Monday, May 28, 2007

Granado Espada Pre-Open Beta Impressions



Like I said last post, I went to try out Granado Espada's POBT to get a feel of the game's new mechanic of giving you the ability to control 3 characters at one time. Also it seems that the 17th century is becoming quite a hit in MMOs nowadays as GE is using that setting as well as some other upcoming MMOs.

The classes are very basic, with some variations:
Fighter: Your standard tank/melee dps. They are by far the best damage absorbing class and one of the better damage dealers.

Musketeer: Your constant ranged dps.

Scout: Your support class. They basically give good buffs and are the only class that can heal. They are also able to equip daggers to do damage for certain specs but from what I heard, they totally suck at it.

Wizard: Your caster/buffer class. They can buffer with all kinds of shit in the world as well as nuke quite a bit.

Elementalist: Your most powerful burst DPS class, equipped with nothing but AEs, DDs and...AEs.

One of the key features of this game other than the ability to use 3 characters at once is the 'stance' system. Equipping your class will enable them to use different stances like dual wielding, polearms, sword+shield, etc and using them long enough will enable you to level up in the stances. It's something like a job level much like RO, just that you can switch jobs if you get my drift.

Granado Espada boasts a really powerful AI, so powerful you can basically 'bot' through level 1 to 30. I'm only level 26 so I can't comment about higher levels. I have only heard that higher levels are so hard you could not spend a minute chatting. Hopefully I can reach that stage (if I don't fall asleep already) and comment on it.

Other than that, GE is extremely beautiful in many many ways including the animations, the art, the graphics, the UI and the environment. The music isn't really...'environmental'. It boasts a collection of trance soundtracks which imho was done very well overall. In fact they all fit the game nicely.

Unfortunately, like all korean MMOs, GE is a fucking grindfest. And it really is a huge grindfest. The amount of player-to-game interactivity is close to none (for now). If GE turns p2p, I highly doubt many people would want to play. Why would you pay money to afk grind? But hey, it's afk grinding, meaning you can work and 'play' at the same time...?

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