SCORE:

Gameplay: 6
Graphics: 6
Sound: 6

Overall: 6

Pros: Much more involvement in the gameplay , colourful graphics, fun combat.
Cons: Initial combat a bit too easy, which will hopefully change in the later course of the game.

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We’ve lately had a look at another action hero-building RPG from R2 Games, Crusaders of Solaria, which is playable for free in any internet browser. Due to the fact that many of the company’s MMOs fall into the same category as League of Angels and Wartune, we already had some expectations as to what the gaming experience would be like and to be honest, we were expecting another reskinned version of these games (the titles get enough comments calling them clones of each other that we think is a fair statement to make). For we usually don’t have a knack for these exceedingly automated games, we didn’t have high hopes for this one.

However, we were surprised in a positive way as Crusaders is in deed a pretty enjoyable MMO, which is set somewhere between R2Games’ typical RPGs and the action shooter Zombies Ate My Pizza, another one of their games. We were much more involved in the combat and had to actively move around the side-scrolling 3-D levels while using powers and abilities on our hotkeys to unleash amazing attacks. Although the combat as such was all but tremendously challenging, it was still pretty fun and we can only hope for an increasing combat difficulty as players gain levels.

Upon entering the game, you may choose from 4 different classes/ characters and although the sad truth is that there aren’t any option for customising your character, it’s plain to see that your choice of class actually matters a bit more than in other RPGs of this type since you have to actively perform your attacks. This means combat gameplay will significantly differ depending on your chosen class. Questing pretty much live up to our low expectations, with auto pathing options to travel from NPC to NPC in order to pick up and hand in quests as well as long dialogues until we were eventually send into a dungeon.

For the initial part of our trial, we explored the dungeon area and were frequently sent into some kind of mine that was brimming with goblins. When completing its different tiers, we realised that the enemies’ Battle Rating (BR) was publicly viewable, which enabled us to compare theirs to our personal BR value in order to evaluate how difficult it would be to defeat them. Our sheer amount of gear and the rate at which we were increasing our skills was well beyond this difficulty curve, meaning that we were always pretty overpowered for our missions (which were the only available ones so that we were , most probably, intentionally made that dominant for the initial game).

For each completed mission and quest we were rewarded with a huge load of in-game currency that could be spent on new items (though the items available for purchase were the same than those we were already being awarded with for our missions) and on enhancing and enchanting them once this feature had been unlocked, all of which contributed to increasing our BR.

Combat was in fact pretty enjoyable; we were waiting for our powerful attacks to power up in order to unleash them into a gathered swarm of goblins, e.g. our Whirlwind attack which kept spinning for around five seconds moving around the map destroying everything. Quite enjoyable. The boss mobs that we faced, including sub bosses, were interesting and had some different tactics and abilities that broke up the combat and made them a little more challenging in their own right (though again there was never really any danger that we were going to die at this stage and each boss fight has a convenient he’ll pot placed nearby). Once we had worked our way through the mines, we headed off to the next zone around level 10, a port side town where this time round it was Pirates that seemed to be plaguing the locals.

Overall the gameplay was fun, even for these types of RPG which normally aren’t our cup of tea. We think Crusaders of Solaria stands above many of the other RPG titles that R2 Games currently has. The sound is pretty well done including SFX and background music, all of which add to the game and the graphics have an interesting cartoony style to them (again resembling Zombies Ate My Pizza more than their other games).

In order to find out more about this game, heck out our profile of Crusaders of Solaria by activating the INFO button below.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 14th, 2014 at 7:00 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.