Tuesday 14 August 2012

Battle of the Immortals

Gamespot score:n/a

My score:7.0


(+)Pros:- Makes you feel powerful, - Leveling isn't a chore unlike most MMOs,  - Pet system is cool and acts like a trading card game, - Fun instances, - Bad ass looking boss and monsters, - Great variety in environmental visuals.

(-)Cons:- Highly repetitive, - Character customization is almost non existent, - Soon becomes a daily exp stone collecting game.


Gameplay time:-





So why Battle of the Immortals? Surely the sequel War of the Immortals was already out by the time I decided to play BOI. Well me and my friends had a little back and forth debating about which to play, BOI or WOI. According to reviews and forum posts, it was said WOI was actually a bad game compared to BOI, which was rated as a good game. So we decided to go with BOI. I must say that BOI is very fun for the first couple of hours or so and it just gets better with every increasing level. However like many MMOs it suffers from its own flaws. BOI is a simple MMORPG, and if you can stand much of its simplicity, its can be fun to play.


Story? Meh, it hardly has one. BOI suffers from the MMO-story syndrome, which most MMOs suffer from. It hardly has any noticeable or memorable story segments and thus it falls completely flat. Sure there is a story going on in the text and conversations with NPCs, but without any incentive or purpose to read those, it just gets pointless. Moving on....



The first thing you see when you enter the town.

So lets start off with why BOI is a good game. First things first, the game makes you feel like a powerful bad ass. At early levels you destroy mobs at incredible speed and it only gets better as you earn more powerful skills as you level up. You can decimate tons of mobs in a shot with AOE attacks, or deal massive damage to a single boss and kill it almost instantly....the game makes you feel as though you were a god. Plus the armor sets in this game look pretty damn awesome, even the lower level ones. It makes you feel even more powerful than you already are.


Another good thing is the grinding, or leveling up. Its easy to level up in this game, like seriously easy. Accept a level one quest to walk a few steps and talk to another npc, and bam, you're level 2. Go outside and kill a few mobs, you're level 5. Before you know it you can reach level 18 in an hour and you won't even know it. It continues this way until the 40s-50s, where it starts to slow down a little bit. Doing quests and stuff make you level faster, and these are easily done like in most MMOs, so you will be leveling at quite a fast rate.



That....is one bad ass looking dragon....

The pet system is also worth praising, as its probably one of the best pet systems I have seen in an MMORPG. Killing monsters will random drop their pet symbols, in which you pick up and add them to your existing pet slots. The monster can now be summoned as a pet, and you can raise and level him up like a Pokemon. You can only have so many pets, and you can release old pets to take in new ones. Pets will fight alongside you and some can even learn skills to further improve their combat prowess. Instances are also fun, as these mostly just rip off scenes and dungeons and movies (lol dragon emperor and pirates of the Caribbean). Mostly mob clearing and bosses at the end, but doing these with friends do provide some moments of fun.


And of course at the end of instances we have bosses, and let me add that most of these monsters look very big and very bad ass. Most are impossible to solo, that's why they're called instances, you need party members. Some monsters also look pretty bad ass, but alas, they are but mere monsters and it is their fate to be one shotted. The areas where these monsters dwell also come in great variety, ranging from temples, deserts, tombs, underwater environments, beaches, dark caves and many more. This makes exploring a fun sidetrack if you're the kind that likes to explore the world in MMOs.


Character customization is BARREN.


Unfortunately we have come to the end of all the good things of the game. Repetitive game play haunts BOI, badly. You are so overpowered that beating monsters becomes nothing but a lazy CHORE, and there are so many quests that you won't even bother to do. Its the same quests over and over, and its just not worth doing them as killing high level monsters or doing instances gets you more exp. The character creation...ugh, its abysmal. You don't even get to change much of your character, and that is just terrible. Just the face, portrait, and not much else. Another thing is once you reach level 45, you can get exp stones that level you up once per piece. You can grab 5 of this stones per day...whats the point of grinding then? It becomes just a daily stone collection, use them then log out...rinse and repeat.


There are reasons to why BOI has the exp stone system...its an old game, and it shows. Its repetitive nature really strips off a lot of incentive to actually boot this game back up and play it once you've reached a high level (50 to 60ish). There are skills up to level 120, but would you play that far when you already feel like a god at level 30? There are things the game does right, but when it boils down to it, there are better MMOs. Not to say this game is bad, if you like simple MMOs with a cool pet system and want to feel like a bad ass, this game does just that.




Happy gaming.