All righty, so I’m back with another review of Atlantica, now in Open Beta. So, it took me some time to muster up the muscles to get back to installing this game, but seeing as everyone seems to be interested in the last review I had of it, I figured it’s worth looking back into to see what’s changed, for the better or worse.
If you haven’t already, check out the original Atlantica review, since the basics of the game are explained there, and not much has changed (the changes I have come across, I’ll be sure to mention in this article, but it saves me repeating detailed explanations of the old stuff… yes, I’m that lazy ^^ ).
Here are my ramblings of a day back, my Return To Atlantica *cue awesome dramatic music*:
So after a big of a brain flux, I finally managed to recall my account information and reclaim my spiffy character and her previous beta name (still in snazzy blue-colored text, a ‘perk’ for those who participated in CB testings). I’m not one to mess with what I’ve already tried, so I choose the same character type I played as in CB, healie shaman.
I pop right in and notice that the realm I picked was rather sparse in starterville, though I do realize the game has been open beta for some time, I would have thought there’d be more folks than just me and two others. Ah well, it looks like the UI is still the same, simple and as streamlined as it can be. That includes the space bar inventory.
I’ve been spoiled by moveable UIs and adjustable keys, so that is one drawback to Atlantica. There is no changing key shortcuts, what you get is what you get. So even though the spacebar takes a little getting used to, it’s a lot easier to settle into than it is with me and my strafing keys.
There was one new addition from when I first played, though I had heard about it in subsequent tests that I didn’t play. The stamina button with the rest of the side buttons glares out at me, the ever curious Kitn.
It took my mind a while to grasp the concept of what stamina was. When it was first implemented, I remember a lot of QQ about it being put in, so my first thought was what was it limiting? It must’ve gone some pretty drastic changes, because my first dealings with it weren’t as dire as some made it sound.
What Stamina does is for a set number of battles (1 stamina per battle), you get three times as much experience, and double your chances at finding items. This number resets every day (you get back a certain amount), and you have chances inbetween to regain any lost stamina either by being idle for ten minutes while in game, or by participating in the free league (essentially an arena type match for all those PvP happy players).
So when your a newbie starting out, these first 100 points of Stamina does wonders to get you zooming up in levels. I won’t say it’ll get you to a high level automatically, but I definitely got farther in one day than I did back in closed beta, and that was in between testing out the ten minute idle function to see my Stamina go back up a point. Think of Stamina as rested experience (in WoW terms), which is definitely a positive direction in getting people to play a game. Rewarding players in a way that makes the playing experience less tedious is a great note to start on.
So after I marveled at the beauty that was ‘more exp’, I started on the tutorial spree of quests. As I mentioned in the first review, Atlantica goes along doing its tutorials in a decent learning set up where everything is taught via a quest. Now, I can’t say it won’t get old for veteran players starting additional characters, but it makes getting those first few levels go by quickly without too much muss and fuss of having to start off with a hard grind and a long read.
Introduction to these quests (and the storyline to Atlantica) comes in the form of three barely-dressed sisters who each give you tidbits of why you’re the adventurer you are, and what you need to learn to survive. These include how to grab mercenaries who make up the rest of your party. These explanations also end up being those tutorial quests I talked about, and I’m happy to say they fixed one of the buggier bits they had about the tutorial.
See, the first basic set of tutorials for battle come up in windows as you fight, and each step of the tutorial has you doing a basic function. Every time you complete that function, it ticks off that part of the tutorial, until you do it all to completion. One aspect of the tutorial was teaching the player how to use potions to regenerate hp. The problem I had in Beta was that you weren’t given any potions when that part of the tutorial came up. So you were forced to battle till one dropped, and every time you battled, that same tutorial window would pop up like an ever nagging old lady. Luckily, someone found out how irritating that was and when that portion of the tutorial came about, a set of five potions was instantly in my inventory, ready to be used to get the nagging window off my back.
The battles this time around feel even smoother than the first time I played, which means some really good graphical overhauls were done to keep it from chewing up my computer. Outside battles, I can’t say (on my computer) that moving around was fluid (I cranked everything to max for both windowed resolution and other various settings), but in battle, it definitely was a smoother transition in fight animations.
