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本帖最后由 jorgegeminis 于 2013-4-3 12:17 编辑
[s:159] [s:159]
Saint Seiya Online
Personal thoughts on the game
http://www.mmocultur...ts-on-the-game/
After going through Part 1 and Part 2 of my brief but enjoyable journey in Saint Seiya Online China, I thought I would give some personal comments. Of course, not everything is rosy, but perhaps just some personal irks I have with most of the online games now.
Saint Seiya Online is currently only licensed for the China market, and I have a hard time seeing how this will be brought to the western market. Yes, sure there are tons of Seiya fans around, but how many would actually play the online version, much less pay to keep the game alive?
I am pretty sure that Perfect World will have to pay a hefty license fee to SEGA in order to extend the game into the western market. After that, perhaps revenue sharing. And to effectively market Saint Seiya Online, it is of importance to spread into the comics community as well, perhaps making its presence known at Comic-Con.
Ok, enough of the business side of things, my thoughts of the game now. The graphics and animations are top-notch, especially with the resemblance to cell-shading technology.
The storyline is being kept very authentic, beginning right from the time Seiya becomes a Bronze Saint to traveling back in time to find out the truth on Gold Saint Sagittarius Aiolos’ “betrayal”.
With that said, 1 of the major problem I had was with the upgrading of the various Bronze, Silver and Gold cloths. While the regular gears are being upgraded via the normal catalysts way, I was really expecting the cloths to really gain experience and grow with the characters, not another layer of item upgrading with cash shop boost items.
I was quite disappointed about this, and still am. It is 2013, with Saint Seiya Online and Swordsman Online both having the potential to help Perfect World take the next step in game content development. However, it seems that while the in-house game engine has been upgraded, the game features are pretty much still the same.
Truth to be told, I really like Saint Seiya Online as a whole, the game has elements (other than the theme) which makes it stands out from what Perfect World has developed thus far. Perhaps the company has developed far too many oriental MMOs, and Saint Seiya Online came just in time for a refresh.
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Saint Seiya Online - Exploring the game, Part 1
http://www.mmocultur...he-game-part-1/
Before I begin, Saint Seiya Online is currently licensed only for the China market, with no news of any overseas launch.
With that aside, Saint Seiya Online is the 1 and only official MMORPG based on the franchise, and developed by Perfect World. I had a chance to play in the 2nd beta phase (Silver Test Phase) over the past few days, and man did I enjoy the experience.
Known as “Knights of the Zodiac” in the localized western version, the game explores almost everything of what the original story had to offer, down to the smallest of details. Over the next 2 articles, I will be touching more on the basics of the game, and hopefully the details you care about. Let’s begin!
Character creation
Compared with other Perfect World titles, the customization choices are significantly lesser, perhaps to maintain that “Japanese manga/anime” look to stay true to Saint Seiya. The most important part is perhaps the birthday, which will align players with the corresponding horoscope.
Do not worry, this will not affect the type of cloth (the armor) which can be worn. More on this feature below. 1 of the main functions for this will be the summoning of a static guardian during dungeon battles.
For example, if I am a Taurus, I will summon a Taurus guardian, and when clicking on it, grants any party members a boost in defense for 30 minutes. Each horoscope has got different effects, and only 1 can be active.
Graphics
As you can tell, the design bears some resemblance with Perfect World’s previous title, Forsaken World. Yes, this is something which I have to admit, but on the other hand, how would you expect the world to look like?
Using the Angelica III Engine, the characters sort of have a cell-shaded quality, with the faint black outline. Screenshots don’t do Saint Seiya Online justice in all honesty, taking videos is still the best way to showcase the game.
Combat
Ah, combat. Yes, it is still the classic “point and click”, but then again, it is not to a certain extent. You see, skills in Saint Seiya Online has got low cool-downs, which makes most of them spammable. To put the icing on the cake, there is no mana system. Yes, skills are purely based on their cool-down timers.
Coupled with the amazing animations and effects, it is hard to be bothered by the “point and click” system utilized since I was engrossed with the battles most of the time.
The 2nd bar is actually the stamina, which is used when players sprint, dodge or block. Sprinting is just a simple double-tap on any of the WASD movement keys, with spacebar as the jump key.
Dodging will require Shift+ a direction key, although it is barely used since each dodge costs 100 stamina points. Blocking is an actual skill, not right-click, and will decrease damage taken while slowly siphon away stamina points. Once again, not a function I used much.
Cosmo
Cosmo, or cosmos, is perhaps 1 of the most popular word used throughout Saint Seiya’s history. In the game, players gain cosmo by defeating enemies, which charges up the cosmo meter.
At 50%, 75% and 100%, comos can be unleashed giving massive damage boosts, which is similar to a berserker state. Features such as 6th and 7th sense will come at a higher level, which I have yet to reach T__T
Cloth
In the spirit of staying true to the Saint Seiya series, I will refer the armor as cloth. Players will get to choose from 1 of the 5 bronze cloth after a few quests at the start: Pegasus (fast attack speed), Dragon (ultimate defense), Cygnus (ranged and freeze effects), Andromeda (support healer) and Phoenix (AOE + DPS).
