The Chronicles of Spellborn

Sometimes a game appears and you wonder where it came from;  The Chronicles of Spellborn is one of those games.  A free to download game from Acclaim, TCOS has pitted itself in a fantasy roll somewhere between WoW and the rest of the MMORPG world or so it hopes…

TCOS is one of those games that is trying to break the mould of how an MMORPG plays, it has a unique combat system that is trying to combine arcade games like Street Fighter, with an FPS style in an RPG environment.  Right now I’m as confused as you; but the fact remains that the although it’s a big change from the normal MMORPG, the combat does make you feel more involved, not only in combat but after combat when you need to visit your skilldeck to adjust the skills that you use during combat.

During the early levels you have a handful of skills to work with but as you gradually build your skills library your deck becomes restricting and you have to decide what you want to do.

I chose a spellcaster and assumed that I would be predominantly casting, yet my initial combat skills where hack, slash and life tap.  Not the kind of skill set I was expecting to see, but I pressed on.

You start in the solo tutorial instance on board a shardship, a large vessel that travels between shards that you adventure on.  The tutorial shows you the basics of movement and then onto quests including the combat system against dummies and finally how to gather articles.

Once you have mastered the basics, you are directed to the deck of the ship where you meet up with the captain of the shardship.  This is when the combat kicks in.  You’re initially asked to find some documents that blew away, however on collecting the last item the ship is attacked and you have to hot foot it to the captain to see what is going on.

You’re sent to repel the attack, a daunting task considering the size of the enemy that appeared off the starboard bow and after fighting off a bunch of small critters in waves you’re knocked unconscious and awake later.

The tutorial is well put together, it’s atmospheric and the voices really convey a sense of being in the game.  After a quick chat with the captain again, I’m off the dock where as you would expect, you join the rest of the masses in the game.

The tutorial was a good lead into the game, easy to follow and helped get my bearings with the combat system at the basic level.  Fights where not overly taxing and pretty easy really.

Once on the docks the game really begins.  Quests are the way to go with the game, but they’re not overly in your face, the first quest is to head to the city to start my citizenship quest.  All well and good but after walking for 5 minutes I hadn’t reached the actual town and was pretty subdued by the environment.  Graphically the game looks good on first view, player characters have a good selection of armour and styles, faces and hair cuts, but the NPC and enemies in the game seem to lack diversification.

Walking from the docks to the town I saw, boars, wolves, cows, boars, wolves, cows, boars, wolves, cows and that was pretty much it.  In fact up to now in the game I’ve only actually seen 7 different things to kill, where are the rats?!

Enemy variety aside, I seemed to have spent the first 10 minutes of my Spellborn life looking for a needle in a haystack, or rather the Commander in the town.  If it wasn’t for helpful people on /zone I may not have actually found the guy in my first outing of the game, quintessentially located at the town centre (duh…)

This here is where I feel that the game lacks something that many other games do well, linearity of quests.  A quest should lead you from one area to the next and on the way pick up or do quests as you go.  Instead I was thrust into the town after a hefty  jaunt to be sent right back to where I came from to collect reports from the guards in the game.  Fair enough, I’ve now spent a good 15 minutes running around, not my idea of fun, however it was an introduction to the town and as such I have a good idea of where to go for everything I need, which at the moment is nothing.

So back into the field to find the guards.  The quest was good, it directed me to where all the guards where and finding them wasn’t overly difficult.  I was now level 3 and started to pick up some other quests that I stumbled on.

The combat quests are kill 5 of these, kill 5 of those, nothing overly taxing, until you start losing the battle and the level 4 bear is eating your face you scramble desperately through your skill deck looking for the heal that you saw a few turns earlier, something that will take getting used to is the fact that along with the turn on the skill deck through the tiers you have cool downs on the spells, this is a stumbling block that had to be overcome and I found myself in some fights waiting for a ability to finish cooling so that I could press on with the attack.

After some near misses, I ended up back at the docks (because there’s a guard right back there…), and found some quests that didn’t seem available to a level 2 character when you appeared at the docks after the tutorial.  So having spent the best part of an hour running around getting very little fame (experience), I did a few quick quests around the docks and managed to get close to the next fame level.

It was at this point that I returned to the city to complete the citizenship quest with the commander.  This wasn’t too bad, good fame and some PEP (/shrug).  I seemed to have a few quests that didn’t interest me at this point.  Combat is so unfulfilling that I wasn’t about to go out and kill 8 wolves for their paws and gonads and so took to wandering around the city where I found the academy.

The academy contains 3 characters in each section (3 doors all colour coded to your class), inside you can chat with these NPC’s who tell you about the 3 different sub classes, for myself they where Ancestral Mage, Runmage & Void Seer, each is different, one is a healer, one uses pets and the final one is the damage dealer.  All well and good but I was fame level 4, which was nice after a few hours of running around, however I needed to be level 5 to choose my sub class, of course each of these character failed to tell me that and I again had to rely on /zone to pass on the knowledge.

Back into the newbie fields I ran to kill some more enemies out there and found some more quests tucked away near the docks.  These involved me killing some boar looking creatures called shoaten.  After fighting with 2 other players for contention on 5 shoaten I finally managed to kill the half dozen I needed and returned to the quest giver.  This then led me to an area called hunters camp where I found more quests and finally ended my 2nd session in the game with killing some really easy level 2 Mauribeak (yes Level 2!).

So far the game has been interesting the quests are a little up and down but that’s what you expect from a mmog; go here kill that come back, go there gather that come back, go see him, him, her and him then come back.  Quests are chained which makes it more interesting, where a quest leads you to an NPC who asks you to complete a task for them and then return to get their answer.

Balance wise the game works, there is a poor variety of creatures to kill in the initial area and for some reason the developers saw fit to put enemies in the newbie area that are 8-10 levels above the starting area of which seem to wander close to the tracks or are grouped with little indication that I could see, overall the fights have been relatively simple to a point and sometimes assisting someone else from distance can get you a kill steal that will give you the quest ding that you need.

My overriding fear for this game is that the developers took on too much than the average mmog player could cope with on the combat side.  As an ex-twitch gamer I started off using my mmog skills of keeping one target, standing still and hitting away.  After I learned that you should move it became easier, button mashing isn’t the way to go, instead you’re left mouse bashing and keeping your target on the enemy, while concentrating on your health and their health, adds and … well the list goes on.  With Combo’s and watching your team mates health at the same time to come, I can see that this game is going to be mentally and physically challenging, nothing like what many people look for who play these games; at least in my social circle.

As you would guess with a new game there are still some little bugs here and there, I’ve had a few CTD’s and also find the hitching as the next area of the zone loads a bit of an annoyance but I’m sure they’ll solve that in time.

I’ve got a few weeks left on the trial so I’m going to go back and visit again, I certainly won’t leave the game at level 6 and would really hope that I can give you some insight into the late teens before I finish my trial.

Related posts:

1. Chronicles of Spellborn – Trial offer
2. Game Update 51 – Patch day
3. Are you an MMO completionist?