Of course, the first thing I completely forgot to do was fiddle with the camera settings for battle. Anyone who’s familiar with the game will know that this is an MMO that tries to give a great cinematic feel to it, not with actual cinematics, but with swooping cameras during even the most mundane battles. So at first fight, you’ve got the camera panning every which way, zooming in and out, from behind, from afar, trying to make the fight look more epic than it really it. It’s great the first few times, and maybe for actual epic boss battles, but it gets mind-numbing for every other fight thereafter, so it’s always a good idea to get it turned off before you start getting Blair Witch-style-induced headaches. Luckily, the developers added a button to do just that, which means less chances of you getting aggravated and tossing your mouse at the screen mid-fight.
The fights felt roughly the same, and it still had that keyboard vs. clicker friendliness to both parties (I’m a clicker), though I did find a delay for clicking that didn’t seem as apparant for keyboarders. Whenever I tried to click on a different character before my turn came up, I would choose the character for a split second, and then switch to a new one on my turn. This would be fine if I didn’t get ADD and click on the character I wanted afterwards, go for the attack, and then find that it uses the one it switched to at the start of the turn instead. It’s not too terrible an inconvenience, unless you mean to heal with the shaman and end up attacking with her instead, using up a precious fight turn. Then it gets mildly irritating. The other delay comes in the form of the AI not realizing every monster is dead until two seconds into their turn. Two seconds feels longer when you can definitely see all the mobs are dead and want to just finish this battle to get to the next.
Anyhoo, by the time I’m finished with the starter tutorials, said my goodbyes to the sisters, I’m immediately thrust out into the ‘real world’ of battles and whatnot. Again, I choose the same starter city (you have four to choose from), just for familiarities sake.
The world is a lot more filled out than it used to be. There were definitely changes to the geometry of the land so that there were more subtle hills and valleys, and there is definitely more environmental clutter everywhere. By clutter, I mean foliage, rocks, abandoned buildings and whatnot. It looks a lot less sparse and more like a world that has had travelers and settlers come and go.
Unfortunately, as beautiful as the scenery is, I couldn’t figure out if there was any option to take a first person view of the camera to take snazzy screenshots. I had to be content at being able to hide the UI and my name, but having my character constantly planted in the center, making it less like a picturesque screenie and more like a wish-you-were-here-playing postcard. The camera also felt constantly anchored to the character, so any pivots I made were in relation to my toon, making getting certain angles frustrating when you wanted to just look out at something else in the distance when tilting the camera up or down.
The other fall from prettiness was this one giant texture glitch I spied on a decorative wall. From afar, it looked like a texture, with all its vibrant colors, dips, and cracks. But the closer you got to it, the more it started to look… off. Up-close, it was actually a texture map that was repeated and stretched, warped, and skewed, yet somehow maintained it’s style from afar. Very strange…
The NPCs were also settled in much different areas than just all in one level ground. Such as one NPC being at the top of a hill nestled in a sort of gazebo while two others were below, one near a sort of ramshackle hut, the other on a path towards an overlook. It’s a nice change to see them spread out against a backdrop of various objects or scenery.
Not to mention the various NPCs look marvelously diverse, some with decent voice acting to help with the immersion. My gripe? Why can’t players look as different and colorful? Sure, I haven’t reached the higher levels of outfits and equips, but so far the one set every certain levels just doesn’t feel as good as being mismatched and uncoordinated in various gear. Ah well, that’s me being nit-picky, if any of you have read my previous articles, you’ll know I love varied costumes in MMOs compared to armor sets.
Continuing my quest grinding, I find that one thing certainly hasn’t changed. Atlantica can be played with either the ASDF keys for the usual movement, or using the mouse to point and click to get around. One of the more useful of the transportation features, however, is that auto-move. Quest auto-move is fantastic, because you don’t have to sit around checking a map, figuring out the route to get to your objective. The game gives you a button to just auto-move your lazy butt to the area.
The one flaw in this beauty of a gem is that as you auto-move, if you wanted to stop for any reason, the game stops to ask you if you want to stop first. So you have to fumble to the interface to say, “Yes, Stop! Now!!”. In open areas, it’s a mere inconvenience, but in battle dungeons, filled with mobs that battle as soon as you touch them, you can easily auto-walk into a fight you never wanted in the first place, and even if you try to stop just before you hit them, chances are you still will run into them because the character’s breaks aren’t automatically applied without extra consent.
