[Martial Arts MMO] Swords of Legends Online

[rittchard]

I don't know if there is any interest here in such things but this is a martial arts MMORPG originally from China (I assume). The graphics look pretty good, and there appears to be a nice mix of classes, and I think for once they aren't gender locked. From what I've read it seems kind of like Chinese Wuxia WoW but honestly I have no idea.

First closed beta for this is coming this Friday (May 21). It costs $40 to pre-order and get in the beta.

(As a side note, if you like the wuxia genre and don't mind subtitles, Handsome Siblings on Netflix is a pretty fun show.)

[rittchard]

Beta report.

This was pretty much what I expected, a very well polished MMORPG mixing ideas and "feel" from a variety of sources. The dialog is all in Mandarin with english subtitles, and is actually fairly decently voice acted, and the translations/subtitles are good. I've watched tons of Chinese TV shows and the quality is about the same. Graphics look great, not quite as good as I'd hoped but still pretty nice to look at. I've seen some promos for another Chinese game (I think it was called Moonlight Blade or something like that that looks more next gen). Here's a screenshot:



There are various modes of transportation but perhaps the most fun was "riding" a magic sword (seen above), which allows you to fly above and around the scenery and also move much quicker. There are also land mounts and teleports, etc. and even your own movement has Chinese style jump/flying.

The beginning flow of the game is very WoW-like, breadcumb-ing you from area to area without overwhelming you with sidequests. I didn't get far enough to see how that changes but clearly things open up later as there are dungeons and raids and other typical MMO fare. If you've played any mobile Chinese MMOs, it's similar in some ways but toned down a bit, I assume, for the Western audience.

If you are looking for something different content/lore-wise but familiar in terms of gameplay, this might be interesting. Personally I found a lot of the main quest line kind of confusing even though I understand the language, so I'm not sure how it would play if you are completely unfamiliar. It's definitely leaning more toward supernatural things rather than a more traditional wuxia/martial arts story.

I'll probably end up playing this more at launch, depending on what the competition is. I still have a whole Mass Effect series I want to get to

[Skinypupy]

This was apparently released on Steam a couple weeks ago. I'd never even heard of it, but watched a few absolutely glowing video reviews tonight. Seems to really be taking people by surprise with how good it is. Lots of positive comparisons with GW2, in that it's B2P, has no RNG upgrading system (which is kinda unheard of for a Chinese MMO), has a strong story, and the cash shop is cosmetics only.

It definitely looks interesting, and I'll probably give it a shot once I finish my current game (Trails of Cold Steel). I quite liked Blade & Soul before I hit the "Pay to Advance" and this looks pretty similar...just without that wall.

[Skinypupy]

After the third review I read that compared Swords of Legends very favorably to GW2 (calling it "the Chinese Guild Wars 2"), I figured I'd give it a shot. First impressions are...not good.

On the plus side it looks great and the combat seems like it might be interesting. I say "might" because it's so poorly explained that I'm not entirely sure what's going on. I'm starting to sort of wrap my head around the Spearmaster after a couple hours (certain "Spear" abilities change your basic attacks to different abilities which then have a chance to proc more powerful skills...I think), but the skill descriptions are so badly written that they're nearly impossible to figure out.

The main quests seems easy enough to follow, but there are a bajillion other quest logs (side quests, maybe?), currencies, and other things that aren't explained at all. I mostly just keep clicking on stuff and getting rewards that I really have no idea what they do.

There's a lot of story (which I normally view as a positive), but it's a heap of completely uninteresting nonsense. You're shuffled quickly from place to place with very little context around where and why, meet "very important" tree spirits and field generals then zip off again after a 10 second conversation, have big dramatic airborne sword battle cutscenes for no apparent reason at all, etc. And the audio is a complete mess. The captions rarely match what's being said, it switches randomly between the Chinese and English actors, spoken lines overlap or are simply cut off midway through during cutscenes, etc.

Definitely doing a Steam refund on this one.

[Sudy]

We thank you for your sacrifice.

I feel like I seriously need to tone down my "video game" expectations when trying any MMORPG that's not a AAA+.

[Daehawk]

Too bad its $40. That just sets itself up to fail.

[Skinypupy]

Too bad its $40. That just sets itself up to fail.

Actually, one of the big selling points is that the game is B2P. You pay once, and that’s it. The cash shop is for cosmetics only, so there’s no pay to win element at all. There’s also no RNG upgrade system, which really interested me as well. If you have the components to upgrade something, there’s a 100% chance it’ll succeed, which is a welcome change from most Asian MMOs.

Stylistically, it reminds me of a mix between Tera and Blade & Soul. I spent a couple hundred hours with both of those, and was hoping this one might scratch that same itch. The characters and environments both look fantastic, but the entire UI is a completely cluttered mess. I’m sure I probably could have gone into the settings and turned things off to make it better, but the overall game was so uninteresting that I simply didn’t care.

[TheMix]

I took Dae's comment as saying that if the game was priced lower, people might still purchase and play despite the bugs. But with a game priced that high, people likely aren't going to want to purchase if it's a buggy mess.

[Daehawk]

Ya theres no way I could pay $40 to test a new game in the mmo field.

I did like both Tera and Blade & Soul for a while each. Nothing super special but fun for a little while. I go back to all free mmos over time repeatedly. But last time I tried either of them I just could not get back into them at all. Didn't even make it past the start area. They've changed too much. But with B&S it was the controls. Either the first time I tried it they were different or I simply got used to them. This time though nope.

[Skinypupy]

I took Dae's comment as saying that if the game was priced lower, people might still purchase and play despite the bugs. But with a game priced that high, people likely aren't going to want to purchase if it's a buggy mess.

Ah, I misunderstood.

I didn't think the price was particularly onerous (mainly because it wasn't a full $60 release), but I would strongly recommend anyone who might be interested to wait for a sale.

[Harkonis]

I still wish I played more Blade and Soul and also that it had come to console like they said it would.

[Stuie]

I love action combat in my MMOs, so I bought both this and New World and figured whichever one really grabbed me I'd stick with. This did not win.

The combat was kind of fun, but the quests were typical of a translated eastern MMO in that they ranged from hard to understand to unfathomable. And the early dungeons are a joke, no group required so difficult to learn healing and tanking. Also seems like end game is just run the same dungeons everyday, and you get there pretty fast.

So I uninstalled and will be playing New World at release.