By Vincent Haoson, Onrpg writer
Black Moon Chronicles, is an MMO that is based from a comic strip titled, “Chroniques de la Lune Noire”. The game also had a single player RTS made for the PC.
The story
The game’s basic plot is that your character is a survivor of the most tragic event in the history of the Kingdom of Lhynn, which is named “The Night of the Screaming Tears”. A massacre of the people of the kingdom ensued and you were part of the children that survived the attack.
You are part of those children who survived the event. Depending on which job class you belong to, the basic premise is that you have finally grown of age and the story starts on the first quest you receive as you spawn into the game.
Gameplay
In Black Moon Chronicles, you get to choose from four different factions who are: The Empire, The Justice, The Light and the Blackmoon. Each job class you see in the game is automatically part of one faction, therefore if you want to get a job class that is part of a certain faction, you are then forced to choose from the faction’s stable of jobs.
The list of available job classes and which faction they belong, in Black Moon Chronicles are as follows: The Warriors and Sorcerers belong to the Empire, the Phalanx and the Archer belong to the Justice, the Paladin and the Priest belong to the Light while the Black Guard, Ghoul, Orc Barbarian, Dark Priest, Necromant and the Menthat belong to the Black Moon.
For customization, the game only allows you to change the skin color. Hair style and Hair color of your character. Furthermore, there’s also a personal slogan that you can use for your character.
The game is your typical dungeon run story driven MMO. What you do in the game is complete the set of tasks that are given as quests by the NPCs. The quests are important to you because this would be your story that you would need to follow through. Unlike in most MMOs where you can skip the quests and just level grind.
The game is highly dependent on the quests and the story your character follows. There is no clear information regarding the game’s PVP system meaning that it is in fact story driven.
Conclusion
If you are into story-based MMOs, Black Moon Chronicles, The Winds of War is a game that can tickle your fancy. Each character class in Black Moon Chronicles has its own story and as you begin your quest in this game you are immediately thrust into the world of your character. The quests you will be given circles around your part in the whole storyline of the game.
Right of the bat, Black Moon Chronicles is not a visually stunning game, though you might appreciate its graphic novel design and feel. The game can be compared to Diablo in this regard with Black Moon Chronicles being more of the comic-bookish side of gloomy.
If the developers hope to make your game experience feel more out of this world, Black Moon Chronicles delivers. The game is like an interactive graphic novel with you as the main hero. The colors, the texture, the feel, makes your experience feel like it’s taken out of something you may have read on comic books.
The thing is, the only thing unique in Black Moon Chronicles is the Storytelling element it has. The gameplay is generic and there’s nothing particularly neither unique nor new in the character’s skills. The job classes are taken from the usual bunch of jobs you can see in most MMOs, save the Necromants and the Menthats which is the game’s necromancers and psychics.
One of my biggest issues with the game though is that there are still a lot of things that need to be fixed system wise. For example, when I pressed the quit game button, I wasn’t able to connect back into the game and I was directed to reinstall the game because the system can’t find a config.
The other thing that I find highly irritating is the character creation and management in Black Moon Chronicles. As much as possible you don’t make an important game system such as character creation and management tedious for your gamer. However managing your character and creating a new one in the game is more laborious than the character management and creation in most MMOs.
For players who are used to creating their characters upon logging into the game would be surprised with this system. Though it is true there is some merit with logging into the website to create and manage your character, like, if you don’t need to minimize the game if you are busy with the stat allocation especially if you are following a guide or something else. However, the problem with this kind of system is that what If the game site is down or that something is wrong with the site and at that time you want to create a new character? Then you sir, are in a pinch.
Unfortunately that happened to me, I wanted to create a Menthat but there was something wrong with the code in the character creation page, therefore I opted to just stick with my Paladin because I’ve been trying to finally create my character to no avail.
If you have practically nothing else to do and if you are highly interested on an MMO based from earlier RPG games, then you can try out Black Moon Chronicles. The game still has a lot of things that need to be fixed before it can go head-to-head with other MMOs.
Pros
– The game feels like you are inside a graphic novel
– Unique storyline for each job class
– Rich story
Cons
– The game still has lots of bugs
– The dark atmosphere can kill the game experience
– The quests can be vague
