I have played some of the larger MMOs, such as World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14, but aside from that, I have just dabbled in the myriad shapes this subgenre can take. Therefore, my assessment that Throne and Liberty do not quite live up to my previous dungeon-diving, loot-grinding, and boss-slaying experiences in massively online games is mostly that of a “normie.” Nevertheless, major expansions for both World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy 14 were released this year. The sequel to NCSOFT’s Guild Wars, Throne and Liberty, has a gorgeous world and combat that develops into an engaging and dynamic dance of skill interactions. Still, the repetitive quest structure and mostly dull plot I encountered during my ten or so hours with the Open Beta make me concerned about Throne and Liberty’s chances of dethroning the genre titans.
Still, the game looks fantastic. You may add some impressive levels of detail to your avatar customization with the character maker. And no matter what you put together, the finished product will look amazing and will not exhibit any of the uncanny valley player character issues that certain games have, where your PC’s overall quality is not as good as the developers’ meticulously designed NPCs. The world is also rather beautiful. It will be several hours before you see anything as magnificent as the enormous flying whale again, but the landscapes you will pass through along the way are vivid and intricate. I adored the multicolored plains with enormous wild birds Not Chocobos and the damp jungle overgrown with spiders. Better yet, everything works incredibly well. The ability to transform into a wild cat and become your mount to speed across cities or between locations loads incredibly quickly and in real-time, regardless of the number of people displaying on the screen.
You will be moving about a lot as you follow the fairly ordinary tale of young children who are magically gifted and become warriors of destiny, as well as the rival groups in the fictional planet of Solisium that wish to take advantage of them. I only read up to chapter 5, which is halfway through the available content, so I did not get very far into it, but nothing really caught my attention. I found myself skimming over a lot of the boring speeches in non-cinematic exchanges because I had a trustworthy narrator who summarized the main sections of the story I completed shortly after I completed them.
Most of the objectives, both side missions and those on the main path, are standard MMO fare.
Most of the objectives, both side missions and those on the main path, are standard MMO fare. You will be searching for missing persons, gathering fragments of the local fauna to manufacture a potion, working as a letter carrier for a while, etc. As you go, there are always new things to discover and accomplish, but because Throne and Liberty treat the main plot like a lengthy tutorial, I found myself a little nervous about what to do with all the strange items I was receiving as prizes.It got to the point where I was frugal with my stuff, not wanting to upgrade anything just to find out later on in the mission that I could have used it for something else. Even if you are not the kind to make sure everything gets examined, each area of the map offers unique side chores that are worthwhile to complete for their benefit. There are many of “kill X of Y” tasks and challenges here, but these are also likely to have more intriguing objectives than the main quest. Although I did not get to see many of them, I did speak with a few people while traveling who told me about some more difficult platforming missions in situations that I would have loved to try out.
Naturally, there will be a lot of fighting during your adventure; in fact, Throne and Liberty’s most notable aspect is its dynamic combat. There are no class restrictions on players. whatever skills they can use depends on whatever pair of weapons they choose to wield. Like NCSOFT’s other major MMO, Guild Wars 2, battles necessitate a great deal of positional awareness, and skills have a great deal of mutual synergy inside and between weapon kinds. Finding the optimum combinations for maximizing their effects is encouraged through a great deal of trial and error.
Each weapon has an automatic attack pattern that allows it to parry powerful strikes from foes as long as you press the button prompt precisely. Additionally, each weapon has a series of follow-up attacks that maximize the opening you created. Defense is essential if you want to escape bosses and other powerful enemies alive, even though this feature looks incidental versus lesser opponents. In the boss rush mode, which is akin to Bloody Palace and pits you against powerful opponents with no tolerance for error, mastery of it was a necessity.
