One of the toughest genres of games to review is the massive multiplayer online role-playing game. Generally, an MMORPG is built with so much content that it’s tough to pinpoint where it is safe to judge and talk about it. Do you stop at the first boss battle? Do you party and give yourself time with dungeons? Where is the point that you can safely say that you have a firm grasp of everything, and you can judge it? It’s tough, doubly so when an MMORPG is first launched, and everything is vanilla.
I have been flipping and flopping with MMORPGs for the past two weeks. Most recently, I have delved into the world of Throne and Liberty from developer NCSOFT and publisher Amazon Games. I am at the point where I feel more than comfortable discussing the construct of the game’s world and can firmly see the path it is trying to take to make this another Black Desert or something similar. As it stands at launch, it is one of the more stable MMORPGs I have played, it seems to have some mostly clear direction, though it does throw a bevy of routes for you to take at once. Is it perfect? Lord, no. At times it can be overwhelming and frustrating, but for the most part, it is a worthy journey.
So, sit back, curl up your animal morph next to a warm window, and let’s talk about the huge, beautiful, and sometimes confusing world of Throne and Liberty.
Gosh, there is a lot of gameplay.
The story of Throne and Liberty surrounds the people of Solisium, a world that is divided by a power struggle where the evil Kazar is trying to acquire Star of Sylaveth fragments to gain power and control the world. Of course, the good people of Solisium, including your character, are trying to prevent that from happening. The adventure begins with the near collapse of your town and the introduction to the Kazar and their evil ways. Eventually, your character becomes a child of the star, where you gain power as protector of Solisium and have abilities to help navigate and protect it against the Kazar. And that is your purpose and journey.
It isn’t a bad setup, as it’s purely good v bad, which most MMORPG backbones have built on since the beginning of the genre. At the very least, the narrative is generalized enough to fit in specific and still-developed events that make sense within the world built for Throne and Liberty. There is nothing wrong with that whatsoever because you never want to trap yourself or your player in a box.
And trust me when I say that box is quite big and beautiful.
Get your shovels, there’s a lot of sand in this box.
One of the better parts of Throne and Liberty is how big of a sandbox it has for your MMORPG needs. To say that the world was huge would be an incredible understatement. I’m not sure I have seen a world this big before not called Final Fantasy. I played this game for hours and kept uncovering new places to traverse. When you look at the expanded map of the world, it’s vast and every bit of that map is true to its form. You will find huge mountains, marshy plains, dry and desolate deserts, and everything in between. The girth of the world is something to behold, and it feels like a thought-through construction. Unique enemies and new personalities reside within each layer of its land, so repetition isn’t an issue when you’re traveling from place to place. The only real repetition you run into is within each land/container, where you’ll find oodles of the same enemies waiting for you. That’s typical of an MMORPG experience, as my days with Final Fantasy online reaped a lot of hacks/slash of the same type of enemy repeatedly. It was a grind but, again, typical.
Thankfully, there are plenty of lands to explore, new enemies on the horizon within each, and the option to fast travel helps to sort out any potential boredom that may arise from seeing the same enemies constantly. All the above said just to let you know that you’re in for a huge treat with the amount of exploration you have in front of you. There are plenty of places to keep your attention and engage you.
Visually stunning
Not to be outdone, the beauty of this game is equally as impactful as its expansiveness. Playing this on the PlayStation 5, I was thoroughly impressed with the draw distance, amount of detail, and less-than-usual rendering/pop-up as my journey unfolded. Outside of Final Fantasy, this is probably one of the most gorgeous MMORPGs on the market. It’s visually stunning.
The flora and fauna are finely detailed, the enemy and character models are impressive, and the perceived ray tracing, shading, and lighting are well-done. There’s a lot of visual love to be had with Throne and Liberty and it doesn’t skimp out on any of it.
The only knock in this department? The cutscenes and conversations. They aren’t as beautiful. It seems like the art is pulled back a bit for whatever reason. Maybe it ends up on the Switch? I’m kidding but seriously it isn’t as solid.
