The Euro/NA release of Cabal 2 Open Beta is ready to go and we were given access to a Founder Pack that players could purchase to get a couple of free in game perk items as well as three days early access. The sequel of Cabal Online, also developed and released by Korean company ESTsoft the game sees us as mercenaries journeying to the main continent in search of our younger brother who was kidnapped during a ceremony by a “white haired man”, why he was taken and where he was taken to is the underlying mystery and story-arc for our character and in that time we have to help out a bunch of other people who can provide us with answers.

 

Starting out the character creation process lets us choose between the six original classes: Force Blader, Force Archer, Force Shielder, Warrior, Priest and Wizard, covering the main bases of melee and ranged tanks, DPS and support, players can choose either a male of female character. The customization wasn’t half bad, with a whole host of sliders to change facial features and body shapes, whilst some were so subtle it almost wasn’t worth having them, one of the things we did like was just how much weight we could put on our character, pulling them away from the traditional ripped/athletic fantasy hero we usually see. Taking advantage of this we created a female Force Archer who was considerably more on the bulky side than we’re used to seeing in MMORPGs, complete with gut, double chin, thunderous thighs and a shaved head with Mohawk and black eyeliner that screamed butch.

The combat, at least for the Force Archer, is relatively skill based and requires timing and positioning, the Archer actually being ranked as the hardest class to play as shown at char creation (5/5), the idea is to use your evasion skills to keep out of melee range then unleash a variety of combos (or Consecutives) on the enemy, able to chain them together to greater effect. As you level up you unlock more combo abilities, which grow increasingly more difficult to pull off but are definitely worth the payoff, particularly when fighting in a group. We didn’t notice any way to turn on monster nameplates and so we stumbled into our fair share of mobs a few times by accident and nearly got destroyed, showing why the class has a 5/5, this was usually down to the auto-pathing on quests running us straight through enemy filled forests as it was the most direct route. With a little skill and awareness as well as investing our stat points each level into increasing our Hitpoints we managed to get a little less squishy.

 

The game itself looks okay, the animations aren’t too bad, and there’s a lot of cinematics in the quests, but in all honesty as the game was built using the CryEngine 3 we have to say we were expecting more as it definitely hasn’t utilized the technology to the best of its ability. Whilst we will concede that the EU/NA release is a few years behind the Asian release, the graphics still look a good eight years old, a marked improvement when compared to Cabal Online, but in comparison to other MMORPGs released over the last few years it’s definitely not up to par.

As far as MMORPG progression goes, it doesn’t really get any better, the content and questing is the same back and forth between the same NPCs whilst slowly and arduously pushing the plot forward (the number of times we had to skip through banal pleasantries informing us that we must be “that new mercenary that arrived” was tedious). The quests weren’t much better, nor any different to what we’ve seen a million times; go kill a mob and collect so many of off it then come back, however the all too familiar rote of the quest format wasn’t the worst part, it’s that you pretty much only have 1 quest at a time, the quests pushing you through the zone and giving you the next quest in the chain provides for a very singular experience… one that we can’t imagine anyone would want to repeat with multiple characters given that you all start in the same place with the same storyline. Speaking of dated concepts even World of Warcraft, a game that is ten years old, managed to give multiple starting locations, various quests in each zone and numerous story-arcs and quest chains to uncover.

Whilst the game offers some elements of gear customization with various crafting features, of which seem to be tied more to NPCs than any player involvement, helping you enhance gear, disenchant items to get crafting ingredients and the like, it still follows an all too traditional white/green/blue gear quality concept. With customization also comes character skill points, each class having its own skill tree that players can navigate, as well as your attribute/stat points acquired each level; with the amount of customization it does at least mean that players can create fairly unique builds that suit how they want to play. Some of the stats even focus on PVP values, which is promising, and the PVP Arena features look really impressive, a combination of classic battlegrounds match with MOBA style mechanics pushing ally NPCs into an enemy base, fighting past turrets and trying to destroy the enemy Commander in his base. Unfortunately this feature is pretty much pushed towards late game, level 28 for your first Arena (so obviously we didn’t play long enough to check it ourselves), meaning that up to that point you have a lot of boring quests and a handful of group dungeons to tackle in the meantime.

Fundamentally the “blast from the past” echoes through the entire game, using an all too familiar themepark style MMORPG that is pretty tired, where other MMORPGs are looking for ways to innovate and bring something new it feels like Cabal 2 has gone for a formula that worked for years. The issue is that this formula has been copied by a multitude of mediocre MMORPGs (spawning a constant barrage of “WoW Clone” reviews), but Cabal 2 perhaps hopes of possibly capitalizing on the success of their original title to separate it from the others; the result is still the same and has made for a generic and dated title that does little to inspire. Whilst we pushed through each level we constantly waited for that moment, that we were just in the tutorial phase and that something exciting would come our way; unfortunately it never did. Whilst the game may be fun for players of the original who like the world and theme, or those who have never played an MMORPG, for anyone who has tried out a few titles then there’s nothing really that would compel players to choose THIS title specifically.

SCORE:

• Graphics: 7


• Gameplay: 6


• Performance: 8

• Pros: Combat system is relatively skill based and action packed, character creation offers more than most MMORPGs, intriguing PVP Arena content.


• Cons: Gameplay and features are generic and overdone, questing content is extremely linear and old fashioned.

Rating: 7

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2015 at 4:20 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.