War of the Immortals: Refined Isometric Combat
By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist
Perfect World Entertainment might be one of the most popular publishers that are involved with F2P Online games today. Lately they’ve been publishing a ton of new titles and I got the chance to try out the War of the Immortals beta, becoming one of the first to experience the world of Motenia that is both beautiful and treacherous. This is the tale of my journey fighting vicious monsters, infamous villains and angry Immortals.
Tutorial
When first logged in I was delighted to see there were multiple servers from different regions to ensure even someone from the EU like me could get decent ping. When making your character you get the choice between 8 different classes. Unfortunately there is a lack of information about what each class’ specialty is and thus I recommend you to look up OnRPG’s video section for a series of class spotlight videos before choosing. The eight classes that you can choose from are the Berzerker, Magus, Champion, Heretic, Slayer, Duelist, Ranger and Enchantress. All these classes are specialized with different weapons, stats and elements, as well as some really oddball mounts. I chose to go with the Magus because this class is specialized in the use of Magic at a wide range; she also uses the elements Ice and Fire to her advantage. When creating your character you will also have to fill in your birthday so it’ll know the correct Zodiac, something that’s been growing in popularity in Asian MMOs since the release of Lucent Heart and Forsaken World. After choosing your class and viewing their high end gear you are ready to set foot in Motenia.
After you have spawned it is time to do the tutorial! In the tutorial you will learn the basics, and I quickly found out that every quest object and NPCs is underlined in the quest log. When you click on this underlined name you will automatically walk to the destination. After taking my first few steps I got to learn how to use my magic and was rewarded with a staff. After defeating a few servants of Valkyrie I was sent 500 years into the past so I had to time to train properly (yup.. I needed a LOT of training time). There was no time to slack off and I had to start my training as soon as possible. Valkyrie feared the fate of the world would rest on my shoulder, and only I could revive the Lord Odin. I felt quite honored with such an important task and immediately set off for my 500 years of grinding.
Gameplay
In War of the Immortals you have to point and click to walk to your destination through the world of Motenia. It doesn’t take long to run into some actoin combat in this game and thankfully it is really smooth and intuitive. You start off with 2 skills: the first skill is automatically used when you click your target and the other skill is used by pressing the corresponding key, there is a small action bar on the bottom of the screen where you can put your skills on from 1 to 0. When fighting monsters you will automatically gain Rage. After level 20 you will get an XP skill that you can unleash your rage once the bar has filled up to the cap of 1000. This feature works just like the XP system in Forsaken World and adds a nice bit of strategy to grinding since you can clear an entire region with one properly placed skill.
The Marketplace and Crafting
When walking around the first town I saw a lot of players showing off their mounts. Each class is bound to a specific style of mount, but even within each class there was plenty of variety. Also the mounts were able to learn a few basic skills to help their master in combat. The maximum amount of mounts you can get is 6, but you can also expand your mount bag to hold up to 20. You will have to purchase a Bridle of Deities however which is purchased from the Marketplace.
The Marketplace is where you can buy a lot of items with the real money currency, ZEN. The Marketplace is quite extensive and contains items such as Potions, scrolls, bag expansions, Pets, Mounts, Fashion items and a lot other accessories. The option exists to sell Marketplace items to other players so people who really don’t want to spend cash can grind in-game gold to purchase these luxury items from other players.
Once reaching level 50 you experience the Crafting System. After locating Lillan and learning the basics you can choose one of the three branches of crafting. Also each branch of crafting will have a unique gathering skill dedicated to only your focus. The branches of crafting are as follows:
Handicraft: Specialize in handicraft products that include Souldbeads, Soul Jade, Chalices, etc. These items can boost your physical or magic attack.
Arms: Specialize in arms products like Stardusts. Stardusts can be used to reinforce equipment and increase certain stats. This will increase your offensive and defense prowess.
Alchemy: Specialize in creating food, potions, and luxury items. Luxury items are items you can craft and exchange for money. The amount of money you get will depend on the quality of the luxury item you craft.
Graphics
While War of the Immortals follows overdone Asian styled graphics, it makes up for it with its impressive armor effects and spell animations. It’s really wild to see a group of high level players standing together as their armor sets are constantly flowing and moving like living creatures. The following specifications are needed to play War of the Immortals:
Windows® XP, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, or Windows 7
Intel® Pentium® 4 at 1GHz, (Mid to High Range Dual-Core 2.5GHz CPU or better recommended.)
1GB of RAM (2GB or more recommended for XP, 3GB or more for Windows Vista and Windows 7)
5GB of Hard Drive Space or more (14GB or more preferred)
3D video chipset with pixel and vertex shader model 1.3 supported. GeForce 4 Ti4200 64MB or ATI Radeon 8500 64MB or newer for Windows XP. For Windows Vista and 7, a GeForce FX 5200 128MB or ATI Radeon 9500 128MB or newer is needed.
DirectX 9.0c compatible sound chip or onboard audio capability with the latest sound drivers
If you have no idea whatsoever what kind of computer rig you are running then know that any computer that was made in the last 6 years can run this game at the lowest graphics settings.
Conclusion
War of the Immortals stands out from the competition by bringing excellent isometric style gameplay. There are a lot of quests that you can do and there is a lot of features to keep you occupied for a while. The sheer number of items, pets and mounts available to hunt down kept me busy for quite some time.The fun factor of this game is hard to describe but the feeling of addiction when playing a good game for the first time really set in. If character customization, action combat, and collecting are what you really care about in a game, then definitely check out War of the Immortals because you will be hooked.
