KeyWord: Atlantica Online, Sword of the New World, MMO
Summary:The website of GamingNexus has released an article of the first impressions of Atlantica Online. The world view of Atlantica Online is the Earth as we know it in outline, at any rate though the third-person view...
The world view of Atlantica Online is the Earth as we know it in outline, at any rate though the third-person view is a parallel universe of gleaming-high fantasy in the grand tradition of Eastern role-playing games. Neon-glimmering towers; double-stacked, three-story mushrooms; cliff edges swallowed in clouds, and pastel-painted skies reaching dreamy distances. And even though Atlantis is nothing more than a dream, a memory, it#DY#s also the resting place of the greatest power: The Memory of Atlantis. I#DY#m not exactly sure what that#DY#s supposed to mean, but everyone begins here, in this misty, bloom-lit realm of etched stone and snowy hills, which simultaneously serves as the game#DY#s theoretical endpoint. Master the worldly realm, and you#DY#re promised to master the memory of Atlantis. Plus the three lovely ladies tutoring you at the beginning will, um, serve you. I#DY#m hoping the extent of that service is negotiable. Or at least as pubescently-gratifying as the text would suggest. But I#DY#m not holding my breath.
Atlantica hasn#DY#t been entirely forthright on what it#DY#s meant by "turn-based MMO." Is this a strict Galactic Civilizations type of turn-based movement? Perhaps the hybridized turn-basing of a Total War game? Actually, it#DY#s neither. It#DY#s pound for pound a JRPG (Japanese Role-Playing Game), yes, Atlantica is Korean-built, but JRPG conventions are typically understood, with real-time movement in the overworld, while instanced combat cuts to a battle effectively invisible to anyone not involved, and a front-and-back-row strategy likened to Lost Odyssey draws up the battle lines. (You typically have to defeat the creature in the front row before you can attack the creature in the back; magic and arrows notwithstanding.)
I only got a tip-of-the-tongue taste of Atlantica during its recent stint of closed beta time (the next round starts up again on August 25th), but I#DY#ll concede that the gameplay is a pleasing shift from typical MMO standards, but not altogether unfamiliar as far as JRPGs go. But perhaps I was enjoying Atlantica for the wrong reasons, considering its MMO foundation. Despite being massively-multiplayer, Atlantica very much trundles along a "massively-singleplayer" experience, a complaint similarly leveled against Sword of the New World: Granado Espada, which entrusted each player with a party of three. In Atlantica, the main character can hire up to seven player-controlled mercenaries. In persistent online worlds, where individuality comes at a premium, it seems even easier to get lost in the shuffle when every player, gold farmer, and their mother is inflating the server population eight-fold. Granted, you only see your main character while traversing the world (your party only appears during fights), but MMOs tend to feel very lonely if you#DY#re not initially required to interact with anyone. The chat channels were expectantly hushed.
