Game Review: Vindictus

I haven't posted in quite some time. A big reason for that is due to the fact that all of my spare time has been eaten up playing various games. You might think the game that would be stealing all of my time would be Gears of War 3, or perhaps Dark Souls, both highly reviewed games that have come out recently.

And you would be more or less right about Gears of War 3 - that was definitely a release day purchase. However, I played that game a ton during the Beta, and now that the actual game has come out, it hasn't taken long for me to play my fill of Horde and Beast mode. Don't get me wrong, I'll be back playing the game again sometime, but most likely as split screen co-op with my brother during the holidays. I'll review the game itself another time.

No, the game that has been literally chewing my time up and spitting it out is a little MMORPG game called Vindictus. Vindictus is an action-adventure third person beat em up known as 'Mabonagi Heroes' in Korea where it was originally developed, where you take your character and beat up the enemies in a dungeon, culminating in a boss battle (player vs. environment). PVP (Player vs. Player) is possible, but it's more of an afterthought, so if PVP is your bag, this game is not for you.

Free To Play

Normally, I have an aversion towards playing MMORPGs in any form, because I really hate paying monthly fees for games. I've never played World of Warcraft, City of Heroes, or any other pay to play games (although note that recently City of Heroes went Free To Play - I want to check it out, but I haven't had time yet).

However, this game isn't a pay per month game. It's also a Free To Play game, like Team Fortress 2 is these days. That always leaves the important question lurking just under the surface - how do they fund this game model? Is it a Pay to Win model, where the user has to pay to get the most powerful items? Or do they finance it via vanity items that make your character look slightly better than other player's characters and via useful items that aren't necessarily necessary to succeed at the game?

I'm pleased to say that in this case, it's the latter. You don't have to pay any money whatsoever to sink gobs of time into this game and be successful. Effectively, if you feel like rewarding Nexon with your money, you can pay them directly, or get a prepaid game card from a retail outlet to buy NX. NX is the internal currency they use to buy items, and is generally sold at 1000 NX = $1. There does happen to be packages you can buy which have good weapons and armor in them, but in no way are they necessary to get a lot of enjoyment out of this game, or to get good equipment. You also can buy health potions that restore more health than the standard potions, and revival items that can revive you if you go down when you're by yourself with no help, but these items only slightly reduce the difficulty of the game, so it doesn't feel like you're cheating when you use them.

When you start the game, there are four character classes you can choose, which are archetypes: Evie (a female magic user), Fiona (a female sword and shield warrior), Lann (a male dual sword wielder), and Karok (a male giant that wields a pillar as a big club/battering ram). If you so choose, you can start several characters simultaneously to play through the game with (much like Diablo II), though you'll want to choose wisely when you first start, since you'll be making a large time investment in a particular character type.

Character Customization

Once you choose a character, the game moves you into an avatar editor. You can't change the features of your character at the granular level like some other games, but the options they give you are sufficient. Certain hair, hair color, skin, and eye color options are available by default, but others cost NX to apply to your character. If you don't have NX when you start, there's no worry, because you can always apply changes to your character later (including other customization options like tattoos and inner armor [under clothing]). When choosing a hair style or inner armor that costs NX, the game gives you the option of applying it for 30 days, or permanently (the 30 day option costs about half as much as the permanent option). I'm not a big fan of a temporary changes, so when I purchased NX I made sure I bought enough to make my changes permanent.

Once your choices are made, the game pushes you into a tutorial mode which explains the different moves your character can do, and introduces the plot of the game. I played through the tutorial the first time I started the game, and I would highly recommend that new players play through it once simply to get a feel for whether they'll actually like the game.

The tutorial is single player, and once it's complete, the player is moved to the game proper. The town area and questing mechanics are introduced at this time. I won't spend a lot of time talking about them, because they don't compose the meat of the game. Suffice it to say that they work well enough to get the job done, and the UI is quite polished.

Game Play

Once you're in the game, to start a mission, you go to the docks. You choose the mission you want to play, then create a 'boat' for that mission. The 'boat' acts as a holding area where you can wait for other players to join you for the quest. Most quests can hold up to four players, though there are some raids where you can get up to six players. However, there is nothing stopping you from soloing any mission if you feel like it. The boat can be a fun distraction for awhile, as there are random items you can throw around and you can practice your moves while you're waiting. After playing the game for long stretches, however, you'll tire of this fooling around. Fortunately, the game is based on the Source engine (Half-Life), and the game is set up such that if you alt-tab out the game continues running. In this way, you can quickly alt-tab out and browse the web while you wait for more players to join.

