your equipment, and the fact is that you can buy equipment improvement in the cash shop in ABUNDANCE means that this game gets the first goose egg in the Cash Shop category.

FINAL THOUGHTS

If you like Pina Coladas, go listen to Jimmy Buffet.  If you like a simple, easily, heavily structured game with  visually complex and brightly patterned characters, play Forsaken World.  But if you like a challenging game, where your pocketbook does not define your success, with enjoyable character depth and variety, then look elsewhere.

That's it!  I finished one of the new Reviews, and it only took me... way too long.  Seriously, thank you to all of you who keep coming back for more (you masochists) and keep your ear to the ground (or follow my missives by one of the options on the right) for my review of : Maplestory!  Till that uncertain time, Stand Up, Hook Up, and Shuffle To The Door, Jump Right Out And Shout "We Waanntt mmmoooooorrrre........"

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Forsaken World Review #2

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Here I come to save the Da-ay! Or at least interject a little mild entertainment, which for my hectic life is about the same.  It is I, NoCashReq, here with another look into the MMO Forsaken World. In our last installment, i forgot to include my BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) and put the scores at the end of the article, two things I wanted to keep at the beginning so if you only wanted to know a 30 second shot of my opinion, you could get it, and if you wanted the full experience that is FBGR, you could happily read on.  I am returning to that format, and so you will find these parts at the beginning of each of the postings regardless of whether I am posting a full review or the new format of several posts for one review.  But enough about that, back to the game...

 When we left our story last, I had managed to create two characters for this game, a dwarf sharpshooter and a stoneman defender, and had made it through the basic levels early in the game, and headed out into the world to stake my claim to GLORY!

And then I became a florist.

 BLUF:  The games strict adherence to classes leaves you a single path for your character, and although the game mechanics do allow for choosing which skills you have on quick keys, there isn't enough room to find your own path. The community largely ignored me, and I them, as there were no real reasons to involve them in my questing.

SCORES

Learning Curve: 3/5  Character development is smooth, even, but narrow and ultimately did not allow me to try my own style of play due to the strict adherence to class roles.  The fact that all races had only some of the classes available to them was annoying, and the amount of options within the role was not enough.

Community: 2/5  No interaction, despite attempts to reach out, ask for help, or at least talk to others.  Everyone seemed to be off doing their own thing, and with the combat system being so easy to wipe out most enemies without trying, I can see why.


 BEYOND THE TRAINING

Wait, wait wait wait, did you say a florist?  Yes,this game allows your character to have multiple little side jobs like herbalist, cook, potionmaker, etc. and gives you little tasks to teach you the basics for all your jobs.  Little stuff like this allows for a more rich game experience, creates little projects for you to do while questing, and basically gets ignored as you search for monsters to kill.  Or at least it did by me.  Seriously, I wanna shoot something, not go throw stuff in a pot and go "BLAM!"

The regular story-driving quests that follow the initial training grounds involved an inordinate amount of running to and from Non-Player Characters (NPCs) to have long drawn out discussions about your quest, the meaning of life, and other stuff that I, in my infinite wisdom and extremely finite attention span, mostly glossed over once I realized that there was no important information.  Really,  why should I carry on long preset conversations with the computer unless the script is filled with useful information, or is at least entertaining with ribald chicanery and offbeat sarcasm?  The auto-direct saved me from wandering forever on these runaround quests, as finding anyone by chance seemed impossible, and skipping the dialog saved my sanity.  What's left of it, anyway.

Combat never got any more challenging than in the first few levels.  Now yes, I did add some new and exciting tricks to my character's repertoire, and yes, some of the graphics for those attacks were cool, but when I can spam every special attack on one enemy, wait for the cooldowns, and then do it again on the enemy RIGHT NEXT TO THE ONE I JUST KILLED without a major scratch in my armor, it's too easy.

COMMUNITY RELATIONS

Yes, you get to ride goats. No, you don't get to name them Mr. Fluffykinwooodlesmoochie.

My experiences with online gaming have ranged from the positive, supportive fun of finding new friends and allies, to the acidic, simpleton-level, foul mouthed wit of twelve year olds who think that a DSL line gives them enough protection to use language that I would box their ears for (and their parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and second cousins for letting them end up that way), but until I played this game, I had never experienced a solo MMO before.  Seriously, there are other people playing this game? WHERE? The few other players I ran into ignored me like I was a NPC, despite my several attempts to engage them, try to strike up a band of merry men, insult their goats (see pic), etc.  All attempts to interact were ignored, and so I continued on.  After a while though, I realized that the majority of them were ignoring me because they didn't need anyone else to help them along.  Now, maybe the PVP servers are different, maybe there people join together to keep from getting smashed flat by rival teams, but there just was no response from other players on the PVE server I was on.

