We were recently taken into a private walkthrough by Nexon America for their soon to be released MMORPG Riders of Icarus; the game has already been released in Asia and is now gearing up for its North America release. Riders of Icarus is a free to play fantasy where players can tame all manner of creatures; the taming aspect being fairly central to the game you are able to create your own mounts, pets and even armor/weapon enhancements from the thousands of creatures in the world. Meeting up over skype and jumping into the game we were accompanied by two other press outlets for our little tour to find out what the key features of the game are all about.
Meeting up at a reclusive camp in the game we were shown the basics of taming; with our previous look at the game in closed beta we were already fairly familiar with the process and took to it fairly quickly. Our first target was a nearby bear, hitting our taming button we went into a stalker mode to signify we were ready to try and tame the creature, getting close we had to then hit spacebar to jump and land on its back. If successful (and it’s actually harder than it seems sometimes) four greyed out icons pop up that correspond with your WASD keys, when they light up you have to quickly hit them to try and tame the creature, represented by a taming bar that fills up, before the creatures denial bar fills up. When you manage to tame the bear then you find yourself riding atop of it already and it is added to your mount collection as a summonable item.
When we were on our mount we instantly switched to our mounted weapons; a crossbow or a spear, as mounted combat is actually available in the game as well as being able to use a creatures own various abilities that they can unlock as you level them up (levelling up a creature is as simple as having it summoned so that it is active). We were taken to check out another bear, this time a named elite version that was a little rarer and generally more difficult for players to find, these elites can be found all over the world and are pretty valuable for those that can get them. This particular elite couldn’t be mounted from the ground (i.e. creeping up and hitting spacebar to jump on its back) instead we had to perform an aerial stunt jumping off a cliff overhang to land on its back! It took us all a few attempts as the timing was key, ultimately relying on one of our tour guides to battle the creature under the rock to keep it in position.
With a couple of bears tamed we were shown how the pet and seal system works, essentially any creature you capture goes into your inventory and can be used as a mount, or you can use a Pet Scroll to turn the creature into a smaller summonable pet version that fights alongside you but can no longer be mounted. As well as this players can also use a Power Seal scroll to convert the essence of a tamed creature into a buff that is applied to your weapons or armour, each type of creature giving different stats to your gear. With creatures being mounts, pets and gear buffs essentially this means that players will benefit from taming the same creature multiple times, particularly powerful or elite creatures that give the greatest effects.
Taming demonstrated we then got taken to one of the early level dungeon instances called Carleon Estate, a personal group quest where we had to go in and beat up some different mobs and fight our way to the end boss, the Vampire Carleon. The battle demonstrated the dynamic combat with our opponent showing off some different AOE style attacks, as well as changing form into a more challenging “true” version of himself through the battle. The battle was fun although it had been toned down for us for testing and was pretty easy, but for other players there’s two sub-bosses you need to fight through first and Carleon is much more powerful.
The tour then took us onto potentially the most exciting part of the game as we logged into level 25 characters and were at a location called Fort Baelias; a tower out in the middle of the ocean surrounded by mini islands that floated in the sky. Here we would check out flying, aerial combat and more taming! We had a handful of flying creatures already at hand including a huge blue dragon, a smaller skinny brown dragon and a similarly sized insect type creature.
Flying is pretty simple with the spacebar jumping you into the air and allowing you to hover, holding it lets you ascend but otherwise you have WASD movement directed by the mouse. On the backs of our big blue dragon we had a number of new skills available that utilize the dragons own attacks, however when being attacked it did still use our own healthpool. Attacking in aerial combat works generally the same as normal combat except you have more verticality and it’s easier to lose where you are! A few kills under our belt it was time to tame one of the smaller flying dragons!
When taming there are only certain creatures that can be tamed, indicated when hovering over the creature itself, though there are plenty of creatures that can’t be tamed there are still thousands that can. For our taming efforts we had to perform the same feats, flying above our intended target and jumping from the back of our mount onto the back of the tameable creature! It took a while to get the hang of it, our efforts with the Elite Bear had shown we weren’t the most skilled at this, and missing meant a long fall down into the sea (thankfully jumping up out of the water and summoning our mount quickly put us back in the dragon’s saddle).
Our final demonstration was the first raid location, at level 25 players can head to Attaius Peak and try to fight Attaius, for us it was more a chance to see what you could go up against with a full group as it was a 10 man raid and there were only five of us! Flying up to the location we entered a portal and found ourselves in an open ring of mountains with a huge lake in the middle and a handful of small dragons flying around; by destroying some stone pillars surrounding the area we would summon Attaius, a huge water giant that hurled lightning and did high damage melee attacks if you got too close. Our entire team tried to concentrate on damaging his lightning arm (we could only see him above the waist), moving in quickly and attacking whilst moving out… but it did us no good; this guy was waaaay too strong for our group, but he was incredibly impressive to see. After some more futile attempts we accepted defeated and called an end to the raid and the tour, giving our thanks to our guides.
So what did we think of the experience? Well the game looks and plays great, definitely a top quality MMORPG with all your traditional features. The backbone of the game is taming creatures as it helps you with exploration, combat and crafting, it is literally infused into near every aspect of the game, and this is what has us most concerned. Players have “taming points” a resource that is used up each time you attempt to tame a creature, whether successful or not they are used up per attempt, and the more powerful or rare the creature the more points it will use up. Your total number of points increases by one as you level up, and there are potions to replenish a number of taming points, our big concern is how monetized this is going to be (and the answers we got at the end seemed the be a little unsure as of yet). If players need to rely on premium potions then it’s pretty much going to make potions a necessity when it comes to taming high level elites (as the “mini-game” for taming pushing WASD is completely random and sometimes you just can’t tame them on your first go). Aside from that we were really impressed with how the game both looks and plays and it’s definitely worth checking out.
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