Asayaki zAc :the Gaming Artist

Friday, April 9

Labels: The Chronicles of Spellborn

Okay.. about time I did an update. I did wonder if doing all this was worth it. Anyway, here's a little picture I did with my graphic tablet Intous4. Took me around 3-4 mins to do.

The Album Cover!

I had been playing The Chronicles of Spellborn (TCoS) for quite some time so I thought I do a review on it.

Status: It is not being updated, but you can play it
Genre: Fantasy
Area: Global
Fee: Free to Play
Developer: Spellborn International
Publisher: Acclaim Games (there are two more publishers but this one is global, well I think)

Once upon a time...
A little overview of TCoS, it is a pretty fun game to me. Needs more players though. It was originally launched as a pay to play (p2p) game but now it is free to play (f2p). It has very nice graphics, quite similar to that of WoW but much more unique in a sense. It is actually a tprttorpg (third person real time targetting online role-playing game) if there is such a genre.

Learn the ways of your masters.

Before anything else, you should know that there are three classes in TCoS; the Warrior, the Mage and the Rogue. What? No archers?
The screenshot above shows that you have to choose a class during character creation. The red icon represents the Warrior. The green icon represents the Rogue. The purple icon represents the Mage. Clicking on them will reveal a little summary of what the classes are like and what type archetypes they can advance to.
Each class can advance to three different archetypes upon reaching level 5.

The Warrior can advance to Blood Warrior (BW), Wrathguard (WG) or Adept (AD).
The Mage can advance to Ancestral Mage (AM), Rune Mage (RM) or Void Seer (VS).
The Rogue can advance to Death Hand (DH), Skinshifter (SS) or Trickster (TS).
I'm not sure of the acronyms, correct me if I'm wrong.

Each archetypes are special in their own way. So let's take a look at them.

Blood Warrior -
If you like absorbing damage and not worry about health, then this is the perfect tank for you. They emphasize more on defensive skills (which means less offensive skills) and they possess abilities to absorb or redirect damage from their allies.

Wrathguard -
Seen a warrior that can cast empowerments and buffs? Well this one can. They can buff allies as well as themselves to make them stronger in battles by evoking ancestral spirits to unleash their powers. They make nice tanks and damage dealers too if you play them right.

Adept -
Nothing 'kung fu' can't solve. Adepts are experts in martial arts. They can deal swift and deadly blows at their opponents and possess the abilities to disarm, slow and silence them (basically to debuff them). They can also heal allies, somewhat like a paladin, making them useful in group battles.

Ancestral Mage -
They are the 'tamers' of the game. This means that ancestral mages have pets! They can summon the spirits of the past to fight alongside them. Although they have limited offensive spells, they can buff the pets up and let them do all the work.

Rune Mage -
If you prefer to see your opponents being bombarded by an array of spells, then go rune mage! They specialize in offensive spells and are capable of creating special runes which enhance their power as well as those around them.

Void Seer -
Are you a better assist than a fighter? Then try the void seer, as they possess abilities to counter enemy spells, buff and heal allies.

Death Hand -
A special brew for you. Death hands are masters of poison and they use mixtures of different poisons to slow, blind and damage their enemies over time. This also makes them ideal in group battles since they can take on multiple enemies at once.

Skinshifter -
Have you played Assassins Creed? Notice your hero in Assassin Creed can 'blend into the crowd'? Well, so can the skinshifters. They possess abilities to transform and shapeshift into different forms, hence blending into different crowds, then assassinate their targets. Useful eh?

Trickster -
Speed, ingenuity and efficiency. Tricksters can create illusions to trick their enemies. They rely on sleight of hand to gain the advantage too. Oh, one more thing. They can craft special - and small - devices and traps to confound their enemies.

Congratulations! It's a boy!
Now you know the classes and different archetypes. Time to create your character!

I took nearly a whole 30mins to create my character. You get to choose two races in the game, a human or a daevi. Humans are, well, humans and daevis are like a mutated form of humans with bigger arms and body structure as well as hooves. They are little devils, only bigger.
You also get to choose your gender and body type (skinny, normal, fat or buff). I personally prefer the skinny or normal ones. The buff (for males) and fat ones just look overly exaggerated.

After body type selection is the hair and head customization. You get to choose different hairstyles or you could just go with bald. You also get to choose from a large palette of hair and skin colours.

Next up, clothing and accessories. A big wardrobe to choose from too. Each design have five different types of clothes; sleeveless, short sleeves, long sleeves, sleeves on right only (both short and long) and sleeves on left only (both short and long). You also get gloves and you can choose from short pants, three-quarters and long pants. You get to dye your clothes too. Although you can re-dye your clothes but that don't come cheap so choose wisely.

Armour pieces are next. One thing to remember, the armour pieces does not affect gameplay. They don't give stats or improve your spells. Only the sigils equipped on the armour do (more on that later). So don't worry about what type of armour to choose, just pick whatever you see fit. You can also choose to type A armour the left and type B armour the right. You get shoulder pads, shinguards, helmet (or hoods), armoured gloves, boots, chest piece and belt. You can change the colour of the armour pieces, re-dye is also possible but still not cheap.

