Fantasy Earth Zero

[balliztik1]

[Fantasy Earth Zero](http://fez.gamepotusa.com/)

So, I saw an ad for a free MMO today, with Square-Enix's name on it, so I figured it might be somewhat decent. I just downloaded and played it a bit.

At first glimpse, the game is pretty magnificent. The graphics are stylized, so not the most realistic, but still not bad. The menus and backgrounds were smooth and easy to navigate. I quickly pushed 'Create Character' and dove in.

My first annoyance, however, was that names could only be 8 letters long, and couldn't be reused. As such, it was difficult to not use numbers or a random jumble of letters. When I logged in, I saw that this was the case for many character names once I logged in - and the game is only about a week into its release. I forsee a huge naming issue in the future if this convention doesn't change.

Once in the game, I was greeted with a choice of nations, which all looked very nice. The images produced for the nations were very cool, and each one sounded unique, which was good. I chose one and was dropped into a city. From there, I was given a tutorial, then allowed to play. This was where my fascination ended. I don't know if it was my computer or not, but running consisted of maybe 5 extremely choppy frames. Jumping and strafing somehow managed to be worse, with the character doing a laggy crouch, then jetting 10x his height into the air, suspended inanimate until touching the ground again.

But, graphics aren't everything, so I pressed on, eager to complete the first quest. My resolution was set rather small for this (by default), and the tips popups I got greatly obscured the fighting. The combat was real-time, requiring each attack to be pointed at the enemy, so a loss of vision is deadly…or at least it would be if the monsters fought back. I certainly did not feel like I was learning, as I just pulled out my bow and killed random beetle creatures from a distance until I was finished with my training. They just wandered on their random walk paths without paying me any mind at all, despite the fact that I was committing a bug genocide.

Still, though, I pressed on, hoping that past the tutorial would be something nice. Admittedly, I was impressed when the intro had a well-done voiceover, but once it was done telling me what to do, I quickly became bored again. I was asked to deliver a letter, and strolled off down a path. I ran into no-one, PC or NPC alike. I practiced with the controls, which were toggle-able between mouse-look and point-and-click, but neither provided much comfort in use. After leaving that first area, I quit out of a mix of boredom and frustration.

Overall, I was enticed at first by the smoothness of the menu graphics and the character creation process, but the animations soon took that away. The environments, though, were very nice to look at. What little combat I saw was unengaging and annoying due to "tip" popups. The controls were unlike any other MMO I'd tried, and as such, were unwieldy. All-in-all, I can't really say it's a bad game, since I didn't give it much of a chance. I will say without a doubt, though, that it did a fine job of hooking me in, then disappointing me several times in about a half-hour. If I ever do give it another try, I might feel differently, but at a first impression, I'm not likely to go back.

[Robin]

This only just came out international? xD

I played it JP a good few years back. 2005 I think, as it was on the old Naruto Realm forums I wrote the guide for registering. :P

Still got the screenies.

[http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/3.jpg](http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/3.jpg)

[http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/guide.jpg](http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/guide.jpg)

[http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_03Dec.jpg](http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_03Dec.jpg)

[http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_08Dec.jpg](http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_08Dec.jpg)

[http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_14Dec.jpg](http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_14Dec.jpg)

[http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_09Dec.jpg](http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e112/Kite_Minase/ScreenHunter_09Dec.jpg)

[balliztik1]

Apparently so.

I gave it another try for a few minutes, and the combat past the tutorial was okay. I like the idea of being able to dodge and attack actively, but the combat wasn't fast-paced enough for it to feel significant. It was just shoot and strafe. I like that they discourage grinding by only awarding experience for quest completions rather than by individual kills, but since the quests were mostly involved in killing X amount of things, it didn't really feel like anything different. The PvP elements were hyped a lot on the website, but I'm not really too big into that, so I wonder if it's just not for me.

Regardless, it's unique in some ways, and not unique enough in other ways, so I'm going to have to give it a miss, overall, I think.

[Kusy]

Man, I'm getting too old for this shit or does it looks ultra generic?