They just announced the date that the game will be launching, it will begin with an open beta and follow into the official service like many online games do from the looks of it. I've updated the main topic post with the schedule, the game will be officially launching on July 1st, but you can signup ahead of time and redeem a key to access the early character creation, and then redeem another key to gain early access to the game a few days prior to the launch date.
I played in the 3rd CBT and tried a foreign version of the game after I finally got around to fixing, rebuilding and upgrading my desktop. The game is a different experience on a higher graphics setting, as you can see in
this comparison. The mouse and keyboard combination worked well for the game, each class has a lot of skills so most common controllers probably wouldn't have enough buttons for the game.
The one thing that was probably lacking in the beta was the difficulty, it was too easy at times and even easier in a party. However they will be adding much more difficult modes soon, and the game did offer challenges at times where you pretty much had no choice but to party to stand a chance. There's a stamina system that limits how much you can play per day on each character, but they give you enough that you'll rarely hit it, and if you do then you still have an extra weekly stamina bar per character that it uses if you run out of your regular stamina.
If you play a lot then you can potentially reach lv50 in a week from normal playing and questing, which is a nice change of pace from other MMOs that take a long time or require power leveling to level at a decent speed. There was pretty much no grinding all the way to lv50, there was always quests to keep busy with which was what allowed you to level so fast. You rarely had to run a stage on the same difficulty more than once, and the stage layout and bosses are often different depending on the difficulty.
Of course since you reach the max level so fast you lose a main goal to work towards, but that's where building better equipment sets and doing the challenge modes comes into play until they add more continents or content to the game. There's also grades for each stage difficulty that you can increase by doing runs on it, and stat increasing achievements like Legends and Auspices that are gained by accomplishing certain things, like killing so many of a certain enemy. Most of the classes in this game play very differently from each other, and since you level so fast this is encouragement to make more than 1 character and try out some of the other classes.
There's of course also the PVP mode for some real challenge, I personally didn't try it out since I've had my fill of PVP matches from other online games. Since I didn't PVP though this put me at a disadvantage when I fought people who would invade my runs since I enabled Intrusions. If you enable Intrusion Mode for you runs, then you'll use less Stamina per dungeon, get 25% more exp on the final run bonus and get twice as many guild points. But it allows other players near your level to intrude on the run and try and kill you, an entire party can even intrude at once. The amount of people in the intruding party can't exceed the amount of people in your party, but any amount of parties can intrude who will then be enemies to the other intruders as well.
The intruders do have limitations, they can't revive if they die, they can't use their maxfury, they're on a time limit, and they can't use potions, though they can use any hp towers there may be on the stage if you haven't used it already. There are of course rewards for defending against the intruders if you manage to kill them, and there are rewards for the intruders if they can successfully kill everyone in your party as long as you don't keep reviving. The Intrusion mode can certainly spice up a regular run and add some major difficulty to it, but you're going to want to turn it off when doing certain quests to avoid any interruption.
Unless you're playing with people that you know, most folks don't party ahead of time in this game. Except for the really difficult end of continent quests, or something that requires partying before hand like a challenge mode. People will instead request to join after you've started the run, being able to join and leave in the middle of a run without having to wait until it's done is one of the nice features that this game offers. It's not a pay to win game so it isn't too cash based, and there will be the option to trade the in-game gold currency for cash points pretty soon as well.
Now on to the actual gameplay, I wasn't sure at first when I started playing the game, but after I class changed at lv20 the gameplay changed dramatically and it lived up to my expectations for it. I didn't like all of the classes however, of course it's unreasonable to be expected to like every class in the game. All you need is at least one good class that you like anyway, but I'm sure there will be several that you'd like instead of just one.
They have gotten better at making good classes for the game, most of the later on sub-classes that they created are or look like they're very good. In regards to air combos I didn't find myself doing them because of the sub-classes that I chose, but I was however hitting the enemies into the air and continually bombarding them with attacks to prevent them from hitting the ground, or hitting them off of the ground and proceeding to assault them with attacks.
Some classes have skills that are good or specifically designed for air combos, while others don't. I'll list some recommendations on what class to choose, based on my own opinion from what I've seen or hands on experience with the class. Though I still haven't tried quite a few of the classes, and what you like may just come down to your playstyle.
I'll be adding more videos this month to the main topic post. If you have any questions about the game, or would like any good unlisted videos just let me know. The game was quite entertaining and enjoyable, and if you're looking for a 3D Action MMO I would recommend it.
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