Forsaken World Review
Forsaken World Review
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Genre:
I’ve played a lot of Perfect World MMOs lately and, for the most part, they’ve been of a generally high quality. The other thing that has struck me is the variety in what they publish, from Blacklight Retribution, a fun but fairly run-of-the-mill first person shooter, to War of the Immortals, and MMO that labels itself a hardcore action MMO. For the most part they were very good, offering hours of entertainment unlike much you can already get on the free-to-play market. Then there are the other MMOs that Perfect World publish, the MMORPGs that are exactly like each other and exactly like everything else you’ve already played. They’re good, for what they are, but hardly innovative and this leads to an instant familiarity, a tired feeling seconds after you’ve created your character. Forsaken World is one of the latter games, and I felt tired of it before I’d even really given it a chance. Could it redeem itself?
Haven’t I Seen you before?
Knowing that Forsaken World was “just” going to be another MMORPG, I knew exactly what to expect from my character. I was so, so right; from the dress to the crazy haircut, a male avatar has never looked so ridiculous. There are options, of course, but you can’t help but liken it to a police parade after a fire in a club for transvestites. I can’t say much for the female characters, which are probably petit and attractive, but the men look like they wish they were the female characters. As a result, you probably won’t be able to create the character of your dreams or even a vague representation of yourself (unless of course you look at the screenshot of my character above and instantly recognise yourself, in which case I apologise, and not just for my mocking you, but for nature mocking you as well). The characters you can design are little better than disappointing.
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Is it a lady? – a Metagame
And what better way of moving on than by explaining a game my girlfriend and I have been playing while I’ve been reviewing Forsaken World. When coming across another character, we’ve been playing a game called “Is it a lady?” The character design is such that when you’re journeying around and come across other player-characters, it can be difficult to tell exactly what sex they are. This isn’t a problem that often manifests itself in the designs for NPC characters (who usually look pretty good), but it’s still a strange issue that I don’t think I’ve ever come across before. Character design remains largely uninteresting, but passable; you’re not going to be put off by it being a little bit dull, but you probably won’t find much that sticks in your mind either. It’s strange because, actually, the graphics in Forsaken World are pretty good.
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Little Problems
Before we continue any further, it’s important to mention a few problems I’ve had. Some of these may come from an incompatibility with my computer or it may be problems inherent in the software, all I can say is that I’ve had these issues and there’s no obvious explanation for them. My first time playing Forsaken World resulted in a crash error and the removal of access to the game. Let me clarify that: all the files were on my computer, installed and ready to go, I just didn’t have access to a way of actually starting the game. I searched, I checked my antivirus, I did everything I could to find a way to combat the problem but in the end I uninstalled and tried again from scratch. My second time playing, after a second download and install, resulted in another crash message. Thankfully, the second time, I could continue on without too much issue.
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So Many Quests
If you’re the sort of person who likes to be doing lots of things at once, Forsaken World may just be for you. The quests aren’t exactly gripping, although I’d say they’re for the most part more interesting than the genre MMORPG. With that said, the goals are usually the same: kill so many monsters, collect certain objects, and return for experience. The story behind the quests has a little more effort than usual, but long-time MMOs players probably won’t even notice for the fast-clicking they’ll no doubt be doing. With up to 20 quests available at a time, though, you’ll be able to stack them all up and deliver them in one large pile instead of doing one at a time, definitely an advantage if you don’t want to have to keep going back to the same person to get a new quest every couple of minutes.
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Fighting
Fighting is rather funny in Forsaken World. It’s your usual MMO style: skills at the bottom, assigned to numbers, click an enemy, press a button, trade blows until one of you is badly-animated to death. As a mage though, casting a spell will throw an enemy across quite a distance. It’s amusing enough that it’s actually fun to fight in Forsaken World, causing chaos and throwing tossing enemies around the place. I can’t say that enjoying doing this would last for any amount of time, nor that people with a more mature outlook on life will find it as funny as I do, but it’s still a different sort of thing to see. Other than that, battle is fairly dry and, the only plus side, you’ll know exactly what you’re doing without too much effort. There are a variety of enemies you’ll come across, and while you’ll be performing the same moves anyway, it’s still interesting to go from fighting different sorts of things.
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Forsaken World Review
Conclusion
Like other entries in the Perfect World catalogue, Forsaken World is a very good game. It also offers almost nothing that other games haven’t already topped. Here we have that odd juxtaposition, that odd game that’s difficult to place, that finally crafted game that borrows almost everything from everybody else. It’s something that somebody new to the genre could play and enjoy to the point where they know every inch of the world and the best way to grow each character, but for a long time MMO fan that spark just won’t ignite. They’ll play it for a day or two, a couple of weeks if there’s nothing else on the horizon, and then throw it aside for it to join the blend of games they’ve played and thrown aside. Does that make it a bad game? No, and whether you play Forsaken World for a fortnight or for a year, you’ll enjoy the time spent.
The worst thing is that Forsaken World's competition comes from the publisher itself and it’s too easy to look at other available games on the Perfect World website and see plenty of other things to see and do, probably things you’ve that are a little more original. Still, for what it is, I’ve seen a lot worse on the market, and I imagine there are people out there that would swear by it.
