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The Chronicles of Spellborn: MMORPG.com's Review
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Michael Bitton has been running around the Acclaim MMORPG since it launched and today we offer our review of it. Find out how this new Acclaim MMO scored and what our writer discovered in his travels in this extensive review.
Let me just say I am a big fan of Jesper Kyd. I love the Hitman series and his compositions are truly a joy to the ears. For fans of Kyd, you will immediately recognize his style in Spellborn. The music in the game world also strikes the perfect balance of being easy on the ears, but also not overwhelming to your senses so much that you want to turn it off so you can focus on the game.
Another stand-out is the inclusion of many voiced emotes. When you create your character,you also get to select their voice track, and there are many amusing voiced emotes in the game. If you play a female character the emote /ahh in particular stands out. Try it out for yourself and find out why.
;)
Read the review here.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Nice review. I wish all the reviews on this site were done as well as this one.
Thanks for the compliment!
It's indeed a good game, your pro' and cons are also what I think.
It's sad the servers are so empty ... and with empty I mean empty, I met no-one ...
Eaglix
Very nice review. I am officially bored again and prowling about for another game and this review helps me sift through the options. I think it sounds interesting and maybe something I will try at some point, however, I do not think I will enjoy it in its current described state. No matter how good a games basic features/ideas are I do require some basic functionality that you describe as missing. I will wait another month or two and see how things are going.
This is perhaps the biggest thing most developers still have not learned. You must put out a complete game, no matter how small it is, if you wish to survive and be a success. You can always add more features and content later but the first bit at release must work and be complete in itself to make the players happy.
I believe that most developer know this, but budget leaves them not much choice. Spellborn is a complete game, but just barely. Functionality beyond the basic game play is kept very minimal. And there is not much more to do beside questing and fight in the Arena. Crafting has been made an unappealing aspect of the game. There is too little group content. But for the rest it is a great game in the making. I hope it survives. But every marketing decisions they made so far has turned against them. Some of those decisions were too stupid for words and still affect the player population in a negative way. If they continue to shoot themselves in the foot my hope for survival is not high.
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Delanor
Fantastic Review. Hit the Nail Right on the head.
If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude; greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.
Samuel Adams
Good review with a fair score for the product.
Very nice review, I agree with almost everything you said in there, but I would like to add one thing having played the game for 2 months.
The combat features is what makes this game interesting...just for a while though...Yes fighting in an mmo is a very important element, it is actually the most important element. And they just got it right with this game.
But does having a good fighting system enough for an MMORPG to be a success? Imo the answer is no, and TCoS does not have anything to offer to the player other than an interesting and engaging fighting system and a good lore.
If you get bored of killing stuff, then there's absolutely nothing else to do. People barely talk int his game if you are not in a guild, the crafting system is so basic that you don't even want to try it out. The auction house interface is so bad that there's no one using it and also because the weapon and armor recipes drop for everyone pretty easily, there's no point in using the auction house. There aren't enough dungeons to run if you feel like running some, there isn't enough PvPing going around because of the fact that classes are extremely unbalanced and there aren't enough people in the game.
I am surprised that you did not get into the fact that there is not much to do in this game other than go fight 20000 raptors in your gameplay paragraph, imo the lack of content and depth is something extremely important in an mmo.
My score personally would be a 6/10
And I commend you on the review, it is a very well written review.
Nice review. It's certainly one I'll try just a question of when. I figure that it might be one thats worth waiting on.
Dated visuals? Aren't they stylized, WoW would have dated visuals, if it weren't for the fact it was so stylized.
Nice review fella.
Dated visuals? What computer are you running it on? Granted it is the Unreal 2.5 engine, they did a HELL of a job with the art style and lighting effects to make it look just as appealing as any other modern MMO out there.
This game is pretty. It has its flaws but graphics I would never think to be one of them. Just my two cents.
