Fantasy Earth Zero: initial impressions

A couple of days ago, I was browsing around for an MMORPG that emphasizes skill over grinding and gear, when I noticed a peculiar banner at the bottom of my screen:

Hmmmm... that font and those colors look oddly familiar. Is this a Final Fantasy knock-off? I did a quick search and found its wikipedia entry. It seems that it was indeed a Square Enix game. But, oddly, the official website is http://fez.gamepotusa.com. What's the deal with "Gamepot"? Wikipedia explains, "Several months after the release, Square Enix canceled the game because of severe lack of demand. The publishing rights to the game were later bought by Gamepot, where the game has enjoyed much greater success as they dropped the subscription based element present when under Square Enix's PlayOnline service, and became a "Free to Play" game." The game just arrived on US shores on January 2010. Free-to-Play you say? I'll give anything free a shot.

"Fantasy Earth Zero is a 3rd-person action-MMORPG. There is a large emphasis on PvP on a massive scale.
Sweet! I like PVP.

"One of the features of FEZ, that makes it different from most other fantasy-setting MMOs on the Free-to-Play market, is that attacks must be aimed manually and there is no auto-attack. Players manually aim at their opponent and then click the left mouse button to attack."
Hmmm... interesting. Aim to shoot? Sounds like an FPS or Global Agenda.

At this point, I had enough motivation to check the game out, so I downloaded it and explored the initial gameplay a little



I rolled a Sorcerer. The first set of mobs are melee mobs. They have an overhead strike that they telegraph with a slight pause, so it's easy to dodge them with sidesteps or simply moving away. The second set of mobs have a ranged attack that looks like a vertical cleave that travels along the ground. The cleave travels slow and is given away by wind-up animations, so it is easy to dodge too. At this time, I have a small AOE attack, and multiple single-target ranged attacks. Another thing to note about the video is that in the first set of mobs, I use the targetting system where my cursor is free to move, and in the second set of mobs, my cursor is locked to the middle of the screen (like in an FPS).

First thing that comes to mind is that it plays a whole lot better than Age of Conan (AOC). AOC had the whole sidestep thing and directional attacks too, but the following are what the differences are. In AOC, the sidesteps are useless because you cannot evade attacks with them. Here, the attacks are either telegraphed by an initial animation root, or they travel slowly to the target. So it becomes a game of timing, attacking, faking attacks and counterattacking. Furthermore, In AOC, each directional attack was a unique ability, taking up many hotkeys or hotbar slots just to be able to swing a weapon overhead, over the left shoulder, over the right shoulder, etc. This is exacerbated by the design of AOC's gameplay that gives each person many abilities. In FEZ, each class only has a small number of abilities (you select them with the mousewheel or keys 1-6), and you use the cursor to point and attack. This frees up keyboard real estate for "sidestep" keys, keeps things simple, and doesn't distract the player from the action.

As described, you do have to aim to shoot. But the game doesn't require you to be accurate. It's more like sloppy targeting. The hitboxes are pretty big, so you can hit the targets even if they're not directly under the cursor. Although, I don't know if this will change as you advance in the game.

One thing I haven't experienced yet is the PVP:
"Armies of up to 50 players, each from their own Kingdom, can go head to head in a type of war known as "Kingdom vs. Kingdom." The KvK battles are balanced so that, on the battlefield, one side will have 50 players max and the opposing side will have 50 players. KvK battles are all held on the same server."

"Kingdom battles also have many elements that are similar to a RTS game. Players "mine" crystals by crouching next to a giant crystal. After a certain number of crystals are mined, players must trade crystals with each other to get the appropriate amount of crystals they need to build a structure or summon a unit of war. Units of war are essentially "Summons" like in Final Fantasy games, but the Wraith and the Giant require structures to be built before they can be summoned. When a player character summons a unit, they assume the form of the summon and directly control its action. Buildings can be built on the battlefield and each has its own purpose. Obelisks are used to capture enemy territory. Gates of Hades are used to summon Wraiths. War Workshops are used to summon Giants. Arrow Towers fire arrows at the opposing side."

It looks like PVP involves waging war with neighboring territories and then coordinating buildings and summoned units, in addition to personal combat. I haven't figured out how this part of the game works, so I have no comments here.

As a summary: the graphics are kinda kooky, but that's Final Fantasy style for you. That's fine by me since I don't really care about the style of the visuals of a game, as long as they look polished. What I really care about is the gameplay. The music is Final Fantasy-esque too. The combat feels pretty slick, and I can see what kind of experience they're going for. I really want to PVP, so this game's next "success or failure barrier" to me is how easy it is to get into the PVP.