Pros: Decent enough 3D graphics, 116 class variations, lots of typical features
Cons: Not much new to the MMORPG genre, frustrating and dull questing, dated game
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Luna Online: Reborn has just gone into its open beta, gearing up for a re-release of the old 2009 title Luna Online. Originally cancelled, the game has been picked up by new publishers, rehashed, some improvements made and being relaunched for a new audience (and lots of happy original players glad to see its return).
We got access to the game and got a chance to try it out and see what it was about, a very classical 3D MMORPG the game features some relatively decent graphics (better for the time, but the game hasn’t been upgraded to stand alongside more modern day titles) and a cartoony more “family friendly” theme.
First thing stepping into the game was making our character, here we could go with Humans, Elves or the “Majin”, kind of a dark elf looking character, which looked cooler than actually was (so we came to learn). Humans and Elves can be one of three different classes; Rogue, Mage or Fighter, and when you level up in the game you unlock sub-class specializations at certain level milestones, six in total for the six tiers, which gives you a choice of classes to choose from based on your starter class and race (a total of 116 combinations, which is pretty good).
Not for the Majin though.
The Majin have no class, they seemingly are a bit more versatile in that they have elements of the three different classes, but mostly this comes down to three personal buffs that you can switch between to improve physical attacks, magic attacks and dodging. It sounds cool but our experience wasn’t quite up to par and it felt like the race/anti-class was a tag on to the game that was probably not meant for new players (it was originally a later added class so this might not be too far off the point). The trouble we had is that we felt underpowered to start with and struggled to get stronger, other than gear rewards from our quests we must have picked up over 20 pieces of gear as loot that were all for “Elf/Human” (yes it appears the other two races can both wear the same gear), even the armor vendor in the big city only sold Elf/Human gear with no Majin gear at all (unless there was a hidden second vendor… but he wasn’t anywhere noticeable if that’s the case).
The problem with being underpowered for us wasn’t anything to do with feeling like we were weak, we don’t mind not being an OP class, it was that it directly hindered out questing progression. The first quests for the initial zone are “Kill 10 <monster> and the boss version of it” about 7 times in a row, each time just changing the monster we had to kill and increasing the number (so the last one being “Kill 20 King Slimes and the boss version”. This in itself is mind numbingly boring, there’s literally no other quests in the area, just killing X number of <monster> and it’s boss quests. That still isn’t our issue. That’s boring quest design but it’s fairly typical of South Korean grindy MMORPGs, the problem was that there’s no “first hitting” i.e. when I hit a mob or do some significant initial damage, then it’s tagged as mine and when it dies I get the kill. It would seem the game simply works out whoever did the most damage gets the kill. So when trying to kill “the boss version” (taking into account there were 7 versions of this same quests) there were so many people in the area that even if we managed to get a mob down to 80% health other classes were coming over and absolutely eradicating the bosses we were already fighting and it was taking forever to get the kill count to complete the quest and progress the chain, and we couldn’t get stronger with our gear to kill stuff quicker. Frustrating.
The combat was simple enough, and we were happy that there wasn’t any tab targeting as for PVP this would be a bit of annoyance for us personally. The game boasts a few PVP features primarily including a faction based system where at character creation you choose if you wish to be red camp or blue camp; there’s no lore or anything to either faction that we could make out and it was more of a mechanic for PVP than any story based elements. Periodically we received on screen notifications letting us know of various exploits our camp was having, but we were so low level that we couldn’t really engage, but the mention of PVP zones is always a step in the right direction as far as we’re concerned.
The game really tries to make its mark with the cosmetics aspect, the game is geared towards a younger audience with its fairly timid themes and cutesy graphics; players that want to focus on playing dress up or acquiring new pets and mounts. The publishers assigned some pretty neat costumes to our account including one that made us look like Iron Man, which was cool, and we’re sure it’s the kind of thing that players who are into this game would really like. The environments were filled with players (which made completing our quests hard) but shows there’s definitely an audience for the game, especially one that has been awaiting a return since it was initially cancelled and one that was vocal enough for Suba Games to pick the title up.
Most definitely casual and not especially demanding, this has a tendency to drift into simply “not fun”, beyond it being a more social MMORPG for players to meet up and compare costumes or build up their house and decorate it, it’s very much an emphasis on social gameplay than trying to be an amazing and innovative title.
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