Nice review mike,
I played TCoS since it's CB stage and agree with alot of your points. Even though I've been playing other games it makes me curious to see how the game would've fared at higher lvls. SInce I only had a handful of characters that I took to the lower F2P cap of 7.9 just to test the game out, your review made me curious enough to want to subscribe. I feel now that maybe I didn't give the game 100% of a chance, but I'm cheap and picky.
~Ink
From the review the UI definatly needs a patch and the netwroking issues are unpardonable. Sort that out and I think its worth a punt.
Yeah, nice review.
I'm subscribed to Acclaim servers and enjoining it a lot... i'm a bit worried about server population but this game is incredible so I hope this problem will be solved soon
((
Another big problem is the server distribution. For some stupid territorial war against acclaim and Mindscape-Frogster I was redirected to acclaim servers (US servers) and i'm from Spain (all spanish people will be redirected there).
Now i'm level 20 and i just discovered the EU server (Mindscape-Froggster servers) and i can't switch because they are independent servers.
So european community is divided. It sucks
!
Concerning to the game, Spellborn worth a try. I'm sure you will love it
!
MikeB thats how you write a review my friend! Kudos, and I hope this is a formula you do not stray from as most reviewers have!
Only problem I had with your review was the less than honest quibble about the look, or graphics. Stellus hit it on the nose, this game looks pretty amazing for as old as it is, and it looks even better than some of the newer games already out! If I said anyhting positive about TCOS it would be the combat and the Graphics for sure!
Personally though, I think with all that Spellborn Int has gone through with this game, and Acclaim picking up the title as P2P, its just not gonna fly. To little to lat imo. This game will survive though if they decide to either lower the monthly fee by half, or spin to a F2P. Right now though, no one wants to pay for a beta, and this is what the game feels like all the way around! Hopefully in time that will change, but till then no one will flock to pay the $15 a month fee, when they could be paying for a number of better designed games for that price. Only thing I see going for the game is the client is free, but thats just not enough imo at this point.
Thanks for the nice review, Mike. I will definitely give this game a try. I am jsut bored as someone else here. Tried Runes of Magic and just ran into series of quests where you have to grind trees for hours. Even though it sounds like TCoS has similar quests and maybe even worse I read that it is also very story driven which attracts me the most in MMOs. Thats why I liked LOTRO and still play it for over 2 years. But need a break, so I am giving a try to TCoS this weekend. Hope my ride will be fun
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After reading MMORPG.com's re-review of D&D Online I had given up on this website. This review has renewed my faith in MMORPG.com and their ability to put out quality reviews.
I think the Author needs to be given credit here, not mmorpg.com
It does seem like a fair review, I like that fact that he hasnt shyed away or 'salt pettled' the truth about its negative points.
But unfortunatly the content of the review leads me to conclude, as I do with most newly released mmo's, that it needs to mature a bit.
I'll be skipping this for now, there are a few other 'must-play' MMO's coming out in the next 6 months which appear higher up the 'must-play' scale.
Final score is a bit generous in my opinion, about a 6/10 I would think. And yes the game has dated visuals.
Wow's visuals are dated, stylized or not.
If you're referring to Champions, Fallen Earth, Earthrise, or Jumpgate then I think you'll be better off waiting for them to mature as well. They are all going to be quite rough at first.
Also, you could probably make level 50 in Spellborn before even one of them is released.
Good review, fair score for the product, overall a worthwhile read without a doubt
Nice work MikeB.
good review
same pros and cons as me.
good review,
tho the cons arent really cons imo
i love pvp, so crafting i couldnt give two shits about lol and its saying the quests are the same thing over and over...isnt that with almost any MMO? go out, kill something, get rewards, rinse & repeat...
other than that, it was good
http://acominos.evony.com <- if your bored at work
They are actually quite nice as you can see in the screenshots provided. Technically though, they are dated. Unreal, or even Unreal 2, is quite an old engine by todays standards.