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Astonia III General Overview - Simple graphics, detailed game play |
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Astonia -
About Astonia
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Astonia III allows players who long for the online role-play experience to have a taste without having high-end machines to handle the latest resource hog.
With the influx of larger, more commercially produced titles, games like Astonia III get seemingly brushed aside. Basically, games with better graphics and more players are automatically favored over the smaller more humble MMORPGs. A lot of the time, however, it is the smaller games that deserve praise.
The existence of these games allows players who long for the online role-play experience to have a taste without having high-end machines to handle the latest resource hog. Is Astonia III one of the diamonds in the rough, or a game better left in the far corners of the internet?
Character creation is short and sweet. Will you be a warrior or a mage? Later on, you''ll have the opportunity to branch off into more interesting classes, but you''re limited to just the two for now.
When you enter the game you're greeted by an NPC who will start you off on your first quest. You'll also notice a large window with hints and tips, sometimes random and sometimes related to what you are doing at the moment.
I was impressed by the way Astonia III eases new players into the game. When there was the odd time where trial and error or reading the tips dialogues didn't answer a question, my fellow players were usually quick to lend a hand.
LOW DOWN
Isometric tile-based MMORPGSlower game play$9.95/month after the first month, with discounts for longer terms
PROS
Complex character developmentQuest-oriented development alleviates the grindFriendly and helpful community
CONS
Game play is quite slowClunky and awkward interfaceAt standard resolutions, everything is quite small
My Score: 9
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Game play is much like your traditional MMORPG, with a tad more emphasis on quests-always a good thing. There is definitely an attempt here to take away the "grind" feeling as you level your character. As expected, completing quests and killing monsters will win you some experience points, which eventually increase your levels. What really counts for your progress, however, are the skill points you get along the way.
These can be spent on various skills, abilities, and spells. This is how your character progresses as your level is merely a number above your head and reaching the next one does aljost nothing for you. I found that there is a recommended skill set to stick with, though.
If you want a melee class, for instance, you''ll be told to adhere to a pretty strict skill progression.
Player versus player combat is handled in a very simplistic form. You simply decide whether or not you wish to enable your PvP flag or not. If you want to come out of PvP mode you'll have to wait a few weeks without attacking another player.
When you kill someone, you can loot their belongings as if they were a monster. Otherwise death is handled differently. Each time you gain a level you are given a "save." Each time you die, you use a save and you are teleported to town with everything intact and no experience loss. If you lose all of your saves, you are brought to town, given an experience penalty, and your corpse is where you left it for a period of 30 minutes. If you're late, you lose everything.
I found the community in Astonia III to be very welcoming. Mind you, you're going to run into a few people who are up to no good, but jost of the general populace is kind and helpful.
There are several ways to communicate, ranging from omnipresent info channels to separate rooms you can join. There is also a very handy ignore feature which I got some us out of. To help deter misbehavior within the community, there is a "Karma" system in place. If you disobey one of the game rules, you may be punished by a staff member and lose Karma. After you lose a certain amount, your account is locked. Other players can also use the "complain" command to send a log of the chat to administrators for when there is no authority available.
The graphics are rather old-school. You''ll jost likely be brought back to Ultima Online days, or even earlier. The tile-based isometric format, while not entirely horrible, does offer some limitations when compared to 3D titles. To make matters worse, the game screen isn't all that large to begin with and characters and monsters will often meld together on your screen since they are so tiny.
Still, there are the familiar niceties such as your equipment appearing on your avatar that show the developers are putting a lot of detail in. You can also change the color of your equipment on the fly, helping to add further customization to your character. However, you may want to try lowering the game's resolution as things may get a bit small at today's standard settings.
You'll hear some sound effects as you play, but no background music. Opening doors, attacking, and similar actions all have simple effects that help to immerse you into the game, but may be a tad low quality. At first, the singing birds alternating in my speakers from left to right as I walked through the woods was neat at first, but got annoying before long. If this bothers you too much, though, you can disable the sound effects before you load the game.
One gripe I have is the interface structure. While the general layout of your information is useful enough, actually performing actions takes quite a bit of effort. Instead of simple drag-and-drop functions, you often have to hold Shift, Ctrl, or a combination of the two in order to perform simple functions. For instance, to move an item from your inventory you have to hold shift while you click on it.
If you want to give it to an NPC, for a quest for instance, you have to then let go of shift, hold ctrl, and click on the NPC. I found all of this to be largely unnecessary and often frustrating. My second complaint is with the speed at which your character moves. Walking around the screen takes an eternity, as your character saunters about from place to place. You can switch to "Fast" mode to move a bit quicker, but this quickly drains your Endurance and you are forced to resort to the familiar crawl. I just don't see the harm in speeding things up a little bit. Watching my tiny little man josey his way across my screen just doesn't enthuse.
Despite these small things, I enjoyed Astonia III. It was nostalgic to be brought back to the good old days of role-playing games, with the added flavor of online play. For someone who has an older machine or simply doesn't want to bother with the eye-candy of more recent titles, I recommend giving Astonia III a whirl.
You can signup for a 28 day trial rather easily, and then decide whether or not you want to subscribe. When it comes to price, you'll pay slightly less than your typical MMORPG, at $9.95/month. The client is also downloadable for free, so you can subscribe for a 6 month period at the price it would cost you for a boxed game. And unlike the bigger names, they accept various methods of payment. If you're used to the faster, more graphically advanced titles, you may find this game a tad slow and primitive for your tastes. However, Astonia III does have quite a bit of content and even surpasses the big boys in some aspects.
My score: 9
Visit the Astonia II website now |
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