Tree of Savior - Review

Now that I've played for a couple of hours, I've got more things to say.

First of all, the community is foul. There were some things said in chat earlier that were pretty shocking, especially in a game that does have a chat filter. The fact that there is no report button is rather problematic as well. This brings me to gold sellers/spammers/bots. The game has a bunch, and you can't report them so they just kind of stick around, clogging up areas. You can block them so you can't see their chat anymore, but I'm certain that they're clogging the cities more than necessary due to no way to get them reported as far as I can tell.

You do get to job advance at level 15, which is nice. You choose your next class / circle for your current class, and then the game does not appear to let you know that you then need to locate your class trainer to actually change to that class. I was wondering why I couldn't equip a two-handed sword or add any Highlander skills after selecting that I would like to change to Highlander. Turns out I had to locate the trainer!

This brings me to another annoyance, which is learning Attributes (traits). These cost quite a large portion of silver for a new player, but I don't have a problem with that. The problem is that many of these Attributes take 30 minutes to learn, so basically you select that you'd like to learn the attribute and then you wait or run around and do something else while you learn it. It was quite disappointing to change to Highlander only to find out that I'd have to wait in order to equip my new weapon type. Attribute learning does not appear to stack either, so I already had an attribute in progress to learn to wear Plate armor, so it appears I have to wait 20 extra minutes for that to finish so I can begin learning Two-handed Swords. Kind of annoying.

Gameplay itself is decent. I'm getting a bit more used to the wonky controls. I wish that skills didn't take up quite so much SP though. I feel like I'm burning through SP extremely quickly just by trying to kill normal enemies. I got to the first dungeon, which appears to be soloable with some effort. I am mostly spamming my basic attack and going slow so as to preserve SP for boss fights.

Character customization makes me rather sad. Hair looks really nice, but I can't find any way to change the color. Also, armor that you pick up appears to have no appearance, and instead you have to get "costumes" to change your outfit. You get these upon job advancing, and there's some available for real money in the TP store (or whatever it's called). Always makes me sad to see systems like this; I like seeing my character change as I level.

The game is very in-depth and good for people that enjoy messing with systems and min-maxing stats on gear and such. Very reminiscent of older MMOs, so great for nostalgia. You have to assign your stats like many older MMOs, so you need to know your stat builds and such. You also need to level up skills with your very limited amount of skill points. On your basic class you have 15 points to spend between 5 skills, each maxing out at level 5. I opted to max three skills and ignore the other two, but I'm sure there are other ways of going about it. I'm also sure that, with time, optimal builds will form and making your character effective will get easier with guidance.

As I said in my last post, the controls are rather clunky and unfamiliar to someone who has played other MMOs. It is very similar to Maplestory if you select the "familiar with other MMOs" type of control setup instead of the "traditional Maplestory" setup.

Leveling seems relatively slow (undoubtedly to get you to buy some cash shop items which increase your exp gains), especially since I've heard the max level is 200. This game will surely be grindy at later levels. If it's not, then I will be very impressed. The game itself feels rather slow-paced, in an almost relaxing sort of way. Quest givers are not always obviously marked for you, so talking to random NPCs in questing hubs is rather important if you want the extra quests.

There is a gem-socketing system that I cannot figure out. When I hover over gems it says to right-click them to attach them to an item, and then it tells me to click an item...which does nothing. So I don't know how to do that.

The sheer amount of classes is wonderful, but I can already feel the "optimal" and "meta" builds coming already. The amount of classes will be worthless once an optimal setup is found, as anyone straying from it will likely be ostracized from dungeons.

SPEAKING of dungeons. The first dungeon in the game is rather obnoxious. You're brought into it at level 10-ish when everything in there is level 20-ish, and even if you level up to 15 to job advance, it's still difficult. And that's because it's meant to be group content. Problem is, I can't find any groups! There's not an LFG tool that I can find, and there's no groups for it up in the party finder tool. There's a bunch of groups, but all for levels that I'm not even remotely close to, and certainly not for this lowly little dungeon.

The game has really, really nice foundations, but wonky systems are holding it back, I think. I'd rather give up nostalgia to have a better game with modernized systems.

