We had a chance to take a look at the initial beta of Elite Lord of Alliance (ELOA) from Webzen recently, playing a couple of hours to get to grips with some early gameplay and beyond. The game was originally developed for the Asian market and is now seeing a western release. With a little controversy surround the title and a previous “illegal copy of an early beta” that was released as Inspirit Online, the game is now gearing up for its official release as a more feature packed and complete final version.
Stepping into the game we were greeted with a welcomed 5 different classes, a good start for an MMORPG of this level including the Mage, Sniper, Blood Knight, Psychic and Assassin Warrior, accompanied by four different races from the fantasy world: Kartu, Liru, Sapien and Naru. There was little differentiation between the races, lacking any real background or descriptions apart from a bit of text that seemed to read like that particular races interpretation of a prophecy or about the current state of affairs. Other than the general look the only difference between them was that if we wanted to play a Warrior Assassin then that class was locked to the female Naru, likewise female Naru could only be Assassin Warriors, the class we actually wanted to try out.
As an Assassin Warrior our main focus was high DPS, critical strikes an evasion, able to dash into battle, dodge attacks, unload some burst damage, and then generally get back out safely. The combat system itself is very explosive and action packed, we found our character jumping in and out of battle, unleashing abilities with big particle effects that led to an overall satisfactory experience and made carving up groups of enemies pretty easy for us as we dashed back and forth between them tearing them up with our scythe.
The game initially dropped us into the beginning of a battle where the Ogre Clans had decided to wage their war, the battlefield was scattered with pockets of fighting and a constant source of Ogre reinforcements parachuting into the battle, which was a really nice touch. The game was actually visually very pleasing with an isometric Diablo-esq camera angle we could take in large scenes of forests, cities, flowing rivers and more that really captures the scene and atmosphere well. Encounters are typically linked with quest NPC dialogue and rounded off with the odd cinematic, all of which focus on progressing the story which is, in general, quite linear and focuses on telling a single story than offering up lots of side quests and the like.
The dialogue for the most part was unfortunately extremely poor, the mark of a bad western import where the spelling and grammar were at times near illegible and really detract from any story content that the NPCs are trying to get across. Not only that but the amount of pointless chattering the NPCs forced us through to actually pick up a quest was tiring, dialogue that was absolutely unnecessary and didn’t add to the story or characters at all, often feeling like the NPCs were saying the same thing three times before finally telling you what they wanted.
Combat is definitely the games main focus so it feels like the most attention and systems have been put in place to support it. With a balance of PVP, solo PVE and group questing players find themselves with three “Stances” to support each of these individual activities; the skills/abilities that are bound to each Stance are meant to compliment that particular style of combat. Switching stances is as easy as pushing a button, then your new skills appear on your hotbar, however being too low level to try out the PVP and the content not being difficult enough to warrant grouping up, we didn’t necessarily feel the benefit of the system. However, we were still able to use all our skills, regardless of stance, even when questing solo and with a quick flick between them meant we had a full arsenal of around ten skills very early on between the three stances, which is typically much lower in other MMORPGs.
Another primary feature of the game, also supporting combat, is the Pet system where players are able to travel the world and try and find and collect a variety of different pet companions that can be summoned to help you out in battle. We were provided our initial pet through an early quest who, when summoned, could also be used as a mount, others we found by looting creatures and hatching an egg we recovered from them, binding a pet to us, whereas others we purchased from a pet vendor to get a random egg from a treasure box. The pets were pretty cool and varied, each having their own unique boost such as giving us a bonus to damage inflicted on Bosses or mitigating a small portion of damage we take, providing the individual pet was summoned. Down the line the game informed us that we could level up pets and even combine max level pets to create new ones, a system that sounds fun but unfortunately one we couldn’t explore.
Overall Elite Lord of the Alliance is a relatively generic MMORPG that is far from innovating the genre, even with the Stance and Pet system as their key features, whilst both are done well neither are so unique enough to make the title stand up, be counter or even be remembered. Combat feels fun and fluid, but the quests are repetitive and common place, we’ve seen them a hundred times in a hundred other MMORPGs that came before it. If Elite Lord of Alliance is your first time playing an MMORPG then, other than the shocking English translation, it’s definitely not a bad game and can stand up alongside most, but if you’re a veteran of the genre then it’s going to be all too easy to pass this one by.
CONCLUSION
- Graphics: 6
- Performance: 8
- Gameplay: 8
- Lo mejor: Graphics are very well done, the pet system is interesting to explore, fluid and exciting combat.
- Lo peor: Terrible English translations, not really innovative with new ideas, boring quests.
SCORE: 7
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