Game Review: 2moons (MMORPG)

(if anyone wants to play, we play in Trieste(Blades))

Hopefully the first of many (up next in line is Fable 2, then Gears of War 2 etc etc.)

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Well, I downloaded this game two days ago, and signed up for what looked like a remake of WoW and Guild Wars mashed together, except free. Whatever I say from this point on probably won't be glowing with praise.

So, the moment I logged on, I was already disappointed. Even the login screen showed the game interface for what it was: overly simplified, confusing, muddled, and very inconvenient. For one thing, there was no character customization. If you wanted a specific class, it gives you a little cookie cutter of a character. If you want to be a healer, like I did, you were stuck being a purple cat-girl with an ugly ponytail. It also gave you a bit of poorly-written lore on the class you picked. Even RUNESCAPE or-so help me God- BATTLEON has character customization. The character creation screen looked like a crumpled up piece of World of Warcraft's character creation.

Is that a good enough introduction? Tell me if I'm being too nice about this game.

Only horribly disappointing games would

force you to be a scantily clad woman. Normally,

the people do it by themselves.

Interface:

Like I said before, the game interface was very confusing and overly simplified. If I didn't know better, I'd say the interface and controls were just a poor attempt to mix the Guild Wars and WoW interfaces together and make everything visible at first sight, so people would see the tangible results of their "effort".

Oh wait, it is.

What I loved so much about Maplestory was the control scheme. There really was nothing better. You could take every key on your keyboard and turn it into a hotkey, or rearrange them. In addition, there was no clutter at all, and everything served a immediately known purpose. Even the chat system was amazing, even if it was a bitch to switch between chatboxes.

Now think of 2moons' interface as it's drunken second cousin twice removed.

Everything is clutter, the only way to efficiently talk to other people is to invite them to your party, and the chatboxes get in your way, even if you set the transparency all the way to 100%.

In addition, everything is way too big, and makes your screen feel small and limited even if you're using a 24" LCD monitor.

The controls are clunky and unwieldy, and sometimes, the game doesn't respond when you use a skill, which is a big problem for healers because ALL THEY DO IS USE THE HEAL SKILL.

Also, there are two sets of the same button, which shouldn't happen. If Acclaim eliminated the sidebar, I could actually use the inventory without either cutting myself or moving the window to the center every time I open it up. Also, even though the game makes all these efforts to help you and give you tips, all it does is make you ignore it even more and you end up scratching your head when you're wondering what to do. You also usually have no idea what to do, even though the game practically walks you through it while holding your hand and giving you cotton candy.

Amazing, isn't it? I guess that's what happens when you jam all the cookies you can in the jar and it ends up exploding in your face.

Honestly, the chat box. Really, Acclaim?

The screen makes the game feel horribly limited.

Visuals:

The visuals of this game really aren't much to talk about. However, taking one look at the requirements for this game, I decided I could crank everything up to the highest setting.

With everything cranked up to the highest setting, the game actually looks kind of pretty, but I was downcast to see some framerate issues. So I turned everything down to the medium-high range. The framerate issues didn't really go down much. Curious, I experimented and turned everything down to the lowest setting, making it look like a smeared children's pastel drawing, and the framerate issues stayed the same.

I decided to just leave it at high-best settings.

In addition, what the game did really well was it's animation and general killing things. I loved using my blood whip on anything that moved.

Visuals are actually pretty good if

you have more-than-modest specs

Sound and BGM:

Acclaim did pretty well with the voice acting and sound effects. They were veryrealistic.

As for the background music, I'm just going to say there was none.

Yes, I know you can turn it on through options, but that crap was overly repetitive and didn't match the game at all. So I'm going to say it had no background music.

Instead, I just muted everything and turned the sound effects and voice acting up to the max, and made my own playlist on iTunes to listen to.

There really is nothing like listening to Life in Technicolor II while whipping the crap out of some spiders.

Gameplay [PvE, PvP]:

I'm going to split Player vs Enviroment and Player vs Player in two. For now, I'll rant about the gameplay in general.

Really, really good. The gameplay is just awesome.

Like I said before, killing stuff makes the game fly by. They did a great job of getting you into the game, even if it is clunky and feels limited.

Of course, there's also the fact that you really don't do much exploring. You get a really big map, but all it is is just zones seperated into different level groups for you. There's no exploring involved in it. It feels kind of like a platformer.

Camera is good at times, and at other

times just a bitch. This angle makes it look even

more like a platformer.

PvE-

The big thing about 2moons is the group playing. There's nothing like it. The problem is, because of the limited chat, it's not easy to get together a party to play with. At this point, I just teamed up with David (lee), Brandon (kim), Michael, and James and had a jolly good time killing stuff in a winter wasteland.

Good times.

PvP-

Player vs. Player. It's incredibly limited, idiotic at points, and whatever else you'd expect me to say.

However, there's this cool feature where you can put together two parties and they fight each other in an arena at any time you want.

That's about all there is to it.

Storyline:

I really didn't see any, except anything stranger than a race comprised entirely of cat-girls is a bad guy, and we apparently can use their livers to make beer (irony!)

IN CONCLUSION

The game is okay, considering it's free to play. However, it is the result of people trying to mash together a game and stuff it full of features. Also, it has a crappy staff, including the GMs and developers, who never update a thing. At least the GMs are a little more active.

Scores:

Interface and Controls: 3.8/10

Visuals: 7.3/10

Sound: 6.0/10

Gameplay: 9/10

Storyline: N/A

OVERALL: 7.2/10

-Jason, Because I Can