Yes, the holy trinity of support, DPS and tank is still being used here, which again I didn’t really care about. More on this in the dungeons section in Part 2, to be posted soon.
Even if the cloth is worn, players will still be able to equip gears such as cloth armor, cloth pants, accessories etc. These are worn below the Bronze cloth.
With no weapon system in Saint Seiya Online, damage boost is spread across all the different parts, including the Bronze cloth. All of them can be upgraded as well, which I will not go too much into.
Now comes the question: Will I get more than 1 cloth? What about the Silver and Gold cloth? To answer that, yes, each of the 5 starting Bronze cloth comes with their own set of acquirable cloth. For Phoenix, I have 15 Bronze, 10 Silver and all 12 Gold clothes which can be acquired.
In fact, I got my 2nd Bronze cloth of the Puppis constellation just recently (image below). This cloth may not appear on a couple of the other 5 starters. At level 59 and above, players can change their base/ starter Bronze cloth.
My current Phoenix cloth is upgraded till level 6, but at level 0, the new Bronze Puppis cloth has much better stats. But I don’t really like the look…
Bronze and Silver clothes can be acquired via quests, which are not easy. I have yet to see anyone acquire a Gold cloth, although I suspect it requires much PvP and even more progress to get a clue on how it can be crafted.
Seen below is an upgraded Bronze Pegasus, which changed from its basic form (the extra wings). I am not really sure at which upgrade will the cloth change its look.
Storyline instances
In certain quests, players are brought back to certain famous storyline found in the manga. Here, different roles are assumed. As you can see from the videos below, I may become Dragon Shiryū in one, and then Pegasus Seiya the next.
This is very engaging in allowing new players to understand the story better, while providing older fans with a blast from the past.
I will be touching more on instanced dungeons, leveling progression and more in Part 2. Stay tuned!
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Saint Seiya Online - Exploring the game, Part 2
http://www.mmocultur...#prettyphoto/3/
Welcome to Part 2 (Part 1 here)of exploring the world of Saint Seiya Online, which is currently in its 2nd Closed Beta (or Silver Test Phase) in China. Developed by Perfect World and officially licensed with SEGA Japan, the game is currently limited just to the China region.
In this post, I will continue to touch on a couple more basics of the game. In Part 3, I will give some thoughts of my own about Saint Seiya Online. Read on!
Skills
As mentioned in Part 1, skills do not cost any mana, since there is no mana system in the game. They are only limited by cool-downs and most hit multiple targets, hence making the game much faster when compared to other “point and click” titles.
New skills are automatically learned at different levels, and will require EXP to upgrade them, which is a prominent feature of Perfect World’s games. If the skill slots tend to get to crowded, players have the option to chain them together under 1 simply hotkey, as seen in the screenshot below.
Every different cloth has 1 of its own special move, which I seldom use. Call me lazy, I just love the simple chain skill system, which some newer MMOs still do not have.
Leveling progression
Another feature of Perfect World’s games I remember fondly (unless they changed it) is the abysmal experience points (EXP) given by open world mobs. In Saint Seiya Online, it is no difference, as the bulk of EXP comes from quests and instanced dungeons, which I will touch on below.
This system did not give me any problems, since there are just so many other ways to gather EXP, such as rested EXP, EXP items from dungeon drops, completing quests (on top of basic reward EXP) and more.
I would not say the leveling experience is too fast nor too slow, but it is at a pace I really like while exploring different regions of the Saint Seiya world. Some games tend to tie players far too long to a certain area.
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Instanced dungeons
For players of Forsaken World, you would have known how the system works. There is quite a variety of instanced dungeons, some for EXP, some for gear drops, some for faith points, some opens up at the required level, some are only for guilds, some are open during certain periods of the day while some can only be entered once each day.
From what I see, the game will eventually hit the 200 level cap, since most of the dungeons has that as the max requirement. Do not worry, even if a dungeon says its is suitable for players from level 20 to 200, the system will party players around the same level and scale the difficulty accordingly.
PvP and world boss
There are apparently 4 modes of PvP in Saint Seiya online currently:
1. 1 Vs 1 coliseum tournament PvP (ranked)
2. 1 Vs 1 open world mutual PvP
3. Instanced PvP Battleground
4. Guild Vs Guild open world PvP (?)
I am not really sure about point 4, since I have yet to enter any guilds. But I did see massive open world battles, which is recorded in the extremely laggy video below just before an open world boss fight.
Speaking of world bosses, they spawn just twice a day at different channels, with the highest damage dealt player/ party getting the loot.
God cloths
In Part 1, I mentioned about seeing the 5 basic cloths evolving into its golden state. While it rang a bell, I couldn’t really confirm its name. After some research, I finally remember them as the God Cloths, which were upgraded with Athena’s blood in the manga.
Here, the cloths evolve gradually after more upgrading. The looks below should be their final forms (missing Phoenix). In the manga, the God Cloths are temporary, but it seems in Saint Seiya Online, these are permanent looks.
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发表于 2013-4-3 11:51
发表于 2013-4-3 13:10
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