For those who do not know, both the SEA English and Chinese version will be hosted by the same publisher, Asiasoft. The Chinese version started its Closed Beta yesterday, and I decided to give the game a spin before the English Closed Beta is out somewhere in October. The storyline is pretty much like the many 3 Kingdoms games out there, players get to choose between the 3 kingdoms and fight for its sake. Being the “good” guy I am, I decided to follow Shu, ruled by the benevolent but sometimes clueless Liu Bei.
After a few cut scenes describing the events which leads up to the current storyline, here is my guy. I created a Brute character, and the customization is really horrid with only 2 or 3 choices. I hope its because its just a Closed Beta. As you can see, each class will have 2 weapons of choice.
In the mini tutorial which lasts for 2minutes, you will have your first taste of battle. Every class will have their own “killer move”, which deals out more damage and looks better when executing, lol. For me, its pressing the K and L button (L after K, not both together). Normal attacks will hit multiple enemies if you are wondering. And strafing to the right, left or front by pressing the movement keys twice will consume mana, the orange bar below the HP bar.
Here I am in the city. Players will only need to be close to the NPCs, and their portraits will be shown at the top of the screen. They can be interacted with simply by clicking on them without the need to go in front of them. Its pretty convenient.
After meddling around abit, I realized that all characters are set at a default level 40 (not max level), with really good equipments and tons of skill points~! Most of the skills, if not all, are passive skills to increase stats like base attack, base def, base critical rate, base HP etc.
Mount~! There’s a free mount given for the Closed Beta test too. I love the fact that you can control the speed of the horse, if you are moving too fast, you can press the “S” button to lower the speed, different from other games where mounts have the same speed when moving. And nope, as far as I know, there ain’t mounted battles at the moment.
Leveling maps. Players can access various leveling maps in town (left pic) or exit the town to have a better look at the world map (right pic). Each map has different recommended level range, so choose wisely~! If you look at the top right corner of the second pic, you will see a mini-map with 3 color codings. Each color represents a different country, with Shu being the red one.
In the leveling maps, mobs will drop instant heal potions, and from the chests too. Simply stand over the chest like capture the flag, and move over the potion/food when it drops out. If you see the middle left section of the pictures, you can find a name list with names in light blue color. Those are the people currently in the same map as you, and its a good idea to party with them. I was owned by a boss even before I can get to 50% of the map, the boss keeps moving around and dodging ~!
Closed Beta verdict:
A solid action MMORPG in the mold of the Dynasty Warriors series. Its not as graphically intensive as I thought it would be, but players will no doubt be lagging the hell out if there are too many people in the town area. One frustrating point is that I couldn’t really find a way to attack the mobs who were lying on the ground. And also, a serious lack of customization, which I hope is a Closed Beta thingy.
If you are looking for a Dynasty Warrior type of MMO with various MMO elements, this is a good game, And its pure WASD movement, point and click ain’t needed on the PvE or PvP fields. Left click = to normal attack, not to move to the chosen spot. Awesome.
Official English website: http://w3k.playpark.net/
For more features and screenshots of the game, please click:
http://mmoculture.blogspot.com/2009/08/warriors-of-3-kingdoms_08.html
My system settings:
Windows XP Home (service pack 3)
Intel Quad Core 2.4ghz
4GB Memory RAM
Nividia GeForce 8800GTS 512MB
