RATING:
Pros: Breathtaking graphics, challenging gameplay
Cons: Kind of long tutorial
Overall: TDB
Due to the huge anticipation and hype around Skyforge, we were pretty thrilled to be provided with an all access account to eventually be able to check out the closed beta of this new MMO RPG, which is the result of a combined effort of Allods Team (Allods Online) and Obsidian Entertainment (KOTOR2, Neverwinter Nights 2, Armored Warfare). Before getting into details, let’s sum up what this game basically revolves around for those who aren’t that familiar with the title yet: Players are thrust into world where sci-fi meets fantasy and begin their life as an Immortal. On this planet, gods are real figures, not just beings of faith, and will respond to those calling out on them from the top of their Divine Tower by sending down Immortals to aid the common people.
The lore itself hooked us straightaway, the fact that those gods were actually overseeing the world, monitoring their worshippers’ issues with the help of technology and science and actively being involved in everything. And then there are the visuals, which are just breathtaking in certain places and most likely primarily responsible for garnering that much interest in the title. However, experienced as we are, we that stunning visuals often aren’t enough to automatically result in a great game. We therefore tried pretty hard to put the graphics aside to not let them influence our judgement too heavily, which actually was quite a difficult task, since we seemingly were drooling all the time when entering a new area and being in awe of the overall level design which always gave a scope of grandeur.
When trying out an MMORPG, it’s always the challenge that counts among the most vital things for us. So many, or better too many developing companies seemingly still believe that their product will be the very first MMO RPG experience of their players, thus creating an absolutely shallow learning curve and tweaking down the complexity in order to not overtax novice users. In fact, things have drastically changed throughout the last 15 years and it’s not the case anymore that most folks haven’t even noticed that there exists such a thing as an MMO RPG. Nowadays, players are much more seasoned, so that it would absolutely be ok to drop gamers in the deep end, providing them with a challenge instead of forcing them to keep killing mobs effortlessly with a single blow. Skyforge is a nice change in this regard; still being at the tutorial stage, we already experienced moment when you would easily find yourself lying flat on your face and pushing the button to resurrect in case you wouldn’t time your skills right or tried to tactically move out of reach of a boss’s major attack.
Although being quite experienced with MMO RPGs as well as other games, even we couldn’t avoid being defeated by a tremendously challenging boss [spoilers ahead] in the instance of Port Naori (which was acknowledged as being difficult though). Upon stepping into the area, we were told by our quest log that 2 bosses are waiting there to be killed and for only noticing one, we thought it was the typical sub-boss before reaching the main boss and thus rushed into a close-quarter fight with our Paladin class. How wrong we were! Having inflicted a set amount of damage, we witnessed a cargo container burst open after a certain amount of time to spill some merfolk/ naga-type creature that began to cast various water-based spells which obviously shielded the melee boss. We rapidly figured that it would be necessary to defeat that creature first and therefore changed targets. Having inflicted a certain amount of damage, we caused the caster to flee back into the cargo container, allowing us to eventually take one the close-quarter boss without re-emerging again during this fight.
Three attempts in a row we got close to victory with our Paladin and then still died toward the end because of not being able to maintain our hit point value sufficiently high (opponents continually drop healing orbs during the fight for players to pick up, this one, however, grew a bit miserly toward the end of our duel).
Luckily, we could benefit from one of the game’s key features which allows players to switch classes. We still hadn’t upgraded the Paladin class we were currently testing that much, in contrast to our Cryomancer ice mage character that had been our main option throughout the major part of our trial. This, in addition to the fact that he was able to deal high amounts of damage from afar, drastically changed the odds for this duel, allowing us to defeat the boss in the very first attempt.
This ability to switch classes was just god sent (excuse this pun), enabling us in the middle of an instance mission to just go to our menu to pick from our available classes, which allows for adjusting your choice to any given situation and ensuring you always have the appropriate class at hand your group might be in need of. We were only given access to the 3 basic classes in Skyforge – Lightbinder, Cryomancer and Paladin – while also coming across Berserker and Gunner characters throughout our journey; we suppose those are granted by Founders Packs or anything in that sense. They absolutely looked very imposing as far as we were able to see.
Sometimes, we actually found that you have to travel too long a way to just talk with an NPC, in the initial missions for the most part when we were tasked with discovering a Worshipper in the Park, which resulted in a long walk across the area to simply talk with him without any real action or quest (we have to admit though that the area look stunning, meaning that we weren’t quite bored while enjoying the view). However, it could feel a bit unnecessary and frustrating when having to go back to an NPC or travelling back and forth between them, which other games have managed to handle better (Star Wars: The Old Republic, for instance, with the use of comm devices and holomessages from NPCs when you complete a quest so you didn’t have to go back to them).
Yet, Skyforge at least doesn’t force players to continue to pick up only one single quest at a time from different sources. As far as we were concerned in our test, you get most of your quests from the initial area NPC you speak to, which simply updates as quests are completed. Claiming your rewards after completing a quest is a similarly easy and immediate affair, which is especially helpful with the crystal resources gain from completing quests to then spend them on upgrading skills in the Ascension Atlas system, which allows them to continuously upgrade their character as they play.
The Ascension Atlas - essentially a web of nodes unlocked by players as they spend their resources (similar to Path of Exile, but with each class having their own tree) - was initially a concern for us. From our initial look at the Atlas, we gathered the impression that it was tremendously linear, without any choices initially and only allowing players to unlock the same new attribute/ skill nodes in the same order as everybody else. From what we could tell in game, the path only really branched out a bit toward the end, but even then not that much. However from the screenshots we’ve now seen from other sources, it appears that, somehow, these Atlas’ become significantly more customisable and so what was our biggest concern has since been abated.
So the big question is "is the game worth it"? Well we’ve played a lot of MMORPGs and more of them are released at a pretty steady stream and none of them seem to offer that much in the original core gameplay and instead focus more on different endgame features. For us, Skyforge felt like a breath of fresh air, from tutorial to early missions the combat and challenge was exciting, it didn’t feel like we were playing through easy newbie quests just to learn the controls. The game delivers both aesthetically and functionally, and whilst the GUI feels a little different and has that sci-fi element, it’s nice to see an MMORPG not simply using the same cut-and-paste World of Warcraft interface that we’re tired of seeing.
Honestly? This might be the best MMORPG that’s been coming to the market in a very, very long time.
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