Staff Writer Paul "LockeColeMA" Cleveland dives into Perfect World Entertainment's latest free-to-play MMO. Is the game worth checking out? Read on to find out!

“No!” I begged my editor, “Not another free-to-play game! I've done Pirates of the Burning Sea, Champions Online and I just tried out Mythos... and now you want me to do another?”

Now, I'm not biased... OK, maybe I am a little bit. Like many gamers I know, I tend to believe that you get what you pay for with free-to-play games, and I paid nothing. But my editor passed along an amusing anecdote that softened the mental blow: apparently after years of playing World of Warcraft and other subscription MMOs, a longtime friend of his had quit and been trying out multiple free-to-play games. "What were they?" I asked, thinking perhaps Lord of the Rings Online or Champions Online. Turns out one of them is a new game from Perfect World Entertainment that was “made with Western audiences in mind.” Named Forsaken World, it was the subject of my next article. Read on for my thoughts after the jump!

First, a bit of background on the company. Perfect World Entertainment is best known for the game Perfect World International, another free-to-play action and fantasy MMO released in 2006 and still going today. The company features an in-game item shop in its multitude of games that uses currency purchased from their website. The items range from cosmetic to incredibly useful, either providing significant boosts or otherwise speeding up the gameplay; but they are by no means necessary to enjoy the content of the game. This model worked well in their other games and has carried over to Forsaken World.

The first thing a player will do upon logging in the first time is choose a character from one of the five races: human, dwarf, elf, stoneman and kindred. The characters can be either male or female for all the races except stoneman, which can only be male, but each race has specific classes available for selection. A human, for example, can be a warrior, assassin, mage or priest. However, dwarves can only be marksmen, and stonemen can only be protectors. This pigeon-holes you somewhat into a class, depending on your racial preferences.

There are several customization selections available, but only hair color is truly customizable through a color palette. Unlike most Western games, you also choose your birthday, which grants you a zodiac sign (sorry, no 13th zodiac for all you astrology-controversy followers). I chose a kindred vampire, which I quickly changed from the default settings because he looked just like a certain villain from Final Fantasy VII. Naming my new vamp Thrace, I entered the Forsaken World with a nifty in-game cinematic explaining the background of my character's race.

The tutorial zones guide a new player through the basics of the game. WASD works for movement, as does the mouse, which I preferred to use due to the odd decision to not align the camera with your sideways keyboard movements (so you'd turn and run right but the camera would still be facing forward). The mouse also allows players to click and move automatically.

This automation is taken to a whole new level once quests are given; opening up the quest blurb on the right side of the screen shows the objective in green and by clicking the objective, your player will automatically run to it. At first I thought this was the worst invention ever – the game would practically play itself? After a bit though, I realized that this is kind of the natural next step for games – World of Warcraft put markers on their maps showing the exact location of an objective. The automation (which is not necessary, but is useful) is basically just following an invisible friend to your questing area. And not a particularly smart friend, I might add; several times I ran through fire or packs of hostile enemies. Oops!

The quests in the starting area were standard fare to tell the story of the kindred and the vampire class, but I was pleasantly surprised at how polished the quest dialogue was, especially coming off of the Mythos closed beta, which felt like it was simply ran through a translation device. The story was presented well and the only error I found was at times, upon finishing a quest, I automatically cut through the reward text. I couldn't tell if I was accidentally pushing a “continue” button somewhere, but it only happened a few times. I also received a book from a quest, which I could “collect” for one energy. Energy refills over real life time, and is expended when collecting all sorts of things, from resource nodes to cards to books for collections; an interesting way to limit farming. After the first few fetching and speaking quests, I received one for some actual combat.

Combat immediately drew me in. Many MMOs... heck, every MMO I've played starts off with tiny numbers. Instead of hitting 8 damage per hit, my vampire was starting off with auto-attacks of 150, and special attacks hitting for several hundred. In addition, every character has an attack that uses “Soul Force” to unleash major pain to everything nearby (as in the screenshot above). Soul Force is restored by killing enemies and the attack can't be used without 100%, so it's an emergency attack. And all of the attacks look really amazing – my only issue was that it often looked more like my character wanted to be showy than effective, as the effects sometimes did not appear to quite “connect” with the target.

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