Oh, and back in CB, auto-move was one of those special lazy player’s skills that I was worried would be cash shop only, like auto-loot. Thankfully, it seems the devs and GMs were listening to the outcries of those who can’t be bothered to do an extra click, since it seems like you learn part of these skills while the others you can buy from the market in game. Cash shop items are replaced by other things that I’ve failed to remember and will have to report to you in a second article.
After an hour of play time, a message pops into my inbox, to my surprise. It’s a little gift from a GM (though I suspect it might be an automated response), a reward for spending an hour in game. The reward comes in the form of a treasure hunt, another new aspect of the game that wasn’t around when I first played.
Treasure maps can be obtained (though not sure on the ‘how’ quite yet), and these maps will specify where to find treasures that only appear for a certain amount of time.
Unfortunately for me, since I wasn’t aware of this little tidbit, I got a bit confused as to where to go, and by the time I figured my way there, I realized it was waay farther off than I could reach in the time I had left. Sadly, my booty was lost and who knows when I’ll get another map to play with to see what kind of treasures will pop up. Ah well, it’s still a nice feature that I hope isn’t too rare. It’d be nice to get a treasure map every so often, a small diversion from just leveling.
Oh, something else I read about in the help section that I didn’t recall in CB. Apparently, at some point, your mercenaries will eventually hit their 100th level. Now, if they aren’t too old by then (yeah, crazy, your party ages!), you can choose to turn them into independent mercenaries. They’ll no longer fight in your party, but they will go off on their own adventures, and every so often they’ll write to you to let you know about something that needs doing, or just to send you some random item they found on their journies. They’ll continue to do this till they retire at the age of 60.
That sounds like an amazing way to cycle mercs and gives those who’ve supposedly reached the end, something to do. Especially if they’re not into the guild PvP stuff, like I am. I’m curious to see how this feature really plays out, so it could be an excuse for me to keep playing on the side, just to train my comrade-at-arms and then send them off on their own merry way. Definitely not a common feature, but most interesting indeed.
Speaking of PvP stuff, every so often an announcement will be made in regards to the Free League. Now, I’ve never tried it myself, and chances are, seeing as I suck at that kind of gameplay, I won’t, but as far as I can tell, it’s sort of like an open tournament. Winning a consecutive string of matches nets you varying prizes, and every match you win returns something like 3 stamina points. If you’d rather not spend your time idleing around for ten minutes reading a book or watching tv, this is another route to get back that triple experience stam.
After about two or four hours playing on and off for the day, I’ve found I’ve reached a sweet spot level (15 means new gear, the start of ashen crystal farming). This is a big change from CB when it took roughly two day’s of quest and grinding to make it this far. I can say I haven’t gotten tired of the game from first play, even though it was practically the same walkthrough as CB. That definitely says something about Atlantica, because I know that when I get bored of early level tiers and there’s no random costume drops, the chances of me sticking around to play fall rapidly.
The slight changes and the features implemented are definitely worth trying out at least once, and it’s still a different mob in comparison to a lot of the free-to-plays that are out. Hopefully, it can only get better.
Just to recap:
New Things Noticed:
Stamina - Triple experience and double item drop every day for as long as you’ve got it. Can be regained in various ways, one of which is just being in the game for ten minutes not doing a thing.
Free League - Tournies and arena matches for the blood thirsty and bored.
Independent Mercenaries - Mercs that no longer work with you after they’ve leveled to 100, but still give you freebies as thanks!
Treasure Maps - Buried treasure pointed out to players with a set amount of time to find and grab it. Yummy booty!
Positives:
- Smoother battle animations when compared to CB
- Prettier, more-filled-out environments
- Same good gameplay with emphasis on rewarding those who group together with more experience
- Lazy player skills like auto-move and mass loot aren’t cash shop
- Leveling is less a grind with Stamina
Negatives
- Some glitchy textures still exist, as does some text cut-offs
- Auto-move to stopping still frustrating
- Can’t change shortcut key commands!
- Clicking seems laggier compared to keyboard playing
- If your main character dies, your party still runs around like headless chickens and takes you out of combat instead of being smart enough to raise your butt after the battle
- The NPCs still look better than me 
Thanks for reading! I’m sure I’ve left a lot of things out (seeing as I don’t keep notes other than mental ones I tend to forget), but I’ll keep writing about it if you actually come and read. Keep an eye out for Part 2 as I continue on past level 15 (assuming I remember to keep taking screenshots…) to see what else I can write about to tell you for the next article.