Weapon selection is the final step in your character creation. Your character will get two types of weapons, ranged and melee. For melee, you can get either two-handed ones or single-handed ones. Single-handed weapons allow you choose a shield (shields are just for show, it doesn't affect you in anyway). Bows are the only ranged weapons available.
In this game, bows requires no arrows to fire and weapons do not affect your gameplay. Again, the sigils on your weapons do.

Personally, I feel that TCoS have one of the best character customization that any f2p RPGs can have.

After all these, you are done! Click done will lead you to a short cut scene and introduction. Then a tutorial will teach all the basics of the game. You can't skip the tutorials though, but why skip when you can get experience points and a skill from it. The tutorial is also part of the story that you will go through. Yes, the game actually has a storyline!

All on the Airship please.
Your tutorial begins on an airship making its way towards Hawk's Landing. The tutorial cannot be skipped. W, A, S, D keys to move, spacebar to jump and you can change camera views by clicking and dragging with your right mouse button. You'll be given a series of simple tasks like breaking crates and barrels, shooting straw dummies and finding a key. Press V key (if I'm not wrong) to wield/unequip or weapon. You can also set the camera to stick to your mouse with the R key (again, if I'm not wrong, correct me if I am). You get to test your aiming skills with some creatures later on. You end the tutorial by breaking an egg and receiving a new skill from the captain of the ship. She (yes, the captain is a female) will ask you to destroy an oversized egg and teaches you a new skill as a reward. After that, you will alight from the airship and reach Hawk's Landing.

Aim properly or your mistake will be your demise.
A very unique feature in TCoS is their targeting system. It is very similar to fps and tps games. You have to expertly time yourself, aim and attack your opponents. No more click and wait. This is something I like about the game. It is also 3D too, not side-scrolling nor vertical-scrolling.
Your skills are divided into two sections. Passive and active. The active skills go on your skill deck, which acts like your skill bar. You get to assign different skills on this skill deck (a six sided cylinder-looking-like bar) which will roll from one tier to another after every attack (yes, your basic attacks are skills). A maximum of 5 skills can be placed on each tier and there are 6 tiers. Select which skill you are going to use on your next attack with 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 keys above your W, A, S, D keys. The skill deck will only appear when you equip your weapons and you are only allowed to assign your skills onto your skill decks when you unequipped your weapon.

More info on: http://spellborn.acclaim.com/combat_system.html
More info on: http://spellborn.acclaim.com/combat_reticule.html

Learn not to be blind, lesson 101:

The terrains are beautifully designed with Western-style art. Vast areas to explore too. Press M to look at your map. Areas that had not been explored will no show on the map, something like WoW's map.

Health bar is located at the top left. The red bar on top of your character portrait is your health. The yellow filling in the larger circle beside your portrait is your experience 'bar'. The purple filling in the smaller circle beside your portrait is also your experience 'bar', but it is different, it is called the Personal Experience Points (PEP). Each time you kill a mob, your PEP increases. Maxing it out, you get one PEP rank. The PEP ranks affect your status of your character.
The number in your bigger circle with yellow filling indicates your current level.
The number in your smaller circle with purple filling indicates your current PEP rank.

PEP Rank 0 - No effect
PEP Rank 1 - Raise all attributes by 1 and gain 1 additional rank base level
PEP Rank 2 - Raise all attributes by 2
PEP Rank 3 - Raise all attributes by 4 and gain 1 additional rank base level
PEP Rank 4 - Raise all attributes by 7
PEP Rank 5 - Raise all attributes by 11 and gain 1 additional rank base level

You will lose Personal Experience Points by dying. However, death will not affect your main experience points.

The three other bars to the right of your portrait are your 'status bars'
Physique (the orange bar) affects your movement speed.
Morale (the purple bar) affects your damage output.
Concentration (the green bar) affects your skill deck rotation speed and attack speed.

So basically,
More blocks in your Physique = Running Faster
More blocks in your Morale = Attacking Stronger
More blocks in your Concentration = Attacking Faster

The chat box is at bottom left. There is four different chat logs: Local, Zone, Trade and Whisper. Once your join a guild there will be a Guild chat. You will also obtain a House chat log when you join a High House (five to choose from, more on that later).

The mini-map is on the top right. You can choose to zoom in or out like most mini-maps. The text on top of your mini-map shows you your current location. The picture of suns, stars or clouds (basically anything you see in the sky) shows you the time of the day. A letter N in the shield on the top of your mini-map circle indicates North (logic right?).

Active quests will be shown below your mini-map. Your skill deck is shown in bottom middle of your screen. The menus (character info, skill menu, library, inventory, etc.) will be shown on the bottom right.

