After what feels like an absolute eternity, Throne and Liberty is finally here. In my younger, less jaded years, I’d feel excited and elated to have a new game from Korea. But I see it a little differently now. These days, I’m more of a “wait and see” type. I find ways to curb my enthusiasm. After all, this isn’t the first time a hot new title comes out with all the fixins to be an awesome MMORPG. But how many times has it then turned to dust? A couple months down the line, the only updates might end up just being cosmetics for the store. Flash forward a few more months and it’s as dead as a doornail and I’m writing some kind of retrospective.
Yeah, to say I’m on my guard is definitely an understatement.
And that’s how I’ll be treating Throne and Liberty: I’ll play it, but I won’t let myself get too invested in it, even with such a strong start – and there is no doubt that this game was strong right out of the gate. I’m in the main town as I write this, and it’s downright bustling right now. I played the beta over the summer, and I honest-to-goodness played 30 hours without even knowing it. I had blast playing the beta, and I’m having a bang-bang double blast playing the full release because I get to keep the character and really have time to play the game. I even bought the $20 outfit for my character!
Believe it or not, that’s me on my guard. A younger me would have already dropped $150 for the outfit and other trinkets.
I’ve been here before, though. I remember loving the heck out of Swords of Legends Online, getting totally enraptured by the Xianxia aesthetic and the impression that the developers actually cared about the product. That turned out well!
Oh, and there was the time folks thought Bless was going to be a Black Desert killer and that didn’t go as planned either. And don’t even let me get started on Elyon, a game I thought would usher in new gamers for the coming decade but ended up just full of hot gas!
But hey, I’m only just a little crazy. I think things might be different this time around. This is technically a Lineage game we’re talking about, and it really does feel like a Lineage game. The game hits a nice balance between the gameplay systems of Lineage 2 and more modern MMORPGs. It’s certainly more approachable than Lineage 2.
It’s being published by Amazon Games too. The other MMOs under its stewardship are doing… well, Lost Ark is still alive, and New World might even bounce back with Aeternum. My head-canon also has me thinking that Amazon views this as a pretty safe bet. It rounds out its stable of MMOs as a game that targets the same market as Black Desert Online with its grindy gameplay, risky enchant system, and *ahem* magical way of liberating your cash. And from what I’ve played in beta and on live so far, it might be right up my alley.
A little bit of old school
I’ve heard from folks who’ve been playing on the Korean servers that this game will require a little bit of planning ahead, more than many MMORPG players are used to. It’s not the kind of game where people experiment with different builds before settling into a particular playstyle at level 50. It’s the kind of game that demands players to plan and research what they’re going to want to be ahead of time.
I can dig it. It’s got a little bit of that old-school vibe where players might actually mess up how they built their character. It came as a surprise, though, because it looked like I was able to reallocate my stat points at will. That’s not what players meant, though; it’s more to do with the two weapons players choose to use. I personally haven’t gotten deep enough into the systems yet to experience it – that’ll have to wait until I get my own character to max level and do some endgame stuff – but it’s one more reason to be on my guard.
What threw me off in both the beta and the launch game was the lack of classes. Early in the game, players get every weapon type to use. They’re allowed to equip two types of weaponry that raise their respective weapon masteries from killing mobs, leveling up, and doing quests. It’s a pretty neat system that harkens back to old-school MMORPGs… and sandboxes.
I’m tempted to level up all of the weapons, but right now I’m gravitating to an odd pick of dual daggers and a wand. The dual daggers are exactly what players expect: fast attack speed weapons with high crit rate. The wand looks like the healer weapon with some curses. I don’t know how good that combo is in the endgame or anything, but it certainly is pretty cool setup in my opinion. Heck, I might even try being a full-blown healer.
Feeling good
I hate to say it, but I’ve been struggling to return to Black Desert since the Throne and Liberty beta. Throne and Liberty just looks and plays so much better than BDO. It actually makes BDO feel like an old game, which I suppose it sort of it now. The way the characters move in Throne of Liberty feels snappy and precise – more like Final Fantasy XIV or World of Warcraft (which admittedly are even older than BDO). But the popup in this game is nowhere near as bad as Black Desert Online. Combat includes standard tab target, but attacks feel heavy and are accompanied with good sound design. And I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I love how night actually looks like night. In BDO, it could be 3 a.m., but the sky will be bright like it’s 11 a.m., even with the lighting on the ground is pitch black. Not so in T&L.
The actual play experience of the game is great too. This is the first time in a hot minute that I truly enjoyed just running around, questing, killing monsters, and leveling up. I’d almost go so far as to say I actually felt immersed in the game.
Everything moves at a steady clip that’s fully dictated by the player. NCsoft even managed to make skipping story snappy and quick. In other games, players usually have to press the button twice to move to the next dialogue. The first time finishes the current dialogue; the second time moves to the next. It does feel clunk as the dialogue stretches on. In T&L, pressing the button moves to the next dialogue and there’s no “cooldown” between inputs, so I can actually skip story as fast as I can tap the F key (the default button to move dialogue along).
Teleporting between areas is instant too – no loading screens. I have no idea how the devs pulled that off but damn, why aren’t other MMOs doing that too?
There’s also something to say about the plethora of options and settings. I was pleasantly surprised to find that players can control the camera with the arrow keys, and everything’s rebindable – meaning that with some finagling, this game is playable without a mouse. Not a lot of MMOs offer that feature! On the other hand (pun intended) the game is totally playable with just the mouse too. I love how there’s a click to move option to go along with right-click to attack. It’s way more accessibility-friendly than I’d normally expect from an MMORPG.
Still guarded, though
It sounds like I’m really in love this game, but trust me, there’s still this nagging feeling that something’s going to go wrong. I can’t quite put my finger on it. The game is still a free-to-play MMO with PvP. Whaling is going to happen. The game is only one bad decision away from killing its own momentum, and that’s what I’m worried about. I’m really hoping the folks at both Amazon and NCsoft don’t do anything dumb. Here’s to hoping this game succeeds. Don’t end up like TERA.
The four wind tiles in Mahjong open all sorts of winning combinations for players of this ancient game – and the “Asian” MMO subgenre is just as varied as the many rulesets in Mahjong. Join Massively OP’s Carlo Lacsina here in our Four Winds column as he covers the diverse assembly of MMOs imported from the East!
