Throne & Liberty SGF Hands-On Preview

To borrow the ampersand conventions of its name, the two things that most struck me playing 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Throne & Liberty at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Summer Game Fest were speed & scope. The MMO is far more fluid than I expected it to be, and provided battles and dungeons much larger in scale than I was prepared for. I left the first round of Western hands-on demos 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:outside of technical tests (the game is already out in Korea, where it has 168澳洲幸꧟运5开奖网:been met with a rocky, if hopeful, reception) confident in the experience underneath it all, and believing Amazon and NCSoft could turn it around.

A group of us played through a mid-level dungeon together, guided by one of the devs, so our experience is specific to the combat side of the MMO. Here, I did find myself agreeing with some of the criticisms players in Korea (or players who have wrangled their way onto Korean servers) have had. There is a lot of stand and deliver in combat, with certain attacks on autoplay to the point where you as the button pusher feel superfluous. It's also, despite the impressive cutting-edge graphics, not very 'next gen' in its gameplay. If you've played an MMO before, you've experienced something like Throne & Liberty's combat.

The Character Models In Throne & Liberty Have Impressive Detail

However, a special hat-tip must be reserved for the class system. Unlike other games of its ilk where you choose early on what your specialisation is and stick with it for life, in Throne & Liberty this is tied to your weapon choices. I played as Wand and Staff, so I was casting a range of spells from targeted to linear to AoE to healing. However, if I wanted to go Staff and Greatsword, Magic and Longbow, Dagger and Crossbow, or even Sword & Shield and Greatsword (or any combination thereof), I'd be able to swap them out just like that. While I only got to play one dungeon once, having the option to switch weapons without making secondary characters and having to level them up over and over again offers Throne & Liberty more flexibility than most.

More MMOs are moving towards this flexibility, but only 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New World (another Amaz💯on game) is so open about letting you change ꦯweapons at will without needing to grind for leveling up or use alts to switch between.

Of course, only half of combat is how you fight - the other half is who you're fighting. It takes two to fireball and all that. A lot of the dungeon mobs were fairly standard enemies that either wanted to fight at close quarters or kept their distance and teleported away. The mini boss and final boss had a lot more to them, and showcased the speed of traversal that is key to helping Throne & Liberty stand out.

The mini boss had an attack that set you on fire, and the only way to extinguish this was to jump into the nearby pool, previously filled by interacting with cogs and pipes in the drained basin. It's not the most imaginative use of terrain, but it’s still a use of terrain nonetheless, and Throne & Liberty wins points for that. But the second boss, as the final boss of the dungeon, naturally had a lot more going on.

King Chimera, the lionesque master of this dungeon, breathes fire and acid at the party in a compact metal arena, forcing you to keep your wits about you as it can also deal devastating melee damage with a single swipe. While some of the battle is standard fare (attack, avoid flashing circles on the ground, keep your distance), the finishinꦗg move requires grappling up four corners of the chandelier above its head to send it crashing down on the beast, exposing it for a high burst of damage. This highlights the emphasis🅠 on fluid movement Throne & Liberty puts on movement both in and out of combat.

When you sprint, you don't gain a mount, but fully transform (Morph, as the game calls it) into an animal who races forward until you slow down and transform back again. When you swim, you'll also transform into an aquatic animal like a fish or an otter to dart through the water. It's the same in flight, where the dungeon had us gliding down into an arena while avoiding pillars of fire - you don't ride a beast, but become one. Since there is a focus on grappling hooks for vertical traversal I believe these gliding beasts are only for swooping downwards rather than true flight, but these are still interesting flourishes.

Some Of Throne & Liberty's Morphs

You don't appear to be able to activate this in battle, with the transformation more of a visual element to replace standard mounts, but I probably wouldn't have spent three paragraphs talking about how you can ride a horse like in every other game so I suppose this is working. I didn't see any of the story to know if this mythical element ties into things, but judging by the fantastical elements of the dungeon I suspect it does in some way. Even if it doesn't, it's still kinda cool.

There's a lot this specific dungeon experience didn't show me. The narrative, the PvP, the epic battles (up to 2,000 playing sieges at a time), the much-maligned auto-progression, the MMO grind. What I did see gave me the usual MMO combat but with enough unique touches to give me faith that Throne & Liberty could find its feet and become something special, especially if the weapon-based class system works as seamlessly as advertised. It's not quite as new as it looks, but it's pretty good at what it does.