Hey guys, to start off the new years after taking a winter break from school, we’re gonna do a review of an old classic mmorpg I used to/still play. This week we’re going over Vindictus, a game by Devcat under Nexon’s licensing. Note I won’t be doing as many posts for this blog now that it’s no longer a class requirement, but I’ll make one post every 2 weeks minimum!
– The good:
– The combat system is simply one of the best, if not the best in any MMO, and even better than some single player oriented games I’ve played like Dark Souls and The Witcher. The hitboxes are clean, the action is quick (and even faster once you get some attack speed), and the bosses have a lot of variety in the mid to late game that keeps you on your toes, and stumbles even some of the best players from time to time. The hack and slash elements here are very well done. I would entirely recommend someone to play this game simply for the combat system(but to be aware the early game is very muchly a grind and a faceroll until about the ainle missions, or even the polar bear if you’re new to this type of game).
– The character classes are very diverse and unique from one another. Nearly every single character plays entirely different to the other characters, even between their weapon types if they utilize more than one. You want safer, consistent ranged combat, you pick your xgun or bow Kai. You want to get off a huge burst of spells and gtfo, you pick your staff Evie. You want to get in the face of the boss all the time, and stay there. you pick your Pillar or Cestus Karok, or Greatsword Hurk. You want to play reactively, you pick Twin Sword Vella dancing with ease at the bosses attack patterns, or a sturdy shield maiden in Fiona. And there’s still others who fall on both ends of the spectrum. Find the character you like, and stick with them till 40 to see if you like the game(follow AP guides early on so you don’t get screwed later).
– The character customization is amazing. The armor sets can be mixed and matched however you want for the most part(be aware of set bonuses). There’s an entire outfitter shop with all sorts of different hairstyles, tattoos, inner armors, etc. The bad part is that most of it costs a LOT of money. I’m talking $5 for a single head, armor, leg, glove, or boot customization, but for overall variety, and in such an old game engine, it certainly is vast and very customizable down to some of the colors of the armor pieces themselves.
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– The bad:
– The game is pretty much entirely peer to peer hosted, so whoever’s the host needs good internet or no one can play properly. While not usually a problem with the earlier missions that only accompany up to 4 people, it gets a bit hairier with the 6 or 8 man raids, or when huge masses of mobs start spawning in and the host’s computer can’t keep up. On the flipside, it does allow people to play on other servers with friends if they live nearby with relatively low ping and consistency, so that’s nice.
– The game is VERY much a cash grab at this point. The only thing keeping it afloat are the whales, but most of them only stay simply because of the time invested through sunk cost fallacy. In a free to play game, the community needs to be alive enough for the game to be commercially successful, but eventually even the whales will quit eventually. It’s been very sad seeing the community slowly dwindle over the years and now hardly seeing anyone in even the first 10 channels.
– The game is poorly optimized. It’s built off a very old engine from more than a decade ago, and rarely, if ever, reaches 60fps for even the best gaming rigs. Sure it looks pretty on higher settings, but the game is all about functionality. This can be improved by turning off UI elements(the buff indicators and their tooltips in particular are resource heavey due to their updating every single second, if you want better functionality for this game I’d recommend turning off any UI elements you deem unnecessary for the fight itself.) but will still have a few issues occasionally.
– Progression in the game can be heavily RNG based. For earlier levels it doesn’t matter that much for what weapons and other things you use as long as they’re appropriately leveled. If you’re an experienced player you can easily get to the late game within 20 hours of gameplay, especially when you know when to upgrade things, or just the weapon, etc, and how to play the game itself effectively. For new players, however, it can be very confusing and grindy when they try to farm for things they could just buy on the market for dirt cheap that’s the correct level for progressing through the game. This is also a problem with the enhancing and enchanting systems in the game which can be seen here:
http://vindictus.gamepedia.com/Item_Enhancement
http://vindictus.gamepedia.com/Enchanting.
This can make it hard to progress in the game after a certain threshold where it’s required to be useful in any way during raids or other battles. They’ve since remedied this now that you get free gear at level 90 that lets you get near the attack cap.
– Nexon NA’s support is ABYSMAL. The community mods are mostly just people ruling with an iron fist over anything that goes against their own preconceived biases, and Nexon has issues with fan made sites outside of their own forums or wiki. Dealing with the support team is mostly just rehashed, premade messages that get you nowhere.
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