FEZ Review: 100 Players Go Head to Head

FEZ Review: 100 Players Go Head to Head By Dr. Professor I've been playing MMO's since ragnarok online first came out. I've always loved to make friends online. I feel like the more of a working world an MMO is the better. Thats why I love huge open worlds and big friendly communities. Most importantly is working together with team mates. I think that attention to detail and good art direction are very important to have in a game. It really bothers me to see that most games these days are quickly thrown together. So I'm on a hunt for games people worked hard on!

Unless you speak Japanese or constantly scouring the internet for foreign MMOs, you're likely just hearing about this Square Enix action RPG hybrid. It's just been brought to us by our friends down at gamepot USA. It may be new to us English speakers, but it was already a quick hit in Japan...... In 2007, that is... Fantasy Earth Zero is the freshest free to play action RPG to hit the English market, but do 4 year old graphics, content, and concepts still hold water, or has this well dried up?

Introduction

Fantasy Earth Zero has a basic concept. You've heard of RvR, but probably never like this. FEZ is all about having 100 players go head to head to battle it out over a dynamic map. If you havn't heard that claim before, you probably don't play MMOs much. So what makes FEZ special? Besides RPG gameplay flavored with action, FEZ battles are quite the proper depiction of midi-evil war. Small masses of your team rush for tactical advantage points while Giants and Wraiths cause carnage and confusion as dwindling infantry struggles to defeat them. This is an average map in FEZ.

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The armors the game had to offer were wasted. Everyone ended up wearing this GM give away armor..... not that I'm complaining (I wore it too...)

Character Customization

The first important thing you see in an mmo is the character creation. So FEZ quickly left a good first impression with a small assortment of faces from young to old, hair styles, eye colors, hair colors, and 3 skin colors. It's simple and clean yet far more than enough to be unique. Character creation is commonly forgotten about, so it's good they took some time out for it. You choose your class at birth, and there's no shortage of cool armors, though this is open beta and there were GM give aways... so... perhaps well see some more diversity next time. You also choose your nation.

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Body Type, face type, hair type... I couldn't ask for more.

Small scale Gameplay

Your contribution is much more important than your personal kill ratio (Not to say thats not important, well, you can't suck ) But before we get into the strategy and teamwork, perhaps it's better we start on a smaller scale. You move with the wasd keys and as for combat, this is no point and click. Though it could barely be categorized as an FPS... Imagine it as the slowest paced FPS in existence. You can't move and attack at the same time, and all skills take a few seconds to get off. Needless to say- this takes more than a few minutes to get used to. And you've got jumping and dodging, you have to aim where someone is going to be, taking into account how long your going to take to shoot there. This all makes for a somewhat technical gameplay which is fun and rewarding if you give it the time to become such. The RPG elements are simple and clean. Each character has it's cliche skill tree's. A branch for each weapon, then a branch or 2 off of said weapon. There's no stat system, just a skill tree. Buy potions, level up, gain gold, buy more, level up, buy your next weapon, get some gold, level up, buy your next armor... the normal RPG affair.

Each Nation has it's own voice acted king or queen, who will talk to you and your team, making announcements durring wars.

Large scale Gameplay

Obviously, the over all goal of this game is to ration out your people, protecting your own nation while takeing territory from others. If you do this well, you can potentially end up with all the land- but with 5 other nations, it's unlikely... The thing that makes the war in Fantasy Earth Zero so... war like, is likely that securing parts of the map and taking territory by using obelisk (they mark an area as belonging to your team) is far more important than taking down enemy infantry. This means that one good super player, an FEZ Professional, can't save a team. However, one troll or complete moron can effectively ruin a team, and a game for the other 80 to 90 something players. Working with a team that knows what it's doing is equally as important as working with a team that communicates. Because not communicating is almost as bad as not having a map. Which- by the way- is important, because these maps are huge.