We recently got the chance to check out the open beta for Dream of Mirror Online (DOMO), a Chinese mythology inspired free to play 3D MMORPG where players adventure across a vast world, taking on quests and training up professions to become the necessary heroes summoned from another realm. The game originally launched in 2005 and was cancelled in 2012, but with a little help from some Kickstarter crowdfunding the game has now been relaunched, much to the joy of those original players who were sad to see it go.

This was our first foray into DOMO, never playing it during its original release, and from the onset there were elements that definitely concerned us. The graphics are interesting, very anime style and an optional “glow” effect that players can apply to everything that gives it a dreamy quality, which overall was pretty nice and does a good job at hiding some of the jagged edges from the rather dated graphics. Released in 2005 then the graphics might have stood up a little better, but the game looks the same now as it did back then and.. well… it shows. What redeemable qualities the character and world design models do have the user interface completely destroys that, it has to be one of the most awful looking UIs we’ve seen in an MMORPG, complete style mismatch compared to the graphics, it looks like old Microsoft Windows 95 operating windows and the chat channel window looks like Microsoft DOS. Finally, before getting into gameplay, the sound is quite simply bad; other than the odd sound effect when interacting with an object, reaching a waypoint or entering combat, there’s literally no other sound effects apart from a looped music audio. Every so often when the music stops there is absolute silence which only accentuates the lack of ambient sound from footsteps, NPC chatter, environment, everything; very poor.

Character creation was minimal, with 4 different races to choose from, with only a little variation between them in terms of look and zero mechanical differences, classes are chosen at level 10 and the game is similar to Final Fantasy XI’s system for those who are familiar where up to level 10 we are a Commoner and we choose our preferred Profession at level 10, but are able to switch between them. There’s not much in terms of diversity up to level 10, everyone is the same and you can only do a single basic attack, but the Professions are quite different from each other with both combat, utility and even social Classes like a Merchant. Being able to switch back and forth between Professions/classes is probably the strongest element of the game and definitely makes grouping for PVE Team Fights or PVP a lot more interesting.

One of the bigger frustrations with the game is just generally getting around and doing things, as long term MMORPG players we’ve gone through our fair share, either short trials for testing or MMORPGs we’ve played extensively in our own time. DOMO is not easy/intuitive to work out, finding your way around, trying to locate quest NPCs or even checking out other areas isn’t something we feel comes natural. We found ourselves relying on the auto-pathing option that comes with each quest to get to where needed to go, but even then it could take us on a merry ride and we didn’t know where we were heading to until we reach there, which could take a long time as the world if pretty huge (albeit not really packed with objects, mobs or interesting terrain features; it all looked and felt quite generic).

Questing is pretty much the key activity in the game, it is also one of the weakest elements; the traditional themepark style of questing, the “gather 20 wolf tails” style missions are all too common and are quite simply boring given that the AI doesn’t do much else than run towards you and melee you; it’s not the most strategic of MMIORPGs, so at times questing can feel pretty grindy and uninspiring.

The game is marketed as being a very social MMORPG and with the in depth features such as the Guilds System and the Relationships we can see why, thankfully it is in places like this that the game shines. Here players can work together to build up their Guilds to unlock new abilities, guild housing and more, or work on Relationships and even get married, which comes with its own set of bonuses, an element that most MMORPGs gloss over or don’t think is important enough to develop, but thankfully DOMO has.

Ultimately the game does show its age, looking back at videos of the original release there is very little that has changed, the publishers are relaunching the game off the backs of the amount of disappointment that was shared when the game was originally cancelled. Whilst a lot of players may look back on the game with nostalgia, and many may jump back onto the ship, it really does show its age with both its graphical fidelity and dated questing mechanics. Relaunching a 10 year old game and hoping for major success or… we can’t see it necessarily taking off again in the western market but the Asian market will no doubt lap the game up. Watch this space…

SCORE:

• Graphics: 6


• Gameplay: 2


• Performance: 7

• Pros: Cute anime style graphics, ability to play multiple professions/class on one character, detailed social features.


• Cons: Old graphics, boring quests, lacking/bad sound effects.

Rating: 5

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2015 at 1:09 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.