We took out some time to try the new free to play RPG from NGames, Abyss: Dark Arisen, a browser based title that we managed to sneak our way onto their third closed beta to check the game out. An Asian import now being launched in the west we spent a couple of hours trying the game out to see whether it would be just another run of the mill Asian RPG or whether it would offer up something new for us.

Starting off we had the choice of three classes: Mage, Warrior and Priest, the iconic trinity and not all that surprising for an Asian RPG who rarely deviate too far from beyond the classic trio, so whilst disappointing it was far from unexpected. We took up the mantle as a mage and put it through its paces, jumping into the game we were accompanied by some NPC master who kept referring to us as “My Kid”, an oddly out of place choice of words and we can only presume they were aiming more for a “My Child” but… well… English translations are rarely a strong point in these games (and it didn’t stop there, there really is some low points translation wise, but we have seen far worse).

Our master leads us through a dungeon where we are kicking the living bejeesus out of everything that comes our way, pretty much one shotting everything like a baws, but when we get to the final Ice Dragon it proceeds to hand our asses to us (not due to lack of skill, it’s totally story driven). From here we end up in a town that we would see a lot of for the duration of our play through; the main town being where our main quest NPCs are (Sergeant, Chieftain, Blacksmith, Mage and Barkeep), the rote of the gameplay was to get quests from these NPCs that would prompt us to head to the town gate portal where we could head to a Solo Dungeon instance (no actual traveling, just a list of level stages we had to progress through which would advance the story).

So into the instances. The first area is called Boneyard but each dungeon is a mine…. Albeit filled with some skeletons in places our first foray led us into an linear environment, a one way path with groups of mobs spread out between the entrance and the exit. Combat is easy enough, up to 4 skills on your hotbar (not at this stage though, you have to level up and unlock them) but pretty much everything could be one shotted and later we even got an AOE that would pretty much kill an entire group bar the elite enemies. It’s fair to say it wasn’t the most challenging experience. The controls are a little iffy when it comes to aiming, it seems that in general it shoots (as a mage) your spell in the direction of your mouse, but sometimes it seems to focus the nearest enemy, so it was a little hit and miss for us. Fighting through the instance we picked up some gold and some loot items along the way until we reached a final room with a stronger “Boss” (he took about 5 attacks to kill).

Dungeon cleared we handed in our quest got some XP and levelled up, this was the first stage in the Boneyard region, so we got the next quest and jumped into the next Dungeon… it was pretty much exactly the same as the first one, the path maybe went in different directions (still only one route), all the enemies the same… the third instance was the same… and the fourth… rinse and repeat for 10 stages in the Region. Now 10 doesn’t sound that much, but unlike a lot of other Asian RPGs these weren’t levels you went in and completed in the space of a minute, each of these was a 5-10 minute grind with the same bland one shot kill combat… for about 2 hours until we completed the region.

Reaching the next region we were thankfully for a change in scenery, then we realized that the Dark Jungle zones dungeons were pretty much exactly the same; one shot kill enemies, same designed maps, only a Jungle theme instead of mines; it did not compel us to keep playing.
Once we’d reached a high enough level we thought we’d try the Multiplayer Dungeon; clicking to join and entering some tavern we could find a group of people looking to play together, someone was inviting so we joined their group and waited. And waited. And waited. Tried to talk to them in party… they just stood there, so we quit the party and went in the multiplayer dungeon solo; surprise surprise it was pretty easy with no real challenge (definitely didn’t warrant three people in a team) but we did manage to pick up some purple gear which we didn’t have to share.

One of the main premises of the game is to acquire loot and then spend Gold to Enhance it (level it up) so as to give you improved stats; it starts out with you being able to comfortably keep ahead of the curve and keeping your new gear enhanced (you can enhance an item a set number of times depending on which slot it fit into). The gold cost isn’t too bad, we were getting quite a bit coming from handing in the quests (not that much from actually running the dungeon itself), but when we got our purple gear the items were getting quite a bit more expensive and soon we were falling behind. That’s definitely how the game felt, it starts out making things easy to get you invested and then slowly makes it so that you just aren’t going to be able to keep up or be competitive, using a “Stamina” system we could only do some of the events a few times before we were out of Stamina and would have to pay real cash to refresh (not thanks).

Needless to say we didn’t come away from Abyss: Dark Arisen feeling optimistic about the game, it is very generic, with an overdone formula that may be successful in places like Korea and Taiwan, but it just isn’t a game for the west we don’t think. The combat is grindy and the content in general is just repetitive, having to do what felt like the same quest for over two hours is not what an RPG is about at all; it looks, plays and feels like every other Asian RPG we’ve played before with the same hackneyed plot, mediocre 3D graphics and shallow systems and mechanics. Throw in the fact that the game performed terribly on our PC, constant lag spikes that made us thankful that the combat was so easy so as not to get us killed constantly.

CONCLUSIONS

• Pros: It’s going to be free to play, it is browser based which is pretty convenient.


• Cons: Slow gameplay, repetitive, unoriginal, boring, terrible performance.

Final Score: Still in Closed Beta

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