Quick Sample: Sword of the New World

In early September, I downloaded the intriguing Sword of the New World, a Korean fantasy MMORPG that is “free to play,” although the game ultimately favors players who buy in game items and money with real money transfer (RMT).

I had planned to write a detailed review of the game, but an excellent write-up appeared a couple of days ago at Hardcore Casual that really tells you all you need to know

For myself, here’s what I very much enjoyed about the game:

• The characters look amazing. The costumes are richly detailed and beautiful, and even though you can’t do even one thing to customize their faces, they are appealing. This game has truly captured the anime look and wedded it to the setting.
• The setting is unique: pseudo-Spanish exploration of a (not the) new world. It has some of the flavor of the popular pirate genre but winds up carving out a unique niche. The setting doesn’t try to be believable. Lavishly decorated ballrooms and opulent halls line the streets of a city on the edge of an unexplored continent. But when you’re playing, you just don’t care.
• The music is gorgeous and setting appropriate (really, you just have to listen to it), and the game allows you to control what music is playing.
• The chance to control three characters simultaneously means a person like me, who loves to explore every class available, doesn’t have to split time among quite so many different groups. You can easily make characters of all classes and choose whatever combination seems interesting when you set up an adventuring party.

That said, I quit the game after about a week, because for all the good points, I find it’s just a terrible game. Here’s why:

• It’s too “gamey” for me. As I’ve said before, I prefer a more immersive environment, and Sword of the New World instead reminds me that I’m playing a game. Controlling three characters means I’m not really roleplaying any one; instead, I’m operating three virtual chess pieces simultaneously. The NPCs talk openly about game mechanics.
• Combat is either entirely too easy or almost too hard. One thing I actively dislike about most current MMOs is that they’re too easy. WoW and LotRO are both designed to be accessible to anyone, and even the most difficult challenges are met primarily with time investment, not with skill. In SotNW, though, adventuring can be so easy that you can literally leave the game running for hours at a time, then come back and see how far your characters have leveled. Seriously, the game is actively designed to let your characters grind while you eat lunch. On the other hand, the challenging dungeons and encounters require such careful management of your characters’ abilities and positions to handle the onslaught of monsters – something you won’t have practiced in the super-easy leveling you’ve done so far – that even experienced, skilled gamers may be unable to handle them consistently.
• RMT pisses me off. There are some good arguments for a revenue model based on real cash for in-game rewards, but as someone who prefers immersion, I find such options break my suspension of disbelief. Also, I happen to prefer games in which those with more abundant real-world capital don’t automatically have an advantage.

The worst problem with the game is that I was just plain bored with it after four or five days of exploring. Without a reasonable challenge, an interesting storyline, or a chance to interact in a fun way with other players, even the beautifully realized setting couldn’t hold my interest.

Instead, I felt as if I were playing ProgressQuest. That’s not really fair, of course. The game has lots more to offer. But it doesn’t have lots to offer me.

2 comments September 26th, 2007

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game

On vacation, I had time to read the core rulebook for the Buffy The Vampire Slayer Roleplaying Game. I picked it up because a friend who has never played a roleplaying game in her life but who seems like a good candidate absolutely loves the Buffyverse.

In fact, our very first session will take place this Friday. Introducing a new player to roleplaying is fun and exhilarating. This woman is friendly, fun, and creative. She loves good stories and acts in the community theater. Unless the utter geekiness of our activity sends her screaming, she should be a wonderful addition to our group.

I like the Buffy system. This is my first encounter with Unisystem, but from what I can tell it will be a genuinely fun game system that actively supports the genre. The very grainy rules (one skill covers all melee weapon use) mean that players can focus on doing the cool stuff they’ve seen on TV without worrying about a dozen possible techniques for any given weapon. (Note, I absolutely love games that let you worry about such things. GURPS is my system of choice, after all. But that sort of detail has no place in Buffy.)

The text itself does a pretty good job capturing the feeling of the show (the name of that one melee skill: “Getting Medieval”), although sometimes I thought it got a bit heavy handed. Yes, it’s clever to use Buffyspeak in the text, but sometimes every single sentence in a rules-heavy paragraph seems to drip with Whedonesque wordplay. Funny and fun, but not all the time.

This Friday, we’ll spend most of our time creating characters. I’ll need to refamiliarize myself with the rules (I get lots of great players, but none of them ever seem willing to read the damn rules, even though doing so would make our games richer) and put the finishing touches on our introductory adventure.

Before I do, though, I’d like to ask anyone who plays or has played the game one question: How important are the various supplements? I have one player set to take on the mantle of the Slayer, one who wants to be a reluctant witch, another who can’t resist the alure of a lycanthropy, and the last who’s eager to play a Watcher. Will we be missing out on lots of great rules of we don’t have the The Slayers Handbook and the The Magic Box within easy reach?

Add comment September 26th, 2007