When you target a mob, its portrait will be shown right beside yours. You can also see its health bar right beside it on the main map. A red circle around your portrait will be shown when you are in danger (or at least something is trying to attack you).

Weapons? Who needs weapons when there are sigils!
Sigils? What are sigils. Well, they are basically like a 'power-stone' you place in your armour piece or weapons to make them stronger and boost your stats. As I've said, armour pieces and weapons do no affect your status nor does it improves your character's combat capabilities. Shields are basically useless if you ask me. Sigils are the ones that actually boost your characters.
Each sigils have different stats so look carefully when you decide to place them into your weapons or armour pieces. Oh, you also get sigils to be placed into your skills too! Sigils like decrease cooldown of range attack by X seconds or increase damage of skill by X points are available.

A character involves Mind, Body and Focus...
The stats system is unique too. Three different stats to add, Mind, Body and Focus. The classes are not limited to what stats they can add as the stats affects the skill damage. Each archetypes of each class have a set of different skills that require either Mind, Body or Focus, so a player can choose balance his stats among all three or focus on one or two depending on what skills they chose to be in their skill deck.
The possible builds to the stats are endless. Moreover, the equipments have no stat requirement except for levels.

The High Houses of Spellborn!
When you reach a certain level, you get to join a High House. You will not be able to quit the High House when you joined them so choose wisely. There are five High Houses to choose from: Maul, Silver, Torque, Shroud and Rune. Don't ask me which High House is better, honestly, I don't think there is a better High House. All of them feels the same to me, just that the number of people differ in different High Houses.

If you joined the PvP Server, players of different High Houses can actually attack each other in a PvP Area. Example: Players from Maul can attack players from Silver in a certain areas. Don't worry. Once you enter certain areas, they will warn you in your chat box with the message: "Entering PvP in 5..." and players in the same party cannot attack each other.

Backgrounds of the High Houses:

Maul (Power) - They emphasize more on power. They are usually the first to be on the frontlines of a battleground, ready to defend the Enclave.

Rune (Research) - They crave for knowledge. "Research and know your enemies first before acting" that is their basic principle.

Shroud (Shadows) - They work in the shadows. They are like private investigators and usually acquire crucial information and truths of forgotten times.

Silver (Riches) - They emerged from trade. They are the ones who amassed so much wealth that the High Houses could not exclude them from any decision-making sessions.

Torque (Politics) - They are the political leaders. It has a long tradition of upholding political leadership in Enclave.

Each High Houses have different icons and colour codes to symbolize themselves.
Maul's icon is an eagle on a green background.
Rune's icon is a sword on a blue background.
Shroud's icon is a piece of leave on a purple background.
Silver's icon is a sword, hammer and shield with a crescent on a yellow (or golden) background.
Torque's icon is three axes arranged in the shape of a Y on a red background.

More info on: http://spellborn.acclaim.com/high_houses.html

Adi-adi-adi-T-That's all folks!
Well, that concludes my review. All screenshots on this post are googled. My ratings are below.

My Ratings:

Story: 9.0/10
Quests: 8.6/10
Battle System: 8.2/10
Stats System: 8.3/10
Skill System: 8.0/10
Equip System: 7.9/10
Individuality: 7.2/10
Overall Rating: 57.2/70

Rating System:
I rate according to the gameplay. The gameplay is splitted into 5 parts, Quests, Story, Battle System, Equip System and Individuality. The Story is rated according to, well, the main storyline of the game. The Quests are rated according to how unique they are. Battle System is rated as how interactive their battling system is. Stats and skill systems are affected by the uniqueness of a game system, which includes a variety builds a player can form with. Equip system is rated according to the variety and the uniqueness of equipments. Individuality is one of the hardest to score, this is rated on how unique a player can make his/her character look. Individuality is affected by Equip System and Character Customization. These ratings are part of my views. Other people's views may vary.

There actually is a storyline in the game! Most MMORPG's or ORPG's have no storyline so for that, they get a better score. The Quests are quite unique as well. It ranges from killing mobs to delivering items to tracking down a target to sneaking past guards and finding objects. They also have quests that allow you to try and negotiate with people (apparently it will still lead to killing them) and race against time.

Battle system is very unique. Not many ORPG's have a targeting system like TCoS, so another high score for uniqueness.

The stat system is based on three different stats, Mind, Focus and Body. Although there are only three stats but the variety of builds are endless. Since most weapons require no stats to equip them, just levels.

The skill system is special in its own way. They put basic attacks as skills and there is no such thing as mana cost. It is more about how you use your skills than how powerful your skills are.

As for the equip system, the score was lower because of the lack of benefits the armour and weapons gives. The shield is practically useless too. However, the sigils did make up for it and the best of all, no class limitations. There are also a variety of equipments you can find in the game, although I don't like the drop rate.

The character customization also offers near limitless possibilities on how you can edit your character. Two races, four different body types and a variety of colours to choose from. The only character customization that wins TCoS that I can think of is Aion.

10:56 AM