There you go, a little more of my less-than-humble opinion, expect the final installment of this review soon, but please don't hold your breath.  Blue just isn't your color.  Till then, keep gaming for the stars!

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Forsaken World Review #1

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New format, new game, Same old me.  Welcome back to Flat Broke Gamer Review, and the first part of the review for:

Forsaken World is a MMORPG developed and produced by Perfect World in October 2010.





BACKSTORY

Like many of the MMOs out there, the start of Forsaken World's story are with the gods.  Dyos the creator and Nyos the destroyer, opposites in a balanced universe, these two followed and fought each other, until Dyos came upon the world of Eyrda, and found a tree with a giant star wheel at the top.  He and other gods built up the world of Eyrda, and his children Tytan, Illyfue and Vyda created the races of the world. When Nyos arrived, Dyos had left, leading Nyos to chase him yet again.  Nyos left behind a new god, Mylvada, with all the power to destroy Eyrda. Several wars ensued between the gods and their followers, destroying two continents in the process.


GETTING STARTED

Character creation follows a fairly simple progression of option pages: Race, Class, Male or Female, facial and hair options, etc.  I chose to try out two of the races available, but here is the full rundown.

Human: Just exactly what you'd expect from an MMO, Humans are more adaptable than most other races, and can be Warriors, Assassins, Mages and Priests.

Elves: Falling definitely on the Anime side of the Elf scale, these over dressed, prissy, pointy eared people fall easily into the stereotypes for design.  Elves can be Warriors, Priests, and Bards.

Kindred: Instead of sparkly skin, we get outlandish sparkly clothes for these vampires.  Created by one of the Demigods, Kindred can be Assassins, Mages, or Vampires (don't strain your brain on this too much, but yes, vampire race has a vampire class), but always "Fab-ulous!"

Dwarves:  Dwarves only have one class available, Sharpshooter.  Steampunk inspired rifles are this race's claim to fame, and any game where I get to break out a matchlock is worth trying.

Stonemen:  Not only does this race have only one class, because they are created by magic, only Male Stonemen exist.  These rocky dudes are Protectors, Forsaken World's hammer-wielding, armored-out-the yin-yang Tank class.

You do not have the option of joining the side of evil and trying to destroy the world, but your options are fairly good, and I think most people will find a character they'll like.  Avoiding the cliched and over done, I built a Dwarf and a Stoneman.  There is enough variety in the face/hair/jewelry department to find a look all your own, but not so much that you spend too long getting to the game.

TUTORIAL

The tutorial area of the world is actually pretty big, and specific to your race, with several quests that run you through the gamut of learning your skills, how to auto attack, interacting with the locals, etc.  Most monsters ignore you until you attack, so I found it WAY too easy to annihilate them, especially since they don't even help each other after you attack.  once you've unlocked some of your special attacks, you can usually string two or three together and kill the monsters before they even get a swat or two in.  Those rare monsters that will attack you on sight have a small marker overhead, so you can either avoid them or try to take them out at your leisure.  I found that the setup for the controls were comfortable, adaptable, and most importantly, easily understood.  This is a user-friendly game, and the HUD is easily read and understood.  One good feature the game has is the auto-direct function.  On your quest menu, if you click on someone's highlighted name, the game will automatically guide you to them, which is really good since the areas are huge and the onscreen map is a little hard to follow.  You train in the beginner's area until reaching level ten, and then have the option to head to Freedom Harbor, there to rub elbows with the other races and take your place in the fight to protect Eyrda.

SCORES

Playability: 4/5 A very solid tutorial system, easily used and modifiable keysettings, and a good HUD makes this game easy to learn and fun to play.

Atmospherics: 4/5 Beautiful design went into most of what you see, from the characters to the scenery, and although I think that some of the character designs are a bit too frou-frou (frou-frou: From the pig-latin freoua-freoua, meaning sissy or weak.  See also: namby-pamby and pansy-boy)  for my tastes, there can be no denying that they are visually stunning.

So there's the first part of Forsaken World's Review, tune in next time to see what I thought about developing your character beyond the newbie ranks and the community of players!  For now this is NoCashReq, signing off!