Built to last but somewhat confusing
As Bungie and a few other developers have found out recently, if you don’t have content to keep gamers engaged, you’re going to find your player count decreasing quickly. Much like news, content is king with MMORPGs. From the get-go, Throne, and Liberty throws a bunch of content at you right when you make it to Solisium. You are thrown into the main adventure, where you must stop the Kazar’s evil from spreading, a multi-quest task that garnishes your hours and keeps you in tune with the story. The quests you get with the main are a mixture of solid enemy hunt and take down, as well as tasks that come in sprinkles rather than dumps. All this is business as usual for an MMORPG main questline.
Beyond the main quest of good v evil, you’re also put into events that sporadically pop up, tasks that require you to go hunt people and things down, and a lot of PvE with the hope of co-op and PvP waiting in the wings. At its best, the game tends to throw you in the mix with straightforward one-by-one tasks that equal better leveling and a variety of fun. At worst, the game can throw too much at you, and provide you with overwhelmingly confusing details that don’t give you quite as much direction as it does dictation. For example, at the beginning of my journey, there was a wolf hunting quest where you gather up 10 tails from fallen wolves (they are mean, so it is okay). When I started this quest, I played it about 20-30 minutes before taking a break. The break ended up being a day’s break, where I dived into another MMORPG and came back the next day. The next day, I jumped back into it and was lost on where I should be and where I needed to go.
I’m not the lost type when it comes to games, or specifically with MMORPGs, but finding the exact spot and understanding where I needed to be was a bit of a guessing game. I knew the location of the spot where I needed to be but was given no indication of exactly where I needed to go. Eventually, I found my way to a camp and then was told that the camp delivery system for the wolf tails was closed. I had to go randomly find another camp, which I assumed correctly was in the same area, and everything was back on track. The point of this ramble is that the menu system which should have led me to the exact location was confusing, it was unbudging with location, and the option to find a location based on the quest was a hit/miss gameplay element.
That is my big complaint for this game. The quests can gather and build on a list but not all quests are the same, and sorting out the quests can be a messy game of if you’re on the right track or not. Some quests will be straightforward; some will require you to remember certain details that a character had spouted out in cutscenes and dialogue. When you go back to seek out details and locations of some quests, it’s not at all clear. There is a lot of confusion that could be worked out if every quest gave you the option to pinpoint the location of said quest on a map. I understand that not all quests should give you the exact location where you need to be but at the very worst, they should give you the area to explore.
The complicated and confusing gameplay can be a crapshoot but all of this is correctable. I just wish it wasn’t so frustrating from the start.
Content is king
As stated previously, the content in this game is king. It rules the roost and there is certainly plenty of it. From personal quests to PvE, and all the way to PvP, there is a variety of gameplay in Throne and Liberty to keep the gameplay interesting. The PvE part of the game is a good chunk of content, though it will eventually run out when the game gets you to try co-op, if not forcefully, and you find yourself running dungeons with parties. The PvE is driven by the vastness of the land, which means you’re going to explore everywhere and you will want to do so as there are interesting fights to be had, quests to be discovered, and secrets lying around here and there. The PvE portion of the game is central to the gameplay, and it is the staple of its entertainment value.
The co-op portion of the game is equally interesting, as you’ll find several quests that require you to go up against a bad guy with a group of strangers or friends. The game does a decent job of setting requirements for these types of quests, as you simply cannot go into them underpowered. While I don’t agree with the decision to limit players from entry who are underpowered, as the punishment of being the weak link in the co-op chain would be motivation enough to wait until you’re ready, getting players to go out and grind areas to become powerful helps to balance out exploration and give goals to the player. In short, it keeps the game as balanced as possible, although it cannot fully maintain that balance.
The game also encourages people to play together. The concept of an MMORPG is to keep people in groups and to come back to conquer difficult quests. If you can give people a reason to do so and keep throwing content at them that is challenging and always building, then you have a good combination of balanced gameplay that keeps the game engaging. And there is enough content for co-op to keep the gameplay going. Different levels and different events with power requirements play together with grinding and building.
