Bionic Squirrels

The search for the best free mmo – Fiesta!

Sep 142011

Fiesta has been around since 2007; it’s been a free to play MMO from the get-go, designed around microtransactions. The game suffers a bit from the pay to win issue, with purchasable items providing significant combat boosts, however, it is possible to get similar boosts without paying, but you’ll have to work for them, and they may not last as long. The good news is that it doesn’t appear that these boosts are necessary for the usual playing session, although very nice, you can usually handle any level-appropriate fight alone, and there aren’t significant exp boosts for trying to fight far above your level. The pay-to-win items would be very beneficial for attempting to take on boss monsters alone, though, it would seem they were designed around multiple players. The game starts up in a small window, but that’s fixable with a quick trip to the options menu. Aside from that there were very poor descriptions on the class choices in-game, I had to look them up on the wiki to decide which one I wanted to play. For instance, the description of the mage in-game is: “Mages can manipulate the forces of the world with the wisdom of magic.” As you can see, there are no examples of skills a mage can use, his role in a party, or anything else you might want to know when making a class choice. The game is Korean in origin, it sports an anime graphical theme similar to that of other MMOs from the region. Combat I’ve found can be spammy at times, classes with the SP to spare simply spam their damaging skills as fast as possible, although those that don’t have as much SP will tend to rely more on their auto-attack strikes. Soloing can be fairly slow paced, for some classes the only way to regain hp aside from the purchase of potions and such from other players is to rest in their very own mushroom hut. Although very cute, the hut is a fairly slow way to regenerate health and SP. Having a cleric around makes it far less necessary to have such a hut though. Every few levels you can choose where to place skill points, as well as attribute points. Attributes are what everyone is used to in MMOs, strength, endurance, etc. The skill points, however, are not. In Fiesta you can customize your individual skills, increasing their power, lowering their cost, cooldown, or increasing the effect duration where applicable. This makes every player’s abilities unique to that person. The crafting in the game is somewhat simplistic, every character may choose two production skills from a list of only a few. Clicking on a chosen crafting skill brings up a menu; in this menu is a list of things you can make, confusingly though, it lists even recipes that you don’t know how to make, you have to visit the skill merchant, and purchase the recipes for various items before you can craft them (with in-game money that is). Overall Fiesta is a fine choice for your limited gaming time! The game is a fun, fairly standard MMO that is well designed, and not too money-hungry. Create your account for free at http://fiesta.outspark.com/

The search for the best free mmo – Mabinogi

Free, MMO, PC No Responses »

Apr 242011

This one is actually a bit out of order, Vindictus is the sequel to Mabinogi, however it was reviewed first. That’s because there’s really no pattern to which game will be reviewed next, there’s just a big list of games to be reviewed (in no particular order). That being said, there’s no reason to skip over this review; Mabinogi is a wholly different game from Vindictus. The only things the two games have in common are the setting, and the aim of the combat systems (both games try to provide a more active combat experience than a typical MMO, Vindictus is more successful in that regard; having the best combat of any action MMO to date). Vindictus really is about the combat, while Mabinogi attempts to provide more of a virtual life. While the capability is provided in both games, you’re far more likely to see people gathered around a campfire chatting, telling stories, sharing food and the like in Mabinogi than you are in Vindictus, and while the goals of the combat systems are similar, Mabinogi features much slower paced, more deliberate combat than Vindictus.

In Mabinogi you select from one of three basic combat skills (there are more, but three in particular form the base of the system), you have a basic attack, which will beat out a slow attack, which will beat the block, that blocks the basic attack. It’s heavily styled on rock paper scissors, it gets more complicated once there are more skills to play with, but that’s the gist of it.

Acquiring skills is a bit tougher in Mabinogi than most games, requiring you to find specific NPCs that teach specific skills, or sometimes just discovering the skill as you find the appropriate tools. The sheer number of skills is staggering, and your character ages as well as levels up. You get skill points as you age, and the max age is around 25, but you can be “reborn” as a younger version of yourself, which will allow you to once again get those skill points, so really, there is no limit to how many skills you can max out in the game, but due to the time it takes to learn specific skills, you’re best off specializing yourself into one or two general avenues of play at first, and learning a larger breadth of skills later.

Where Vindictus provides an amazing combat system, Mabinogi provides an amazing crafting system. Crafting in Mabinogi starts by collecting materials (as it often does), you then grab a schematic (or pattern, mold, what have you), and tools (some can be carried with you, other tools are features of buildings, like windmills). Much like in older MMOs, you have a chance of failing and wasting your materials, however, unlike in older MMOs this will not destroy your final product. It takes several successful attempts to make a product, but the number of times you fail in between is somewhat inconsequential, the overall quality of the product is determined by a mini game at the end of the crafting. Tailoring for instance will require you to sew up the last few stitches accurately and quickly, while cooking is dependent on getting the ratio of ingredients just right. Whatever the mini-game, if you do well you can produce an item with a much higher quality (and as such, better stats) than what a player might ordinarily find, or buy. Higher skill levels make the mini game easier, but it is quite possible to make a very high quality product at low levels.

Mabinogi has a store where you can purchase things such as pets, new hair styles, increased inventory, and the like, while many of the things sold will make your life in the world of Mabinogi much easier (reduced death penalties for instance), it is not required to reach your maximum levels. It is, however, required to experience the story quests, so minus points there. But if you can put up with it’s quirks, and the age of the title, Mabinogi is a good solid choice for a free MMO.

Although I do rate the sound of every game I play, I don’t always talk about it. In Mabinogi, sound plays a pivotal role, it can give you a warning about when an enemy is going to use a skill, and there are even two crafting skills dedicated to sound. Musicians can play music composed by composers (and many musicians are also composers) on a variety of instruments in the game. While the sound effects in the game are not the most realistic I’ve ever heard, they ARE, however, perfectly appropriate for the game, and the music-based “life skills” are impressive!

Start your free account at http://mabinogi.nexon.net/

Mabinogi (as a free title)
Overall
A combination of the reviewer's bias, and the objective score

Reviewer's Bias
Some games are more than the sum of their parts, this category allows the reviewer to reflect that in his overall rating.

Gameplay
How fun is the game

Graphics
How good does the game look?

Sound
Sound effects, music, etc.

replayability
How long can you play this game before you need to take a break?

Objective score
An average of the gameplay, sound, graphics, and replayability categories.