DPrime Review: Ether Saga Online

Here’s a question: What do you get when you combine Flyff (Fly For Fun) and Perfect World International? (hint: It’s in the title!) That’s right, Ether Saga Online!

Ether Saga Online is a free-to-play fantasy MMORPG by Beijing Perfect World. After launching it’s closed beta in early February and then its open beta starting on March 17th, the international version formatted into English has finally been released at the beginning of this month. Based heavily on one of the four classical novels of Chinese literature, Journey to the West, indeed an interesting plot lies ahead for new players, but whether or not the game itself lives up to its story is still tentative at best.

Graphics

The graphics in Ether Saga Online are very impressive for a free-to-play game. The visualization contains both a cartoon and anime style but nonetheless it remains satisfying and aesthetically vibrant. Almost everything you’ll see in the game, both your character and the environments around you, are intensely chromatic and the colors really lash at you visually. Besides being undoubtedly pleasing to the eye, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps ESO was just a bit too cartoony, at least for my taste. If you are a fan of Flyff, then you’ll have no problems adjusting to the presentation of this MMO.

Interface

The interface is cutesy as well but I felt as if most its components, namely the skill bars, were just entirely too large. It made me feel like they were saying I was that visually impaired, and worse, I tried to look for options to resize things like the mini map and my skill bars, but it seems ESO isn’t so flexible.

Storyline

The story in ESO seemed perplexing, as I read quest dialogue to understand it a little better, I couldn’t help but feel like there was something I was missing. Apparently, you start off as a descendant of the great Xye and Yen Emperors and therefore the legendary savior of whichever race you have chosen, and you’re also a candidate to be an Emissary, a highly-admired and important position. Needless to say, the game is telling you that you’re a pretty fucking important person, which is a great feeling to know you’re so significant and not just another player.

Gameplay

Before you get to experience the world of Ether Saga Online, you have to choose between three races and then your class. The Renzu is the human race, the Shenzu is the race of demigods, and the Yaoh is the race that were once animals (they don’t really say much of anything else about the Yaoh). Races are supposed to be very distinctively different from the other choices available, additionally in some cases, have certain characteristics or abilities associated with races as well. In Ether Saga Online, its hard to really see any difference between the races at all. One would imagine the Shenzu as appearing almost god-like and the Yaoh as perhaps part-animal, but the only real reason to choose any race for any particular reason is the certain hairstyles or faces associated with them. In reality, you’re just picking who has better hair or wears the outfit you like best, other than that, it really doesn’t matter at all which race you pick as the classes offered are available to all the races. As a result of this, race distinction is entirely obsolete without any unique features or attributes associated to each of them and completely erase the concept of race individuality.

The classes available, no matter which race you choose are:  Dragoon (tank), Rogue, Mystic (healer), Ranger, Conjurer (mage), and Shaman. Once you create your character and get in the game, a window for party recruiting pops up and I never understood the purpose of this. Anyhow, as you gradually experience the first hour of gameplay as a new player, numerous tool tips pop up in little question marks to guide you as you go along and it’s great. Should you ever need more information on something specific, whether it be how to manage your pet or to understand what Ethyrs are, there is an extensive gameplay guide in-game that’s incredibly informative and explains things clearly. It’s certainly a wonderful implementation that makes it almost impossible to get confused by anything within the game.

Now you’re ready to go off and quest. As you go along and collect quests as well as take note of the information given to you by the small tool tips, you’ll notice your quest log enables you to click on the items you need, the monsters you need to kill, or the NPCs you need to visit and the game will set up a route and auto-path you there (or “auto-routing” as the game calls it). It’s a great feature to have and seemingly flawless, but can have a number of setbacks. It completely erases the need to ever read any of the quests you will get and thus, can miss out on the game’s attempt at a somewhat extensive storyline. As a result, you’ll soon resort to collect, click, run, kill, click, run, hand-in quest, repeat. Like I said, it’s a wonderful feature and really speeds up leveling and assists in convenience, but it rids of the need to have such enduring quest dialogue.

Questing in the first hour or so in Ether Saga Online is quite confusing. The first 15 levels are completely, totally, and ridiculously unearned. You get a quest to talk to an NPC, walk for a few seconds, talk to the NPC, level. Rinse and repeat for over 15+ levels. It has to be the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever seen in any MMO that I have played and it truly gives a bad first impression of the game by saying, “Hey look, we’re all about showering you with levels like candy out of a piñata.” What’s strange is, you don’t even get your first killing quest till you’re level 11, where you have to go and kill three monsters that are dead in one hit. I found it absurd how the quest was able to be completed in under 10 seconds. This made me wonder what EuroGamer’s Ten Level Test would have to say about the first ten levels in Ether Saga Online, an opinion that can be formed in well under ten minutes. The confusing part comes in when you start to reach level 20 and the quests all of sudden go from telling you to practically do nothing, to killing thirty or forty monsters over and over again. It’s a quite a leap and the first few quests are quite misguiding as to what the game is really going to be about.

The skills in ESO are a bit of a disappointment as well. The skill animations are brilliant and well done, but even at level 21 I only had about five or six skills, two of them were almost entirely useless to me at that point in the game so I was left with two damage-dealing spells and one healing spell. Additionally, there were a number of other spells that would have been made available to me, but I didn’t have enough Spirit required to get the spell, and the cost is immense. Spirit is gained from killing monsters and the monsters I had been told to kill for my quests were only giving one or two Spirit per kill. I had untrained spells that costed anywhere between 100-200 Spirit, so it’s easy to see how much grinding is needed to acquire more helpful spells. At one point while I was playing, I was appalled at the amount of mobs that were in one given area, it was beyond being polluted as hell and I never understood why they would have so much monsters in one area. One word is the answer to that curiosity: Spirit.

Perhaps the most disheartening experience of Ether Saga Online is the little dungeons you have to complete. Somewhere between the levels of 15-20 you get a quest to enter a Crypt and kill a number of bosses within a specified time limit. The problem is that you need a full group and you need to wait for quite for a few levels before attempting the dungeon. The monsters and bosses within these dungeons are exponentially harder than the monsters you’ve been facing previously while off questing and finding a group is quite the chore. Despite being invited into a helpful guild, I’ve yet to successfully complete the quest despite numerous attempts with various groups. What made this all the more worse was, as a healer, I still only had one lowsy healing spell with a lengthy cast time, so in many ways I felt useless as a healer when I couldn’t keep people alive. As a result, I had to resort to helping out with my damage-dealing spells as I watched my comrades around me die. It was a sad moment to not really feel my class role and in many ways I felt it was my fault for not killing 100-200 monsters to get the necessary Spirit for a new healing spell.

My departure with this game came to a screeching halt at this point. I don’t like being told that I have to mindlessly kill mobs for bucket loads of Spirit to get my skills and I’m not even going to start with dungeons it was such a disaster. But on the good side, while the beginning of the game really set a bad message about what the future of the game holds, the visuals were excellent. The starting armor for characters of all races and classes are surprisingly stunning for low level players. If you take the time to read the quests, you can appreciate the game’s storyline a little more. However, it seems like the game is throwing too much at you in the beginning in hopes that you would stay longer, such as flying before you even reach level 20, a pet to fight for you right from the start, two sets of free armor accompanied with weapons, and in some respects, having “free” levels thrown at you to get into the game quicker. Ether Saga Online is either an incredibly easy and lazy game all around or just very desperate.

PROS:

• Impressive graphics with a unique cartoon and anime style. Vibrant with color and visually charming.
• Presents an in-depth storyline that makes the player feel unique and important to the game.
• Auto-routing makes questing quick, easy, and convenient.
• Skill animations are smooth and aesthetically pleasing.
• Leveling is fast and flying is made available at an early level.

CONS:

• Interface is not adjustable and skill bars are too big.
• Races lack individuality.
• Auto-routing can cause players to be oblivious to ESO’s plot.
• The first 15 levels are practically thrown at you with no effort whatsoever.
• Skills cost tons of Spirit which requires you to grind lots of mobs.
• Dungeons are very difficult and it’s equally as difficult to find a group.
• The game overall gives you too much in the beginning.