RATING:
TBD
Pros: Much better look and sound than other competitors in the hero building MMORPG genre. Great for those who like this type of game.
Cons: Too much similarity in comparison to other MMOs, too much automation which results in a quite boring experience for those who don’t enjoy just clicking their mouse ever so often.
Shadowbound, R2Games’ latest Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Game, has just begun an a-few-days-long open alpha test, granting players the opportunity of already checking out the game in its early stage of development. As an open alpha isn’t particularly common in the industry, we opted for having a look to discover what’s new with R2Games.
R2Games has an expanding portfolio of fantasy-themed hero building RPGs in which players are tasked with acquiring new gear, items, and usually companions to help build up their character strength or Battle Rating in order to become stronger in combat... and Shadowbound is no different.
Those of you who are familiar with other R2Games titles such as Wartune, League of Angels, or even the latest Knight’s Fable (of which we’ve lately published review as well) can prepare for being presented with the same kind of game. We gathered the impression that the company believes in having come up with a successful formula they really don’t seem to be willing to modify it too much. Except for a different storyline, graphics and environments as well as some twists and tweaks on some of the features, the aforementioned games are nearly identical to each other although not having any common franchise or IP; they’re just very similar in gameplay. R2Games and its games have gained both criticism and praise, while some people really like their titles, others think they are not making enough effort to change the gameplay of the games they publish.
There quite literally is nothing new with Shadowbound - the same entirely automated system with auto pathing, automated combat, and automated dialogue, to an extend where we actually didn’t have to click anything for a good five minutes after selecting our class. The game moved us along, fought our battles as usual with the help of ridiculously overpowered NPC companions commonly capable of destroying anything with just one hit, which makes combat pointless in double respect, as one the one hand we didn’t get to do anything and pretty much had a guarantee to win on the other.
Regarding class selection, the developer stuck with exactly the same three classes. Even worse, the selection screen lacked any visualisation of the different characters and didn’t present any information on each class’s capabilities or in which they differed from each other either. We could, of course, make allowances as the game is still in an incomplete state and hope that this will be added for launch. However, as this kind of information is missing in some of their other MMOs as well, it’s perhaps a bit hoping for no reason at all.
Nevertheless, when taking into account that it’s only an alpha version, Shadowbound already looked particularly complete, with just a few missing bits of dialogue and translation issues. The overall experience seemed to mimic gameplay from the other titles and at this stage we can’t imagine that they’re going to change much of it, at least not in the first 20 levels of we played through.
In comparison to the other games, the major redeeming feature of Shadowbound is its actual graphical quality; the artwork scenes of the in-game background environments, which essentially are a static isometric map you run around on, look pretty great. Although their other game’s backgrounds are well designed as well, we gathered the impression that they’d step things up a bit in Shadowbound. More so the actual character, NPC and monster models, they look considerably better than in the similar titles from the publisher. They now look more appropriate for the backgrounds, which is a remarkable enhancement.
Sound and music weren’t too bad either. In a specific occasion when we entered a forest, the music that kicked in definitely had a Final Fantasy feel about it, which can only be considered a good thing.
And in regards to gameplay? Well, Shadowbound had unfortunately much too much similarity in comparison to the other titles we’ve played, way too much automation and we felt dragged throughout the whole story, most of which we missed as the NPCs talk and skip through the dialogue at too high a pace to keep up with. Those who are into this kind of games will probably love Shadowbound for it sticks to the same formula while being considerably more enhanced and polished in regards to its visuals.
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