Once enough players have joined, the boat 'sets sail' to your quest destination, and the dungeon loads. Once you're in the dungeon, you progress with your teammates through several scenes and levels until you reach a boss, which you proceed to beat up on and steal his items. You use these items to complete quests, craft new weapons and armor, or sell on the marketplace in town to get some money (using the marketplace to buy items can also be critical when trying to get certain items you just can't find in a quest). Sometimes, there's a mid-boss in the dungeon to mix things up. Random objects are littered around the dungeons which you can pick up and use to beat up on monsters.

As you complete various goals, you character acquires titles that improve stats, as well as 'action points,' which allow you to improve your character's different skills to make them more powerful. This formula seems very straightforward and boring in theory, but it can be incredibly addictive in practice.

Most of the addictiveness is due to the different moves each character has. After every battle, you character gains 'Action Points' that you can spend to improve those moves/abilities. Fortunately, the game has an easy screen where you can see what each ability does. This screen has mini-video guides to explain how to use each ability, which is super useful.

I've only played as the Fiona, Evie, and Karok characters, so I will review those classes here. Lann will be left as a character for the reader to try out for themselves.

Fiona

Fiona is a sword and shield character, and is the first character I started playing the game with. She's probably more complicated to play than the other two I've tried, but if you're fine with that, it can be immensely rewarding to play her.

After every left button attack you make, you can hit the right button to do a 'smash' attack which is more powerful. Fiona has the capability to chain up to four normal attacks together before doing that final smash attack. In general, doing more normal attacks before the smash attack will do more damage overall (each smash attack is different, and the smash attacks at higher combos do more damage). Each smash attack has the chance of knocking an enemy down (including bosses), which is super useful because that guarantees you free hits.

Fortunately, you don't have to connect with every hit to chain together your combo, so it's perfectly valid to swing your sword four times in the air before executing the final smash on the boss (this is a very helpful skill to use when dealing with higher level bosses).

As you can imagine, most of her style revolves around using her shield. She can use the guard skill to block with her shield, which will protect her from all regular attacks. Additionally, if she blocks a regular boss attack, she has the capability to counterattack, stunning the boss for a period of time while she gets in free hits. In practice, this is hard to execute, because you need to be able to read the boss to see if it's readying a regular attack or a smash attack.

If the boss instead decides to use a smash attack, you'll want to use the 'heavy stander' ability instead, which allows Fiona to raise the shield above her head and take negligible damage from a heavy attack. This won't allow you to get an opening on the boss, but it will prevent you from being knocked on your ass.

Fiona has the capability of grabbing enemies and doing damage to them with various grab moves (try them all, they're fun!), but she cannot grab larger enemies, so it's not an ability you'll be using all the time.

Once Fiona gets around level 30, she can learn the ability to learn a hammer instead of a sword. The play style is much the same, but the hammer gains more area of effect smash attacks at the expense of speed. I personally started using the hammer and never looked back once I gained the capability of using it, since the sword isn't that great at crowd control.

Evie

Evie is a basically a petite sorceress/witch character. Her normal attack is to fire magic bolts from her staff. You need to be a bit careful with this, though, as the bolts have a limited range, so you'll need to time your hits carefully.

She doesn't have a lot of health, but this is balanced by the 'mana shield' she possesses, which allows her to take a certain number of hits without taking health damage. Additionally, when she's not in combat, over time the shield recharges for her. Note that while she still has a shield remaining, while she 'focuses' to cast a spell she cannot be knocked down.

As you level up, you gain the ability to use a fireball, ice field (area effect ice attack that has a freezing effect), ice spear (a longer range ice ability which can even freeze bosses solid), and blind arrow (a multi-arrow attack that does massive damage). Each attack works like the smash attack for Fiona, having a certain percent chance of knocking down the enemy. Unlike Fiona, staff Evie charges up her spells by right clicking, then pressing the correct WSAD key that corresponds to the spell she wants to cast. Each spell can be cast at a different 'focus' level, so for the highest level spell Evie has to charge up four times. Note that if you want to be able to cast spells faster than by simply holding the right button down, you can click the right button again as soon as a focus level is charged to instantly charge the next focus level.

Around level 24, you can choose to become a scythe Evie, whereby she exchanges her staff for a scythe. The play style is completely different (and the abilities are too), so I can't talk too much about that play style. In general, however, the scythe play style is more aggressive and up close, while the staff play style is more about keep away, distance attacking.

Karok 

Karok is a giant of a man, and all of his skills are based around strength and grappling. He's not a subtle character to play, but he's a heck of a lot of fun. His weapon is a gigantic pillar. You start out with a tree trunk, but you can upgrade to an Ionian column, and from there on to more esoteric objects.

His smash system works much like Fiona's, but he can only perform three normal attacks before a final smash attack. This doesn't make him less limited or make him take less time to perform his combos, however. In general, his combos are a little slower to execute than Fiona's are, though you can always always escape out of a combo by rolling away (make sure you have enough stamina to do so before trying, however - see my discussion about stamina later).