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RESPAWNING in 3... 2... 1...

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I LIIIIIVE!  MWAHAHahahaha, (cough, COUGH) ack.... hairball. Sorry bout that.  But contrary to popular belief, I am not dead yet.  In fact I think I'll go out for a walk!

Flat Broke Gamer Review is not going anywhere either, so for those of you who have been waiting for more, it is on the way.  And for those of you who stumbled onto this little nugget of low-cost online games and general shenanigans, WELCOME!  We always like new additions to the House of Budgeteers.  (Not sure if I just made that word up, but I like it!)  Anywho, the simple story of where I went is that everything in my life has just changed, except for my wife, who is the loveliest and strongest grounding force in the hurricane that is my existance right now.  New Son, new job, new home, and very little reliable internet connections for the last few months.  So, I failed to keep up anything resembling what I promised.

But now that I'm settling in to all this newness, its time to bring back some of the old.  Specifically, it is time to revive this blog, follow up on my promises, and give you, my discerning readers, what you want:  My Less-than-humble opinion on what games are worth your time.  So, expect my next post soon!  I have not played Forsaken World in quite a while, so to do it justice, I will start from scratch, and get to cracking on the review.  For now, I'm NoCashReq, and you're not.  Laters!

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Epiphany

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BOOOOOOM!  Yes, for those of us who are more literate than the others, you may have guessed it, but that was the sound of my mind exploding.  Because I had a thought (Warning: This is one of the signs of the Apocalypse, start building your world-escaping device/portal/vehicle now) and that thought was this: Rather than putting in play-by-play posts leading up to the main review, what if I posted each part of the review on different days of the week, with a wrap up at the end.  I could lead off with a backstory summary, hit each of the major scoring points, and then put it all together in a regular full-on review at the end, with the cumulative score and BLUF portions.  It would still be a longer process for each review, but it would be more coherent, and that way you'd get a more in-depth review of each of the scores.

My opinion is to give this a try, but what do you think?  Post your vote and thoughts on the comments board, I will review them and post the results next week.  This is your chance to truly change this blog, so let your voice be heard!

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First Impressions: Forsaken World

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Gamers and friends, it is I, NoCashReq, with the first of a new type of update, the play-by-play. I will still delight and amaze (or at least babble on incessantly) with a complete review like those you've seen me do so far, but since those will only be coming every other week, the rest of the time will be filled with my thoughts of the game or games that I'm playing or review as they happen.  They will not be on a regular schedule, so expect them to hit out of the blue.  If you haven't already, I'd suggest following me either as a Blogger member, or via email (both are available on the right side of the screen).

Enough of all that trash, let's get to the matter at hand: my impressions as I fire up Forsaken World for the first time!

CREDIT WHERE ITS DUE
Forsaken World is a fantasy style MMORPG.  It was developed, and is currently produced, by Perfect World, and was released in October 2010.

CHARACTER CREATION

The character creation page reminds me of several other MMOs, starting with a simple click and choose between races and the sex of your character. One of the suprising things is that each race has specific classes for it, rather than an open choice.  Dwarves and Stonemen only have one class each, Elves and Kindred (kind of a vampire race) have three, and Humans have the most at four. All of the characters have a very bright, anime style to them, all very grandiose and colorful.  I've started two characters to see how they work, a Dwarf Sharpshooter and a Stoneman Protector.  The choices for originality are rather limited, with face, hair, skin color, and flair (facial markings, tattoos, jewelry, etc.)  but the overall designs are pretty nice.  The odd thing that the game adds is it asks for a birthdate. 

The beginning quests are tutorial in nature, and so far are pretty easy.  Combat is not automatic, you have to engage a monster for it to even notice you.

So far, it's an interesting game, we'll see how it does.

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AAAAACCCCK!

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Life is what happens while your busy making plans... or when God decides to remind you of his sense of humor.  Needless to say, Real Life has reared his ugly head, I am overwhelmed with work, a two month old, and getting ready to uproot and change everthing.  So, in order to play long enough to make my posts fair and entertaining, for the nearby future, I will be changing my official Reviews to once every two weeks, postponing the monthly reviews, and to keep you interested, will instead start posting smaller, bite-size bits of my playing experiences as I go.  You'll get to see the work product that goes into my reviews, some of the insanity that is currently my life, and I will have the time to put together a quality review every two weeks!  Until my next gaming time, this is NoCashReq, and that's the way the cookie crumbles!

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