Granado Espada is Making Me Fat

[Xerapis]

Is it as original as....


Vanguard?

[Falconeer]

No, it is as original as RTS meets DIKU, or Diablo. Try it for yourself.

[Falconeer]

Weird double post.
Anyway I am not saying it's a good or fun game.
I am just praising some out-of-the-box thinking.

[Xerapis]

I was just being snarky.

You can check page one of this thread for my impressions already.

[Falconeer]

The more you all tickle me about Vanguard, the more I think you all miss my foolish years. Should I politely ask Geldon back too?

[rk47]

I really wondered where Geldon went. He hyped Vanguard so much, played it and suddenly he just vanished into thin air  :-D

[Trippy]

That's cause he self-banned himself.

[Numtini]

I tried this out and oddly I'm just captivated. It strikes me as the odd bastard child of Diablo and Guild Wars. I like the fast action and while you can leave it afk to level, it's not like you get anything for levelling. And if you push your limits, it does take some management to keep them going. I wish it was full RMT/microtransaction though, but it apparently has a $9 a month subscription as well.

On the other hand, I'm also got a charming summer cold and I'm running a fever of around 100'F, so staying power when I'm in my right mind isn't guaranteed.

This is so not ready for prime time though. I can't believe it's a month from release and major parts are still appearing in Hangul, never mind all the Engrish.

[Fabricated]

I've been poking at the beta off and on, it's basically your typical Korean MMORPG with a few new wrinkles and slightly more polish.

There's quests but not a lot of them, and they're all pretty grindy with poor rewards.
The party control aspect is really cool until you realize it's impossible to make full use of character abilities in most situations since casting spells or using skills tends to make your characters drop out of their Auto-attacking/Auto-Healing.
The Interface needs work.
So does the translation.

[Hutch]

Not to be cliche, but I spent more time downloading this game than I did playing it.

It does have some neat features. I liked building my little team. The character models and terrain are gorgeous, and the game itself ran pretty smoothly.

Right up until I'd been in the quarry (lowbie leveling area) for 5 minutes. Then the game booted me for being in "defensive mode" for five minutes, or some such nonsense.

I logged back in, and 5 minutes later I was looking at the login screen again. And I'd been actively playing the whole time, clicking to move, clicking on loot, moving my characters near the monsters so they'd attack them.

If your game's anti-macro tool boots a player who is actively playing, your anti-macro tool sucks. Better to not have written it.

[Numtini]

It's a bug and it's featured in the forums. It's actually a beta.

[Hutch]

It's a bug and it's featured in the forums. It's actually a beta.

That must be why I didn't have to give them any credit card information! Thanks for clearing that up!

[Numtini]

Since I don't think it was clear and sounded sarcastic, which wasn't what I meant, so by "actually a beta" it actually is still in translation/localization. From the PR it looks and smells like a "publicity release" but they're actually deep into working on things right now. The current translations are placeholders for example. The new ones are far better. Though I'm skeptical about a 7/10 launch given the state the beta is in now.

The thing that puts you into "defend" mode automatically also puts on the 5 minute timer. If you go into the settings inside the game and turn off "lock defend mode" you're fine. You just need to click into defend mode manually or hit alt e. This would be a bit of "localization" that I think is pretty hated. The original system is that space puts you into defend mode and control-space puts you into loot mode, which works out as very convenient with point and click movement and leaves your fingers close to the asdfzxcv etc keys for popping off specials.

[gravdiggr]

Right up until I'd been in the quarry (lowbie leveling area) for 5 minutes. Then the game booted me for being in "defensive mode" for five minutes, or some such nonsense.

I logged back in, and 5 minutes later I was looking at the login screen again. And I'd been actively playing the whole time, clicking to move, clicking on loot, moving my characters near the monsters so they'd attack them.

Moving your character doesnt change your mode, looting doesnt change your mode. If you ctrl-shift click somewhere, it changes your mode but it doesn't register for the timer.

What you need to do to avoid the issue is ctrl-h ctrl-e every now and then. Ctrl-h will put you in hold mode, ctrl-e will throw you back in the defend mode. (might be alt and not ctrl, i don't remember).

