As one of my personal anticipated upcoming MMOs, I’ve been holding a weird, polygonal torch for the “throwback” styled MMO project, Monsters & Memories. As I said back in March, I like the attitude and vibes coming from this game and team, and now that we’re getting longer public playtests, I thought it was about time to at least peek into this MMO and see what I could see.
So what’s Monsters & Memories like in its current alpha state — and what might we expect from its future? Is this an extremely niche project or something that the average gamer might find enjoyable?
Starting with the character creator, we can see that there are a ton of racial and class options — to come, that is. There are only a handful to test right now, but it is interesting to see an EverQuest-like list here (certain races are tied to classes, too, so you won’t get complete freeform control even at launch). The models themselves are deliberately chunky, but the game makes it a stylistic choice. There are a lot of very different body builds and looks, too, from the waspish Goblins to the body building Orcs.
In addition to slotting some stat points, you get to pick major/minor combat traits and major/minor non-combat traits and choose a faith (or lack thereof). I laughed at the placeholder images of cat and dog heads for the latter.
And while I was customizing my Gnome Necromancer, I grooved to the absolutely amazing score that pumped through my headphones. I’ve been sleeping on this soundtrack, and that must stop if this track is any indication.
I was dumped out into the Night Harbor at, er, night amid a lot of other testers. Happily, my night vision trait helped to lighten up the dark somewhat. That, plus a candle that I was strangely holding.
It was encouraging to see quite a few people milling about and chatting up on the extremely hard-to-read text window. There’s some real love for this game, that’s for sure.
My first challenge was trying to get a handle on the UI. This MMO is clearly modeled on EverQuest with a heavy dash of MUDs mixed in, and that’s going to throw any modern gamer for a loop — or even veterans who’ve long forgotten how to use the multitude of slash commands and other quirky, semi-cumbersome features.
I was, in a word, lost.
After reading through the keybinds, I found out that “Q” would initiate auto-combat with a mob. Naturally, I sought out the nearest critter – a snake – and stared it deep in its steely eyes while my finger resolutely pressed Q for all it was worth.
Turns out it wasn’t worth that much because I got my Gnome butt handed to me in short order. Yes, that was a pun. Before long, I was a corpse on the ground, my unblinking eyes staring up into the falling rain. Hey, those rain effects are nifty!
But when I respawned (after a crash, of which I experienced many during this alpha), I was without all my gear. It took me a second to realize, oh yeah, corpse run. But I couldn’t find my corpse at that point, and after wandering around in the dark for 10 minutes feeling like a fool, I exited and rerolled.
So instead of grinding on nearby desert snakes, I opened my inventory and read a note that invited me to the necromancer guild. Could they deck me out with some abilities? I had hope. There were some vague directions in there, but since I couldn’t even find a city map, that meant I was about to get even more lost.
After meandering through the city for 20 minutes, checking the directions in my inventory, and following the signposts, I did find my destination: the Concourse of Souls. There, I bumped into a guy named (of course) Everett Graves who gave me a quest to kill some guy’s rogue undead servant outside the Western Gate. He then shooed me away as I sputtered with the indignity of not knowing where that was.
Needing some levels and wanting to check out the combat, I pinged the ever-helpful crowd to give me some pointers about how to set up my hotbar (and read through the new player guide). Apparently, you have to drag scrolls from your inventory into your book to memorize them, then drag those abilities to your (side)hotbar to ready them.
That gave me a life drain attack and a minor spellshield. I equipped the latter and went out to pick a fight with the largest rat I could find. Happily, I thwacked him well and dead, and while I didn’t get any loot, at least there was a bit of experience in it for me.
For the rest of my time, I stayed in this little courtyard trying to get the hang of attacking and leveling. If two or more critters jumped me, I’d run right to the guards nearby and have them one-shot them, and I wouldn’t feel even a little bit bad about it. Plus, there was a campfire there, which was good for some recovery.
I’ll pause to say that all of this feels very rudimentary and awkward. That’s probably a good summation of everything I’m finding in Monsters & Memories right now: rudimentary and awkward. The old-school particle effects were neat, but the combat felt lackluster and lacking significant feedback, which to be fair is accurate for the game on which this is clearly model.
Again, any up-and-coming game has to make a case as to why modern players would want to play it over the many other options currently out there. Right now, it’s hard to see M&M appealing to most MMOers – except those who truly miss 1999-era EverQuest but for some reason choose not to play it. Of course, the genre has plenty of those folks – enough that it’s worth fighting in court over reclaiming them!
But then, this is still alpha with a long way to go, and right now the studio’s trying to get the fundamental systems down before expanding and refining. I truly hope that there’s going to be a lot more depth and polish coming, as it still has a quirky charm. Even so, I’m fairly certain it’ll never boast widespread appeal. That’s deliberate, I’m sure, but it does put a lot of pressure for Monsters & Memories to rise above newer indie throwback MMOs like the Embers Adrifts and Project Gorgons that are out there – and those have a head start.
Do you love spectating and speculating about upcoming MMOs? We do too! Every week, Justin tackles another upcoming title on the MMO Hype Train with opinions, analysis, and blind fervent hope. Choo choo all aboard!
