Game Review!!
I've decided to start reviewing games that I come across whenever I feel like it.
Today's game is called NosTale.
http://www.nostale.co.ukFirst it should be noted I haven't spent a terrible amount of time playing this game. My reason for this I'll illustrate later. That being noted let's move on.
NosTale (NT) is brought to us by GameForce 4D which is apparently a British company judging by the .uk tag in URL. NT it's self is another free MMORPG I stumbled across while doing something else today at work.
The download for the game is rather small in terms of an MMO; only 700MB. I used FlashGet to manage the download and it didn't take very long at all. Maybe 15 minutes on the connection I was on.
The NT website is pretty looking and seems fairly straight forward. From what I can see the player guide is fairly complete and comprehensive so it's actually useful and can actually be used as a reference. You might find this statement odd, but some of the MMO's I've played have either had really horrible player guides or didn't have one at all.
The game it's self....
This game is INCREDIBLY cute looking.
I'd say it must have come from some Asian company that also specializes in some sort of anime.. but I don't think that is the case.
Character creation is fairly simple. Pick either male/female. 1 or 2 hair style choices and 1 of about 10 hair colour choices. Name the character and off you go.
As of this writing I've gotten up to lvl 12 and I've only been playing for about an hour... no more than that. During this time I've been working through the games 'tutorial' which consists of quest after quest that will queue pop-ups to show you nifty things about the interface.
Unlike most MMO's I've played, this game doesn't employ the F keys at all. It uses 1-10 and Q,W,E,R,and T. The interface its'self is pretty standard. Upper left has your HP and MP, name, lvl, and a cute picture of your character. Under that is your pets bar. Targeted enemy appears in a bar middle top of screen and a quest window for running quests appears on the right side right under the mini-map in the upper right corner. Bottom edge of the screen has your XP bars, quick slots and system icons. The game will let you access these other menu's with hotkeys... the the hotkey for them doesn't seem to make logical sense. The character menu is accessed with P. Quests with O. At least your Inventory is still I.
Skills strike me as somewhat clunky. You run though a tutorial about it, but I'm still left scratching my head wondering how exactly I use it. You learn skills by meeting the min lvl req, having enough gold and CP to buy the skill. CP, as a side note, is never defined so I don't know if it stands for something or not. You do have Basic and Advanced skills... but it's not required for you to learn Basic skills. According to the NPC you can just start learning advanced skills as soon as you want. Also each skill can have Plus Skills which will make your skill better and customized a little bit. A cool idea in theory but as of yet I can't figure out how to get this system to work even though the game has told me I can use this system and should be using it by now.
This MMO has a pet system and as far as I can tell the pets are only there to be cute and add the occational extra damage to whatever it is your fighting. You can only have one with you at one time and the ones you aren't using go into this mysterious place called Mini-Land which is kind of like your own little yard area with a deck you can access from any where as long as you have an item called Bell of Sweet Home which will take you there. You get a quest to tame your first pet (a chicken) soon after beginning the game. Taming is fairly easy. Target tamable creature, attack until it's health is yellow, use tame skill. Tame either succeeds or fails. If it succeeds the creature you were just attacking will now fall you anywhere. A fairly simple system.. but I can't really tell why you need it at all besides for the part of the target audience that likes having cute little animals follow them around everywhere. More often than not when I'm trying to double click on something to attack it I wind up click my stupid pet cause it's constantly is getting in my way. Which brings up another point.
The only way to attack something is to double click on it. Granted a lot of games employ this method. An exception that comes to mind is Rapplez which will have you at least target the creature, but then you can set an action to your quick slot bar to attack it; you don't have to double click it. The reason this system is SO annoying in NosTale is because the game, in an effort to help because all creatures move about like they are on crack or something, will 'lock' onto the creature and then trail your cursor with them as you move. Anything that comes with about 5 pixels of you cursor will generate this behavior. This is very annoying when all the mobs travel in packs and as you try to target one another jumps by stealing away your cursor.
A unique aspect is the mission system. Rarely in an MMO do you find instance driven missions. In this game you fight missions out in a land called TimeSpace. All missions have a time limit. If you don't complete the mission in time you fail and you only get so many chances to complete the missions. Missions are fairly straight forward.. get from point A to point B. In the middle will be rooms you can just run through, rooms you have to kill all the creatures in to unlock the door, and rooms with levers you must throw to open the door which are almost always trapped, meaning they spawn monsters that have to be killed before the door will open. At the end of a mission it totals up your score and gives you your loots. Very simple... but I'm not sure I like the timed system. Even though I always finished the missions I was on in time, I was always feeling rushed which made me enjoy the game less.
Game configuration options are almost non-existent and consist of what resolution you want, windowed mode option and sound level sliders for sound effects and the background music. The fact that this game has background music is a plus. A lot of free MMO's don't. But the music it does have is annoyingly happy, cheerful, and repetitive.
The game has some nice features. Music is always a plus in my book, it's free, has some fairly nice 3D graphics (even though they are highly cutesey cartoony), and a pretty unique mission system. However the movement system leaves a lot to be desired and probably the thing that makes me want to brain myself. The camera is free moving but only so much and not enough to give me the angles I really want when I play a game like this. The zoom isn't much of one which prevents you have getting a nice tight shot on your avatar to check out your gear and get decent screen shots. When you do move your character they run so insanely slow it feels like it take forever to move anywhere. Also when you target where your character is to go to they will take any random path they want to actually get there instead of running in just a straight line. This is only annoying because it slows them down more and kept me wondering if the game was reading my commands correctly.
On the whole... if you like incredibly cute games and are looking for an MMO to play.. NosTale isn't bad, but I've seen better. In my mind the clunky control system doesn't make up for the free aspect of the game. This isn't something that has me wanting to play more and instead makes me want to go get some Advil for the headaches it's caused.
Current Mood: 
thoughtful 
chipper
tired