[Numtini]

If I remember the key is that right now the timer doesn't reset from mouseclicks. So if you use the keyboard in any way you're ok.

[Numtini]

The US/Europe version is launching commercial tomorrow. It's probably not really ready for the kind of launch they are doing, with real boxes on shelves, and stuff like that. K2's previous work has been the Global English version of Mu, a standard cheap import with translations, no boxes and cheap play. I think they're in for a rough surprise from "normal" consumers that grab a box from Best Buy rather than people who play obscure imported Asian games.

The downsides are that it is a grindfest. It's a little more palatable because to me it's more like playing an action game than an RPG. And the sub is cheaper than average ($9).

I got my characters up to 30 and I had a chance to fight a few duels. And while me saying this might make people's heads explode, the PVP is really really a lot of fun, and I'm probably going to play on one of the PK servers. You have three characters to work with and lots of different special abilities with freeze, slow, knockdown, aoe, fire fields, and all sorts of other stuff. Also, because you tend to fight huge mobs of low HP opponents, you hit for far less than a standard PCs hitpoints, plus you have a heal bot, so you can take an awful lot of "normal" hits before you die, so my experience was that fights lasted longer than I've seen in most other games and I was able to turn things around. In addition to dueling and standard random PK stuff, there's also a faction system and guild vs guild fighting over land control in scheduled "colony wars."

[Falconeer]

I'll stick to my reformed opinion. It's a nifty, original, interesting game.
The monthly fee is a bummer but I guess it could make sense if it means a good, working, stable service.

[Amaron]

I think the game at least shows the Asian market might finally move in a promising direction.   It has way more polish and "thinking outside the box" than it's predecessors.  Maybe in a post-WoW world some of them finally get it.

After you get over the stump of understanding its half RTS and learn to use the hotkeys for different characters the combat opens up and you find yourself much more effective than if you played on auto mode.   This seems to make the game much more interesting.  Fighting the first boss shows the potential of such a system.

That said though it's still got too much yucky grind fest going on.  The leveling seems fast enough but who wants to level by grinding mobs anymore?

The concept is good though and easily quells any arguments that restricting players to one Avatar in an MMO is the only right way to do things.

[Numtini]

In particular, with PVP games. Every single one seems to get infested by multiboxing and bots, why not just build it in. You can still specialize in support when you party up, but for solo levelling and fighting, you've got everything you need without buying additional accounts.

[Falconeer]

Tried to buy an account today (19$) to circumvent the 20 levels limit of the free version.
Couldn't.

When I put in my CC info it says "Transaction failed". Apparently lots are having the same issue.

What's worst for a MMORPG than not being able to collect money?

[schild]

Game didn't get shipped out on time either.

[Numtini]

I'm the odd one out, I was able to register online the evening of launch and I haven't had a problem since other than the market workaround.

They have botched up some stuff though. The web programming is simply not there for registration and all that. They've never shipped boxes before and screwed that one up and nobody seems to know when they're coming in or not. In the game they tried to change the names of some of the stances to make them more palatable to Americans and it just caused problems with their database. Frankly, I hope they change them back because it's far easier to find information from other versions if you know the original names. They also had a rollback and have issues with restoring preorder items that were received during that period because they reverted the servers, but not the cash shop. (Which is what is handling the preorder items.)

On the other side of things, the translations are hugely improved. They really did pull off a miracle on that one because they were a disaster and their first pass on fixing them was pathetic. I do wonder if at some point around level 40 or something they will simply run out and be junk though.

Given the resources they have, they seem to be pretty responsive and doing a decent job. But this is really like the kids screaming "Let's decorate the barn and make it an MMO datacenter!" That is ok with a "weird Korean game you download from the web" but it's not for something trying to be a first tier title.

[Signe]

Let us know how the first day or so carries on.   

[cloudy97]

Would it be possible to play the game with 3 musketeers, or 3 fighters, etc? And would it be soloable, that way?

[Numtini]

If you bought enough potions it would be, but you really need a scout as a healbot.

[Falconeer]

The more I play this the more I like it.

