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Atlantica Online: First impressions
October 17th, 2008 by Malcom
I had a chance to play Atlantica Online earlier this week in-between being sick and playing Warhammer: Online. For a game that is in beta, it seems to want to be treated as a game that has been already released, claiming in its advertisements: "Love it, or we'll give cash for your character!" This caught my eye specifically and made me want to try the game, not because I wanted to love it; I figured I'd hate it, since I'm a bitter shell of a man, and could get some cash out of it. However, if you take a look at the details of the 'offer' it sounds more like they're trying to get cheap power-leveling out of their players than actually convince you to play. Offers aside, we're here to discuss my first impressions, so let's get on with it!
Graphics/UI: 5/10 - 'Meh'
The graphics are nothing innovative. They're similar to most eastern games on the market. This game is particularly similar to Sword of the New World, a MMORTSRPG(?) I had the chance to try last year. I don't normally review games at the login screen, but this one wants to be. I had never in all my years seen a login screen with so many, many random colors. I think it was depicting a large-scale battle, but to me it seemed like an orgy of fairies and daemons on a rainbow chessboard. Once I survived the seizure-inducing login screen, it was time to create my character. Character customization is very limited, not only at the character screen but in-game as well. I only had about five hairstyles to choose from, two outfit types, and a...weapon? Well, anyway, once in-game the graphics didn't get that much better. After playing to about level 10(I think), I had gotten quite a few pieces of armor. Instead of evenly distributing them between myself and my mercenaries I figured I'd put them all on my "visible" character to upgrade his appearance. Where's my helmet? Where are the new pants I got? The character looked exactly the same as it did before I equipped anything on him.
Now, let's make something very clear. The game needs to have low system requirements in order to function properly, as battles will eventually become very, very large. This is not why the game's graphics are 'meh'. World of Warcraft and Warhammer: Online both had relatively low system requirements when released as compared to the available technology at the time. However, the way they depicted their characters, the landscapes, the spell effects, was very original, and relevant to the world they were basing the game on. Atlantica Online just seems to have copied and pasted a combination of Lineage 2 graphics, with Sword of the New World graphics, and other eastern games. That's harsh, perhaps, but it seems to be the way the game wants to be treated. "Old MMOs not 'WOW'ing you?" it proudly boasts in its advertisements, suggesting that they have something new and refreshing to offer. It certainly isn't in the graphics department.
Gameplay/Chat/Community: 5/10 - 'Who's my special little boy?'
This section of my first impressions review will not focus on the combat aspect of the game. That's a separate aspect altogether as they seem to want it to be. As soon as you start playing, the game will assume that you don't know how to use your mouse or keyboard and will simply 'lock' you to the tutorial NPC. It will explain the world to you a little bit, and how to get started on completing your first quest. This is where the game also makes another assumption: it seems to believe that you're too dumb to find battles on your own, so it will go find them for you. That's right, there's an 'auto-move' option that will automatically move you to your active quest's objective. From there, all you have to do is either talk to NPC X or kill monster Y.
Perhaps an aspect that the tutorial should have expanded on was how to use the chat interface. I kept seeing only one person in my chat log, and they seemed to be talking to themselves. Not in the sense that there was no one else for them to talk to, but in the sense that they seemed to be answering questions and holding a conversation while there was no one else in the chatroom talking. Maybe I didn't know how to use the chat, or maybe the game packs an auto-ignore feature that will ignore people it knows you won't like automatically.
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