SCORE
Graphics: 6
Gameplay: 7
Sound: 5
Overall: 6
Pros: Nice game world and interesting crafting system.
Cons: Very poor animations.
Last week, we dedicated some of our time to check out Villagers and Heroes, the rebranded MMORPG once known as A Mystical Land. This classical theme-park MMORPG is accessible via Facebook, Steam, or a small client.
Villagers and Heroes allows players to select their class from four available choices to step in the shoes of an aspiring hero and venture into a fantasy realm brimming with monsters and NPCs where there are lots of items to be found, collected and crafted in a typical story-based quest gameplay.
Once the quick registering and logging in is done, players are immediately faced with the character creation, offered a selection of four classic classes that a pretty standard and available in lots of other MMORPGS as well: Wizard, Priest, Hunter and Warrior. As one would assume the Wizard is the typical magic AoE-based DPS, the Priest fills the classic healer/ support role, the Hunter is a ranged physical DPS character and finally the Warrior a heavily armoured tank.
In addition to picking their class, players may customise their character by deciding for a gender and choosing from a pretty limited array of other options to personalise face, eyes, hair, etc. We have to honestly admit that, in spite of considering the fact that Villagers and Heroes is a browser game, we would have wished for a bit more options in order to customise our character, which we think is kind of necessary these days for a title aiming at being competitive in its genre and attracting new users.
Nonetheless, we went with the Hunter and entered the game world in order to seek out quests, adventure and, of course, some loot. We started our journey in a small village in the woods and instantly noticed a female NPC with the common exclamation mark over her head. So MMORPG veterans like us immediately know what to do and head towards her to pick up our first quest, which consisted in killing several puny monsters that roamed the area close by. There was a text box introducing players to the fundamentals of combat; however, anyone who has ever played WoW or another theme-park MMORPG will generally already be familiar with all they need to know to play Villagers and Heroes. W, A, S, D keys are used for moving the character while the mouse will move the camera, trigger interactions with objects and select a target (which is also possible with the TAB key) and the number keys can be hit in order to perform the character’s different skills.
The combat uses a traditional tab-target system in combination with auto attack and skills, which all in all seems to function pretty well. We nonetheless would like to see just a tiny bit of innovation; however, developers apparently don’t see any necessity to fix anything if there’s nothing obviously broken. Thanks to our Hunter class’s ranged skills, killing enemies from a distance was indeed fun, as we were able to move around while firing off poison or shots that caused bleeding. There’s nothing to complain about combat mechanics, which isn’t the case of combat animations though at all; they were awkward and ungainly and far from being fluent or tied one to the other. We also noticed visual glitches, such as a bothersome sliding effect on the terrain for instance.
We continued following the game’s starting quest chain, which also functions as a tutorial, and defeated our first mini boss. We chose our first skills/ talents, obtained new items and equipment and learned more about the game's systems and lore. An aspect we really liked is that items, e.g. weapons, can have their very own active skills your character gets access to upon equipping them; for instance, we found a bow that enabled us to fire a poisonous shot.
Levelling up unlocks skill points which can be used to improve your character's passive skills or earn new active skills to put in your hotbar, resulting in a neat customisation tool that allows players o create a character that fits their personally preferred style of play. The Hunter class, for example, allows players to focus on either increasing their pure damage or crit, or range, or on useful buffs, or even improve dot skills such as poison and bleeding.
There’s a huge variety of distinct quests to be picked up across the world which task players with the completion of multiple sorts of tasks (not just combat-oriented ones), e.g. speaking to specific NPCs or finding particular items. And there were also crafting quests, which directly leads us to the crafting aspect of the game. Villagers and Heroes offers different gathering and crafting skills players are able to enhance: Plant Lore, Bug Lore, Fishing, Mining, Woodworking and more. And the best thing about it is that players are able to master each and every skill, providing them with a plethora of things to undertake if they’re into crafting and selling goods.
When it comes to graphics, developers obviously aimed at making the best out of the tools they had recourse to, since they had to confine themselves to a simple and pretty light engine capable of running in browsers. Apart from that, Villagers and Heroes prsents a cartoonish visual style with humorous characters and dialogues. 3D models are tremendously simple and animations frequently terrible and not particularly well linked with each other. Regarding the textures, they are not bad though and the in-game environments are interesting and well crafted, even though they may sometimes feel a bit empty due to the lack of details.
In regards to the sound, the music is fairly nice, with celtic-style tracks that reminiscent of old fantasy games such as Age of Camelot or Zelda. The sound effects, in contrast, are poor and annoying, and would surely deserve a bit more love.
CONCLUSION
Villagers and Heroes is an easily accessible, simple and casual theme-park MMORPG which doesn't try to innovate or advance the genre but rather wraps the most popular elements and features of the classic WoW-style MMORPG formula in a light and family-friendly package. The game might not be sufficiently meaty for hardcore MMORPG enthusiasts, but is perhaps an interesting game that parents and children could play together or for those who are looking for a light and relaxing fantasy MMO experience.
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