It's Diablo meets Guild Wars meets copious and unexpected amounts of polish (save for the horrendous techno music and the idiotic menus).
The Diablo side is in the loot and in the dungeon carnage feeling. Waves and waves and waves of minions to destroy for your loot 'n grind pleasure.
The Guild Wars side is in the PvP, which is enhanced by the self-team concept, in the beautiful visuals, and in the point 'n click galore, actually expanding the subtle RTS aspect of GW.
Superior to both, the world is actually MMO, not hub-based or instanced at all (save for some boss rooms, which is better).
The amount of overall polish is a real surprise. 

The PVP is hella fun, provided that you can find opponents. I set up some matches with friends (lev 1 chars, or stuff like 1 char vs 1 char, sky is the limit on the PvP options) and it was like the best fun in the last month. Looks like everyone is out there running to level 100 and expanding his/her faimly.
Oh, the family concept is so neat I hope it will be adopted by every future MMORPG. It reminds me of games like Disgaea. It only needs a reincarnation mode and it'll be Nirvana. Alt-a-holics are in heaven already anyway.

It's a repetitive game and it suffers of the same flaws of Diablo and Guild Wars (ie: it can be playes almost completely solo), so no one looks fro groups or stuff to do together. It has its downs, but overall it keeps surprising me. It's worth a look or two (because the first usually gives the wrong impression: "auto-played Lineage 2 clone". That's not the case).

[Engels]

I just downloaded and played for a good spell this evening, and I'm pleasantly suprised, thus far, with some issues here and there.

The good:

Unbelieveably nice artwork and sound. High polish. Nice 'free2play' set up where you can play till level 20 for free. Fun instant game play, mongo loot. Very good performance on my mid-range machine.

The bad:

Poor engrish, but better than most. Hilarious gramatical mistakes in Spanish. Bad explanations on how skill points in skill trees work. Seems like its gonna be grindy, although I'm only level 12. Limitations on character customization and appearances, but miles better than most Asian MMOs.

[schild]

This game is too complicated for me. I preordered it solely based on the artwork.

I don't understand it. I have less trouble wrapping my brain around the ridiculous math systems of N1 titles.

[Deniz]

Artwork? I'm going to buy it based soley on the voice in the trailer.

[Numtini]

I'm still enjoying the game, but it really isn't doing much for the reputation of Korean games in the US market. They did a really great job fixing all the Engrish errors in the tutorial voyage, but ran out of time for, well, the entire rest of the game. Virtually everything there is a placeholder they got directly from the Koreans. About the only localization they did was to open the high level premium costumes for beginners. The billing is a mess. My account still doesn't recognize my free month for being a beta tester. People have lost pre-order items when the server and billing systems weren't synced during a revert.

I don't know how long I'll last. To me this is a game that cries out for a cash shop model. I like it, but I'm not sure I can really justify paying ten a month for it in the long term. I'd probably end up spending more $ in the long run if they ran a cash shop.

While not able to really do a lot to help people, they have a very good customer relations team on their message boards. I like the fact that they're not playing "people who call us expletives are valuable customers who we must treat with respect" game.

[Falconeer]

I appreciate the fact that they are asking 8.95$/month instead of the usual 12-15 bucks. It's like they are conscious of their limits. Plus the whole play for free the first 20 levels is not that bad. I agree 20 levels are nothing, but you could do PvP leagues and PvP tournaments just for free players stuck to lev 20. Easy, nice and fast way to get into "capped" PvP (isn't Guild Wars capped at 20 too, after all? :) ).

[Numtini]

Just a note, but Sword of the New World, the US/K2 version, has gone to a free to play with cashshop model. I think it's a pretty good game, but not good enough to pay for, so for me I think this is great.

[Trippy]

Interesting. Now if only they would get rid that fucking X-Trap I might keep playing it.

[Rasix]

Just a note, but Sword of the New World, the US/K2 version, has gone to a free to play with cashshop model. I think it's a pretty good game, but not good enough to pay for, so for me I think this is great.

Still have to pay for the box or is there a free download?

[Numtini]

Free download.

I am going to guess that they'll have some kind of poison pill coming like the caps on free players in Silk Road or glacial xp with triple XP cards or something. But for now, it's free.