Tree of Savior First Impressions

I got to play the game for about 20 minutes and now I'm writing this quickly before I go to bed.

So far, rather enjoyable! I mean, I'm not even out of the very first area, but still. The game itself is much prettier than I was anticipating. Seriously impressed with that. Despite the very limited character creator, I think my character looks cute enough. My Swordsman feels like she has some punch to her.

Controls are a bit wonky, but they are adjustable. I think I'll keep them as they are for the most part (already had to go in and re-bind the key to sit/recover since my laptop apparently doesn't have an Insert key). If you've ever played Maplestory before they're a bit like that, but a even a bit odder than that. I've never jumped with X before, and I certainly have never opened my UI stuff with the F keys. F1 is stats, F2 is inventory, F3 is skills, etc. Rather counter-intuitive since I want to just click C for stats, I or B for inventory, and K for skills. F4 is Quests I think, which, again, I'd rather just click Q or J.

BUT I get why the menus are in weird places. Basically you control the game with the arrow keys (thank goodness; I thought for a minute there that it was click-to-move and I was deeply regretting spending $10!). Basic attack is Z, and jump is X. Interact is Spacebar. Your skills are bound to, like, ASDFG and QWERTY or something like that, and I already went over the F keys and menus. The only predictable control button is M for Map!

The stats and such remind me of my FlyFF days. It's been a rather long time since I've had to manually put in stat points, and the chat happening in-game is also very old-grindy-MMO-esque what with people selling weapons and talking about the best weapons and such. Hopefully the game will not be even remotely as grindy as FlyFF though.

I look forward to being able to upgrade my Barracks so I can have more characters. I'm saving one slot of my four because I heard you need a slot for a Companion, but I really want one of each class. I have my Swordsman for now, and an Archer, but I can't decide between Cleric or Wizard for the other one. I have reasons to want both!

I haven't run into any other players yet, although maybe the starting area is instanced, I don't know.

I will say that figuring out where to go is a bit wonky. The Map is pretty decent at showing you the general area of quest targets, and you do have an instant-warp thing that brings you straight back to the quest-giver when you're done, I'm seeing an issue with actually finding the quests themselves. Maybe I'm missing something, but there was no obvious exclamation point over anyone's heads (or maybe there was and it was just too subtle for my sleepy eyes?) or any reason to believe the random NPCs around would give me quests. Maybe there was a marker on my map, but it didn't occur to me to open it when I was getting the first round of quests.

One quest in particular, which I think was called "Lost in the Forest" or something like that, confused me immensely for a few moments. It involved starting bonfires from firewood that you found lying around in an area. Well, I found what I thought was the Firewood. I swear it said Firewood, but it was not interactable, and I kept trying to figure out some way to make it work. I tried hitting it, jumping on it, killing enemies next to it, sitting down next to it, etc. Nothing. It wasn't until it occurred to me to go across a nearby bridge that I found the actual firewood I needed. Note that at this time it was past 12 PM, the marker on the map showed the area I was in, and for some reason the quest had removed itself from my on-screen quest list. Turns out that the Firewood I was trying to use was for part 2 of the quest, so it all worked out in the end.

As a huge plus, my character currently has a cute little onion monster on her head, so that's nice.

Okay, I'm too sleepy to keep typing, so I'll play a bit more tomorrow and then I'll surely have more to say!

Tree of Savior!

Just bought my $10 founder's pack for Tree of Savior, and installing it!

Very excited!

I don't know very much about the game or what kind of builds are considered good, but I really want to play a support-ey type character. Not healing, but lots of buffs or other useful utility or something. Really looking at doing something with Pardoner, but I don't know what other classes to pair with it. Krivis maybe? Cleric? Or, a Paladin + Oracle seems okay too... I don't know!

Or maybe something with Archer? Like a Scout or something? Scout + Sapper?
Or maybe a Squire?

Oh well, I probably won't get to play tonight anyway; it's not even halfway done installing and it's already 11:15, so I guess I'll spend the rest of the night deciding and then play tomorrow (although I'll inevitably change my mind about a build by then).