Good review Oz.
I have to admit, I was a little reluctant to try this game at first. While I like anime, I'm not the gung-ho fan(atic) that some of our members and fellow beta testers are here on DragonShadow. It also seemed to be aimed towards a younger audience... and me being all mature like... *cough* But several of us decided to give this one a try, so I put my reservations aside and went through the somewhat tenuous beta sign-up process. (Note: For any DragonShadow members wanting to give this beta a try, see my idiot-proof walkthrough instructions on how to sign up for this beta in the Private Members section. I may send a copy to the company itself as their own step-by-step instructions are awkward at best).
Right off the bat, I was mesmerized by the colour schemes used on the Ether Saga Online website and the game itself. I silently wondered if it was appealing to the woman or the inner child in me... but that curious thought was put to rest when Oz blurted out that he thought the colours were pretty cool too (I'm going with "inner child" ).
In the back of my mind, I was thinking that ESO was going to be like a mix of Mabinogi and Perfectworld, and thought "hey, that would work!". There are elements from both games that I was hoping to see incorporated here. I was disappointed to find, however, that the character customization didn't allow for nearly as much uniqueness as Perfectworld (which to date has gone unmatched imho), and not even as much as Mabinogi, while somewhat lame, at least afforded more choices. I hope they incorporate more individuality before going live.
Oz has basically touched on most of what we experienced in the 3 hours we played last night, so I don't have much to add at this point. I think the auto-tracking system deserves another nod, however, and I'd like to say IT RAWKS!! A tip: if you're partied with someone and you're both working on the same quest and you need to go AFK while working on a quest, use the auto-track feature rather than auto-follow -- the latter is more likely to get you stuck.
Overall, I was thoroughly impressed with this game from the graphics to the game content and I'm looking forward to dedicating some more time later on tonight to checking it out. If you're registered on the forums, check out the screenshots in Oz's album. And if you decide to join us in the beta, we're using our usual OzDragon and Dugchugger names. No surprise there, huh?
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