This past weekend started innocently enough. I was going to play more Requiem, maybe a bit of Eve Online and Atlantica Online, but then I saw that The Chronicles of Spellborn had gone into ‘open beta’ and decided to give it a try. The client is free and you get to play up through the first 7 levels so there’s really nothing to lose. That was late Friday night when I started downloading the client, and come early Saturday morning it was finished and I was ready to start checking it out. So, these are my ‘first impressions’.
TCoS is being produced in the US/UK (AUS/NZ too?) by Acclaim, a company that I can’t say I have much love for anymore. But, the game is developed by a Dutch game developer called Spellborn International. A company that I don’t care for and one that I don’t know about — I was a bit skeptical coming in. One thing I did notice before starting was the obvious notice that this isn’t a free to play game, it is pay to play. You don’t pay for the client though, just a monthly subscription that’s the usual 15 bucks. Not a bad deal. So, I knew coming into the game that I’d be subbing for at least one month — there was money being put down up front, so I was a bit more critical starting out. With the mindset of a skeptical critic I ventured into the character creation. (see previous article)
Character creation was good, some minor gripes about the limited selection of equipments, but this was just the beginning of the game. My first, and main, character is a Rogue that started out with a sabre and shield. The tutorial is instanced in TCoS. You start out on a shardship headed off to Hawksmouth where the new recruits are trained. The world that TCoS resides in is fantasy, but a bit different from usual. Each of the zones that you visit exist on what are known as shards — basically giant habitable asteroids that exist in some magical/cosmic plane. The shardships are basically smaller versions of these, in ship shape. After covering the basics you arrive at your destination. Hawksmouth.
Upon arriving to the docks you go about the usual MMO process — collecting quests, killing monsters and leveling up. Like so many others, the process is the same but the individual parts differ. TCoS has 50 levels total, so the free 7 doesn’t seem like much. However, for a new player that will easily take a saturday to finish. Leveling is a good bit slower than the current standard. At level (I keep using ‘level’ but it should be noted that in-game ‘fame’ is used instead) 5 you can choose your class. Each of the three primary classes has three subclasses that tend to favor a different playstyle — solo, group and balanced. My choice was the Skinshifter, a solo-type class that specializes in sneaking around. The other two rogue choices are the Deathhand and Trickster. Apart from some skill selection differences, the main difference between each class is their bodyslot items. Bodyslots open up once you take a class and are hotkeyed to F1-F5 with their own little hotbar. You buy bodyslot items from one of three stores: Soul Shop, Spirit Shop, and Rune Shop. The Skinshifter gets Soul Mazes which allow them to shift into different forms. The first two that you get at level 5 are a wolf and ousted. (ousted are basically a faction of pirates/bandits) Using these two items I can effectivly sneak past enemies of their type — in wolf form animals won’t attack me, in ousted form other ousted won’t attack me. However, town guards will attack me in these forms, but any damage removes the form and they stop once you come out of it. Same thing applies if you’re being attacked by one of the monster types and shift into your form. The other two rogue classes get poison (Deathhand) and gadgets (Trickster).
Combat is done via third-person using an action-y style FPS-ish control. The easiest explanation is Tabula Rasa’s style. The difference from TR’s is in the skill deck. The skill deck is this little rotating cylinder that you house your skills in. When you use a skill it goes up to the next level on the deck — this is used to form combos. You can freely swap between columns on the deck, but getting back to the start is generly only done once you finish out a column. (you can wait for it to reset, but that’s not a good idea in the heat of battle) There are true combo moves with openers, bridges and finishers, but those skills come later in the game. The first set of openers you get begins at level 11.
One interesting twist in TCoS is the lack of mana or some other energy powering your abilities –this is mostly handled with your skill deck and skill cooldowns. Instead of managing power you get three states that effect three different parts of your character in combat. The first state is Physique which governs your movement speed. The second is Morale which governs your damage output. Lastly is Concentration which governs your skill deck rotation and attack speed. All can be lowered or raised during combat. As a Skinshifter I tend to focus on Concentration — lowering my enemies and raising my own. This allows me to cut down on their DPS while increasing mine, very handy.
Adding together states and the skill deck, combat is both fast paced and tactical. I’ve had NPC enemies take advantage of my weakness (Physique, I deal primarily melee damage) to stay away from me and deal ranged damage instead of using their close combat skills. They may not have some really advanced AI, but what I’ve seen so far is pretty good.
The graphics are not heavy on the polys but the art is quite nice. The world is very beautiful and I’ve already gotten quite a few screenshots. Having shards for worlds opens up plenty of opportunity for variety and future expansion.
For true ‘first impression’ summary: the game at first seemed very odd to me, I just couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. I don’t know why it was like that, either. The newbie zone is pretty subpar when compared with some of the zones later on, which is probably the reasonit felt odd. Typically MMO’s make nearly flawless newbie zones to draw people in then leave the rest of the content as mediocre — TCoS is a bit different from that. The content I’ve seen only got better out of the starting zones. If you’re used to WoW-esque easy questing with a detailed, accurate map to find your way to everything you might be dissappointed (or overjoyed) to know that TCoS’ map is fairly crude when it comes to holding your hand. It will give you a general idea of where the major landmarks and areas are, but apart from those you’ll have to read the quest text and explore. The biggest gripe I have about starting out is the number of quests that revolve around killing a select type of animal(s) and the lack of a dynamic spawn (it’s coming in a patch soon, supposedly) so you can easily spend a long time getting the kills you need if no one around is grouping. Group size is something else I hope changes a bit in the future — the max size is 4 players. 4 players. Ouch! Equipment plays a much smaller role in TCoS than most MMOs. From the start it is largely an appearance thing. The real equipment, at least at the lower levels, is in the form of ‘sigils’ which are basically enhancements from City of Heroes. You can slot your skills starting at level 11 and a few pieces of your gear come with slots for sigils. I don’t know how much this changes later in the game, but it is intriguing. Character advancement for the most part is primarily just with the skills you have open to you and the three attributes that govern your skills. Real ‘skill’ is the player’s personal skill and how they set up their skill deck. I’m sure this will lead to set ‘builds’ that people use, but in a sense I think it’s better to explore the skills and get a personal skill deck setup. It’s pretty interesting.
The Chronicles of Spellborn is well worth the time to try it. I feel there’s a good bit of potential and interesting features to make it stand out a bit from the other bigger, older MMOs on the market.
