Monday, February 22, 2010

Luna Online: 1 Hour Review

Luna Online is a F2P MMORPG with a little twist, you are encouraged to make a family, date and get married. Very anime inspired and simple with the character creation. Male or Female, human or elf, each with 5 different face and hair styles, and a Fighter, Mage or Rouge class.

It's an MMORPG. So the story is of no real importance, and trust me, skip it, It's wordy and poorly formatted. Instead of word wrap, words get a few letters kicked down to the next line, making it a little annoying to read.

Stats are easy, you only get a couple skill points to increase them every level up, so progress feels slow. You also get some skill points, which you use to buy skills. The skill system is neat, as opposed to each class earning the same skills every few levels, buying a skill unlocks more skills. and with skill points being scarce, you can make a unique(ish) character.

Combat is easy, controls are simple, click to move interface blah, blah, blah. It is obvious combat isn't the main focus of the game, dating and starting a family is. Dates take the form of couples only instances. They have special items, and I guess completing enough of them allow you to get married.

Crafting is simple. You can upgrade weapons by enchanting them or by reinforcing them. Neither are too impressive, and they yield slightly different results. Reinforcing gives special bonus, like higher accuracy or critical hit chance, while enchanting increases the attack or defense of your weapon or piece of armor.

That dating focus makes this game interesting. In my first 15 minutes, didn't realize other people were trying to talk to me. Scrolling up the chat pane I saw people trying to get to know me. Where was I from, how old I was, and if I want to party with them. A refreshing break from the 20 minutes spent LFG in other games, spamming chat with 13 other players, none of which I can party with. Of course, this was a little annyoing too, in a game where community was so integral to the experiance, I didn't want to piss anyone off right away. So I spent some time grinding with a "friend" and once they left I went on to the first big city to become a citizen. Oh, that was a treat. Upon the map loading my chat pane was filled with gold spammers, and the main road was overflowing with private stores. After finally finding the NPC to talk to, and actually clicking on her, I registered. Becoming a citizen means signing up for a really lousy dating site. You give your age, location, sexual preference, 3 likes and 2 dislikes. (For kicks, I put loneliness under likes.) Leaving the city of bots and AFK players, I wanted to kill some time taking out quest mobs, I was having a little fun getting used to the controls and play style. Then I was challenged to a duel. A duel is kinda like saying hello in Luna, as you cannot see a players stats or equipment, so you will either be asked your level (a lot!) or challenged (A LOT!). If you destroy them, they want to party with you, if it's close, they want to party with you, and if they beat the ever loving crap outta you, they switch characters so they can party with you. I lost the dual, and joined a party with someone. Killing her quest mobs, I suppose, she seemed more interested in finding out who I am and getting to know each other, rather than questing, leveling up, and getting cool gear. Then it was time to make dinner, so I said goodbye, accecpted the friend request and logged out with 6 friends in 60 minutes.

All in all it was a fun game, I might stick with it for a month or so, I want to check out some things that I didn't get to yet. Like the importance of dating, families and guilds.


Oh, and a family and guild are different by the way, it was hilarious seeing people type "Please, I need a Family!" in chat all the time.

1 comment: