Gamers looking for a cheap MMORPG to play these days are spoilt for choice.  The market is literally saturated with them, each boasting “new and exciting” stories, quests and features, all in an effort to lure new players in.  Unfortunately, most of these claims are overhyped and/or under delivered, ultimately leaving players disappointed.

            Occasionally though, there comes along an MMORPG that tries something different.  One such game is Atlantica Online, a free online role-playing game developed by NDoors Games.  What sets it apart from the rest is a new spin on combat, in which the traditional point and click system is replaced with a more strategic, turn based system.

            The game begins with a brief story synopsis, where the player is introduced to the alternative version of Earth present in the game, in which the Atlantians rose to conquer the world, before their own power backfired on them and sunk their home.  The player learns that they are one of the descendents of the Atlantians, and are tasked with finding and restoring their ancestral home.  While the story is not exactly awe inspiring, it does the job well enough of setting the mood and leading you into the character customisation. 

Character customisation consists of your standard fare.  You get a choice between a few different facial and hair colours, and that’s it.  At this point, it is quite lacking, but the range of options is supposed to be expanded once the game is out of beta.  Next, you must pick a class for your character from a standard set of class types, consisting of various versions of melee fighter (the Swordsman, Spearman or Axeman classes), ranged fighter (the Gunman, Bowman or Cannoneer) and magic user (the Shaman and Monk).   The player is also tasked with building a team of support NPCs, which they also control during combat.  This team initially consists of three members, and can be expanded to a maximum of nine as your character progresses.  The team can be constructed using any combination of the player classes that is desired, so players are free to experiment with all of the different classes, without becoming dependent on other players to progress in the game.  Anyone who regularly plays online role-playing games knows that finding a group can be problematic at times, so this is quite a handy feature.

With character and team customisation done, it’s straight into battle.  Battles take place in a typical turn based fashion, with the monsters lined up on one side of the field and your team lined up on the other.  Each team member begins with a set number of action points, which are used up during the course of the battle and slowly replenished at the end of each turn.  They are used for everything during battle from changing position, using items and launching various attacks.  Each of these options requires a different amount of action points to perform, and careful management, so that the enemy is not given the opportunity to slaughter your team while they were all unable to attack.

The system isn’t without its faults though.  The most noticeable of these is the lack of attack variety.  In addition to the standard weapon attack, each team member can earn a maximum of only four magic attacks/skills.  These skills are also fixed for a given class.  This greatly reduces the strategic element of the battle, and it eventually means that simply spamming a particular skill or couple of skills is most effective battle strategy.  However, even with these faults, the new combat system is a welcome change from the standard point and click grind. 

            Unfortunately, from this point, things take a turn for the worst, as the rest of the game has nowhere near the polish the combat system does.  The graphics, in particular, are mediocre at best.  While the environments and models are reasonably varied, they are plagued by an annoying number of jagged edges and awkward animation.  The semi-realistic style used for the game only further emphasises these problems.  The interface is also quite cluttered, and can be distracting at times.  Considering the system requirements for the game are significantly higher than your average free MMORPG, you could be forgiven for expecting better.

The storyline, while remotely interesting at the start, disappears after the first couple of quests, and is replaced with the inane troubles of the various local inhabitants for whatever section of the world you happen to be in.  Add to this the broken English present in pretty much all of the dialog, and it kills any possible immersion the story may have had. 

The various quests do not help matters much either.  They extend little from the generic go kill x amount of y or retrieve x from y type quests seen in many Korean MMORPG’s, and quickly become tedious.  Perhaps the one saving grace is that these quests reward the player with significantly more experience than can be gained through grinding monsters.

            Ironically, Atlantica Online’s greatest strength is also its greatest weakness.  While the turn based combat system adds a much needed element of strategy into what is probably one of the weakest parts of the online role-playing genre, it has resulted in other, equally important parts of the game being neglected.  That is not to say that Atlantica Online is a bad game, it is just that what could have been an interesting step forward for the genre has become nothing more then an example of mediocrity.

...Rapier