The PvP portion of Throne and Liberty is a different beast. Truthfully, I didn’t play too much on this end of the game’s spectrum. The portions I did play usually meant someone beat the hell out of me. My big complaint here is that people who are overpowered tend to find those underpowered, and then they end up handing their ass to them. It felt like every single time I loaded into a PvP area that someone overpowered was just waiting for me. While it did motivate me to get back to grinding and build my character, it was discouraging that I couldn’t even taste a bit of victory in the PvP area. It was heavily discouraging.
Given enough time and effort, I’m positive that PvE and PvP will balance out. There is plenty to do in the game and if this is how the vanilla version of it is, then the future is bright for the content. As it stands, there is plenty of imbalance to the modes and there is equally plenty of encouragement that things will eventually get corrected and better. Most games of this type start rough and with messy connections to content but Throne and Liberty seems a bit more put together than most. It just needs a bit more cleaning and organizing to make it great.
Hell, I remember when Final Fantasy XIV first arrived, and I was hoping that it was exactly like Final Fantasy XI. Regretfully, the former was far more disorganized and hadn’t quite found its footing yet with content when it first hit the market. Quests weren’t as meaningful, enemies were more of a grind than they should have been, and the world was beautiful but surprisingly empty. Now, Final Fantasy XIV is a great game and it has a lot of players enjoying it. The content is meaningful, the lands and enemies are expansive, and the events, especially when expansions were kicking in full force, were rich with narrative and player impact.
As it stands, there is plenty of content in Throne and Liberty. It just needs some tweaking and balancing. Its life has just begun.
Backend building
While the content is there and the land is all laid out, the backend portion of Throne and Liberty is complicated. When I say ‘complicated’, I mean it is quite extensive. The backend is broken down into equipment enriching, weapon/armor leveling, and a heavy amount of crafting. All this works together and is directly connected to items you gain or gather in the field of play. For weapons, you can upgrade individual items using Growthstones, which help increase damage and health. The growth isn’t as quick as enemy progression, but it does create motivation to keep playing.
The backend player skills tree is far more extensive than just weapons. While most of it is directly related to weapons, the skills are driven by attacks and such. For example, you can place macro attacks in slots. Those individual attacks can be upgraded through skill growth books you earn in the field. There are quite a few skills for players to flip and flop around, and to upgrade, so the combinations always feel fresh.
When you open the skills portion of the backend for the first time you’re going to be overwhelmed. It’s a lot. Once you begin to understand how each skill works, some more powerful than others, while others might be more related to healing or stunning enemies, working out what is best for the gameplay becomes a fun game of its own. All the backend is impressive. It’s extensive. It’s another layer of motivation to keep grinding and getting better. It plays wonderfully with the rest of the game, and it works well within its confines.
More to come
While all the above review jargon points to a solid game that has been firmly established, Throne and Liberty still needs a lot of work. That doesn’t mean it is in bad shape, rather it just means that the ship is a bit off course. It’s sailing perfectly right now but getting a fixed compass will do it good and the travel for its lifetime will get better.
Right now, it’s vanilla in its launch, but it’s certainly laying down a clear path to what it wants to be. What it needs right now is balance and PvP cleanup. It also needs a bit clearer quest direction and connection, as it is happy to throw the player into everything rather than just let it trickle out in an organized fashion.
Content is not an issue with the game, nor are events or exploration. The game just needs a path that it can follow with branching pathways that the player can rightfully choose at the appropriate time. Now, I’m not suggesting linear paths or taking a completely different course that leads this away from an MMORPG personality. I’m just saying that it needs to be cleaned up considerably and get its players connected to one main quest while integrating others around it naturally and smoothly. If NCSOFT can do this, and I think they will, Throne and Liberty has a hell of a future ahead of it.
As with every good MMORPG ever made, the games usually start rough but get smoothed out. Player feedback and developer decisions will ultimately determine the fate of Throne and Liberty, but as it stands right now, the beginning is good.
On that sweet note, let’s wrap this up.
Conclusion
Throne and Liberty from developer NCSOFT and publisher Amazon Games is starting on the right note. The game offers a bevy of content, a fun and complicated backend, and enough motivation to keep exploring and grinding its lands. It does need better direction and connection with quests, as well as balanced PvP. As it stands, the start is good, and the future looks like it could be better.
