*PC Blowout* Eden Eternal

I have recently been getting into PC Free to play MMORPGs, so I think ill do the three I've played so far.  Yes, it's not my usual style, but eh, you run out of ideas sometimes.  Heres the one that kickstarted this trend, Eden Eternal!

From the guys and gals at Aeria Games, this game features cartoony, anime style graphics, character customization, multiple classes per character and more.  It has a decent popularity and overall good reviews.  I decided to play this one first due to the fact it looked very much like the one the girls in Lucky Star were playing in the anime.  But screw everyone else's opinion, what did I think of the game?

It's good.  really good actually.  Very polished and very realized.  The most obvious aspect is the graphics, which are awesome.  the entire game feels like one big anime and I love it for it.  Environments are varied from forests to volcaoes to harbours, and the menu design and UI is sleek and easy to use.  Text is presented nicely and abilties and options are all put in a way so it never gets confusing.  Attacks, while nothing special, are all fluid and damage is seen to enemies only after the attack actually hits, which is nice.  Cutscenes are non-existent in this game unfortunately, so the only way of story youre going to get is in text, which is kinda a bore.  I never read the story into these games, they put way too much text into it.  Dungeons are also varied and have a certain theme or element to them that sets them apart, though some are forgettable.  Overall game looks nice and it's atmospher eis pretty good.  I started the game and was able to pick up the controls and gameplay rather quickly, which should be a testament to it's great design.  All MMORPGs start you off in a small town or area, levling you up and getting you used to the controls, than they send you to the main hub of the game, where all players from all towns meet and set off on their adventures.  The hub in this game is Aven, and it's pretty great.  It's designed well and has that city atmosphere, which it should.  Different merchants and specialist NPS are littered throughout the area, and slowly you start to talk and use every one of them.  its a nice progression and is a pretty good hub for what it is. 

My class of choice as a Hunter

Speaking of gameplay, thats pretty fun too.  i was an archer, and all of my attacks had to deal with slowing them down at a distance, then heavily damaging them as they slowly approached.  It provides a good level of strategy and is way more fun than the basic "I'm a warrior, im just gunna hit em hard" gameplay that most people are accustomed to.  Different attacks are given to you as you level up.  but theres not only your level as a person, but your class level.  This game gives you the option to play as every single class simultaneously, switching through a menu.  Each class has it's own level, and certain rewards are given for leveling up each of them.  Though it's not technically required to do this, and other than hunter and martial artists, i didn't use anything else and was just fine.  Certain armour can only be worn with certain classes, so armour collecting, at least for me, was hit or miss.  Of course everything loses durability after a while so mainting them is a factor, but not really intriguing.  All it adds to is going to a blacksmith and clicking each item to repair them.  How...fun?  Interesting?  Not needed?  I digress.  Overall edens gameplay is simplistic, but still strategtic and very fun. 

The quests in this game though are eh.  Im aware that these games need to have grindy quests so they can be 50-100 hour games, but it can get really tiresome after a while.  Seeing a quest for killing 25 enemies is really disheartening.  Quests can be overlapped and done together, but after a while they give next to no XP, resulting in doing the same chunk of quests over and over and over.  The quests could have been more varied too.  Its either killing enemies, delivering something or going to a certain spot and collecting something.  Wheres maybe a quest that has you race an NPC?  How about a quest that has you say the right dialogue choices to NPCs?  I wouldve liked a way in which each quest felt like their own in a little respect, rather than them all clumping together.  An awesome part of the game is the auto route though, allowing your character to instantly walk to an NPC, area, dungeon, group of enemies or anywhere on  the map via the setting of waypoints  this allows for you to travel long distances while organizing your inventory and doing other mondane tasks that you would otherwise ignore.  This takes some of the grind away from quests, as if u set a waypoint on an NPC, it'll automatically talk to them, so you can set a waypoint far way, get a snack, go to the washroom, and come back to your given NPC.  Items and skills even increase ur running speed, so it shortens the time greatly. 

One of the prettier environments

The social spect is also awesome.  The chat is easy to see and distinguish, and you can filter the text you see to only be certain people or certain types of messages.  They even have a guild system which I dabbled in.  Because social interaction is very good in this game, when I was asked to join a guild, i accepted.  I then found a great group of people who welcomed me and taught me various aspects of the game I was unsure of.   I made some very good friends, had a lot of laughs,  guild raids, dance offs, and even a lot of drama between people.  It was a great experience and without the guild I probably wouldn't have stayed as long as I did.  You can even get married in the game to another player, and have marriage bonuses!  Whoa!  If you're into the social aspect of MMOs this game will appease you and your wants.

So what didn't I like?  Well for one thing the environments arent as varied as they should be.  Theres like, different forest areas, two deserts, and a couple towny-city ones.i felt like I was going to the same damn areas after a while.  Also the agme is really formulaeric, not wanting to switch it up at all.  Gameplay can be described as:  Go into new area, do required quests, have to get to higher level to do new quest, grind old quests until reached new level, do required quest, do required dungeon, need to get to a higherr lvel, do another required quest, another required dunegon then move onto next area.  It NEVER switches it up, and really bogs down what could have been interesting new areas.  Also while the guild system is great, it doesn't offer very mcuh in terms of awards for leveling up your guild.  You get a runned down town with nothing to do in it as an ultimate prize.  Fun.

So overall Eden Eternal was a great first entry into MMORPGs for me.  Great, smooth gameplay, great graphics, great social interaction and high production values are littered throughout this game.  If they had spent more time varying quests and making each Environment more varied, this would have been a higher score.  Eden Eternal gets an 8.5/10 with a recommendation of Download it!

Next Post: *PC Blowout* Dragon Nest