While his normal/smash attacks are pretty fun by themselves, Karok really comes into his own with his grappling attacks. Nothing is more satisfying than picking an enemy up like they're a bug, then smashing them into a wall with a crippling blow, or doing a killer suplex on them.

Also, unlike other classes, Karok can gain the ability to to use his awesome grappling against bosses. When a boss is knocked down, he can use the 'boss bash' ability to pick the boss up and punch him a few times - very helpful (especially satisfying when you give them a knuckle sandwich). Additionally, for the larger bosses he can't use 'boss bash' on, he can use another ability called 'clash.' This allows him to grapple with the boss, where you stop him from doing a powerful attack, after which you click the 'E' key fast enough to win the grapple and end it with a head butt. Not only do you do damage when you win a clash, but you also open the boss up to attacks from other players while the boss is occupied.

Later abilities allow you to toss your pillar and engage in hand to hand combat like a brawler, but I've not yet leveled my character high enough to see this in action. I suspect it works much like the alternate weapon for Fiona and Evie, where there are tradeoffs for each play style. Fortunately, unlike Fiona or Evie, you don't lose your pillar permanently, so you do have more flexibility to trade off your play style during the battle.

Overall, Karok makes you feel powerful, and makes your enemies feel puny, which is not at all a bad thing to experience.

Lann

Lann uses twin swords to play, and like the other characters, gains the ability to use an alternate weapons, called twin spears, around level 30. I'm not that familiar with this character, so I can't review him. He does appear to get a pretty awesome attack whereby he can spin around like a top while doing massive damage.

General Combat Abilities

Note that each move you make uses stamina (including running away and dodging), so a lot of the game involves managing your stamina pool to the greatest effect. This can be a little annoying, but it's not too hard to do once you get the hang of it.

All characters can bring secondary weapons into dungeons. These include spears (useful for stunning enemies/bosses for limited amounts of time), bombs (can be used in the same way as spears, but they're times, so it's harder to hit monsters with them), mining bombs (used to mine ore from formations in a dungeon), and chain hooks (used to hold on to a boss, pinning them down while team members get free hits on him). Fine spears, sticky bombs, and 'light of palala' (flash bang) can also be used when the character is sufficiently leveled up.

All three classes share the ability to kick enemies, as well as the ability around level 40 to gain a transform ability. The transform ability allows the character to turn into either a dark knight or a paladin (depending on how the player completed a particular quest). While transformed, the character gains massive offense or defensive capabilities (dark knight is offensive, paladin is defensive). Unlike standard abilities, the transform can only be done once per hour, and every time you transform, you gain experience for the transform ability that you can use to level up the transform ability. This leads to silly cases where players have to transform right before the top of the hour if they want to be able to transform twice in a row quickly to gain experience (once right before the hour, and once after).

This feels kind of cheap, and it's a little disappointing how long it takes to level up this ability. However, it looks so darn stinking cool that I guarantee you'll be back for more (because leveling up the transform ability eventually allows you to level up to the second level transform ability, which looks even cooler).

Graphics

The graphics are not stunning, but they're pretty good. The characters and bosses are detailed well with quality textures. Remember, it's using a modified Source engine, which is now quite a few years old. Also, the game itself is now at least a year old. However, it still does look pretty good, and the UI feels very polished. In the end, it's not the graphics that make this game outstanding anyway, so I'm willing to overlook the fact that they're not cutting edge,.

Stability


The game itself has not crashed, though I've been playing it for far longer than I should. The Source engine has generally been pretty stable. However, this game has lots of connection problems. Every update the team has done recently has drastically increased the number of problems experienced when playing, such as an inability to connect to the authentication servers when logging in, or having simple functions in the game time out. They do seem to be making huge efforts to fix these issues, so I suspect the problems will be sorted out in a few days after the patch has been put out. It's a possibility this occurs during every patch, though, so in the event that it happens again, you'll need to be patient.

Also, lag in the game depends on how good the internet connection/computer is of the host of the game, since their servers don't take the load when you're playing. If you don't have a good connection to the host of the dungeon, things will start lagging out. Fortunately, this can usually be detected on the 'boat' before you leave for a mission, so it's unlikely that you'll have to play through an entire dungeon with terrible lag unless you opt to do so.

Overall Score: 8.5/10

This game might deserve a ten if the connection issues weren't so irritating. Additionally, it doesn't quite reach that lofty height because it can eventually wear out its welcome. Otherwise, it's a game that has excellent gameplay, and is incredibly addictive. Besides, the game is cheap as free, so you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

Final warning: don't start playing this game unless you don't mind losing large chunks of your life to it.