I was just about ready to try going back to City of Heroes, since they had a Free Play weekend coming up, when a friend of mine told me about a game that someone else had mentioned to them. It was made by Square Enix, he'd said, and had the feel of Final Fantasy Tactics. He wasn't able to play, or even look at much of it (he's having some computer issues involving Port 80, which I'm heading out to help with in a couple days), and wanted me to check it out.
So I do a search for this game, called Fantasy Earth Zero, and the first thing I find is a Wikipedia entry saying that it's not even released in the US. Well that can't be right, I'm thinking, and continue on until I find the download page. Turns out that I downloaded the client on the day that the first Open Beta was due to release. I'd never beta-tested an online game before, so this was pretty cool for me.
When the server for Open Beta finally went up (several hours past the original launch time), I went in and started playing with the character creation stuff while my wife was finishing up installing it on her computer. We made characters, tried to enter the game with them, and hit the first major roadbump: Gamepot or whoever was in charge of FEZ's Open Beta release wasn't expecting the flood of players it got. They'd only opened up 2 of the 5 kingdoms for people to join and play in, just to get a feel for how things worked in the US version, had only one server, and only 800 slots for characters in each of those kingdoms. They quickly set up a second world/server, but they still only had a capacity of 800 for each of the kingdoms. It was very, very late in the day before they got the population limit raised (my wife had already gone to bed).
Day 2, we went in and started going through the tutorial quests. The controls were very foreign to me at first. The only way to turn around is to change your camera angle, since your directional buttons only allow for forward, back, and strafing. The mouse, by default, changes your camera angle as you move it, which was very disorienting at first. Over time, however, I got used to it (and by the time Open Beta was over, I had trouble going back to other games!).
The Party system seemed a bit glitchy - it would kick my wife and I out of a party when transitioning, so we would need to reform the party when going to a different area. Aside from that, it didn't really feel like we could do much to help each other, aside from just whack at the same monster. The game lacks any sort of ability to heal other people, with your own toon's healing dependent solely upon potions or food items, or sitting at one of the mana crystals when in a war (which will get you yelled at, since healing your character by camping the crystal takes HP away from the crystal).
Overall, it seemed cute and mildly distracting, but seemed to lack any real substance. I had already told my wife that the female character model was complete with "bounce effect", something which was lacking from most other games (even Mabinogi, whose signature character Nao is notorious for it). A closer look, however, revealed something even more revealing: the outfit female characters start with, an exceedingly low-cut peasant-style blouse, actually seems to show the top curve of the areolae. Looking around at other outfits available, it seemed like the newbie outfit was the only one which did this, despite the fact that other tops seemed to cover even less. When it came to clothing below the waistline, the starting outfit was tame, with a knee-length skirt (despite the slit up the back). Other female armors had skirts ranging from mini-length to practically non-existent, with various styles of undergarment. But it was the peasant-blouse starting gear that really disturbed us, and we were just about ready to uninstall.
Then we tried our first war. The game's major selling point, in most of what I'd read, seemed to be the massive combat capability: 50vs50 PvP. I have never been a fan of player-vs.-player gaming, whether in the MUD, on MMOs, or even on Facebook apps. So I was exceedingly surprised to find myself enjoying this. After talking about it with my wife, we think it's because of the scale of it. Most PvP is one-on-one, or maybe a small group. It ends up feeling very personal. But on this scale, it doesn't feel that way. It's like Capture the Flag with more rules.
The system isn't perfect. Of the three classes available to us in the Beta (Warrior, Scout, and Sorcerer) it seemed like the side with the most Warriors would consistently win, despite the game's internal balancing that said otherwise. I'd started off making a Sorcerer, focusing on the lightning spells, only to find out that was one of the worst choices to make. In theory, lightning spells are faster to cast than fire or ice, whereas fire does Damage over Time and ice slows or halts the enemy. Due to lag issues, the lack of auto-targeting, and the differences between fighting AI-run monsters and actual people, it seemed I could never get a spell to hit another PC. Occasionally, if I targeted ahead of them (so they would run into it) I could manage a hit. Even that seemed to work better with the bow-based scout abilities, though.
Warriors, however, have at least 2 high-damage Area of Effect abilities that are centered on the warrior character itself, which is a much safer bet for a PC than trying to aim an AoE (spell or arrow-based) at a distance. For one, since it surrounds the PC, the warrior is going to hit anything close-by, preventing attacks on the warrior. And two, the warrior is built to go wading into battle like that.
I did enjoy playing a Bow-Scout, though, for the ability to stand at the top of a cliff and rain arrows down at enemies at the bottom. If you did it right, you could even stand at the bottom and hit enemies at the top. I also enjoyed playing a Dagger-Scout, to a lesser degree. Being able to potentially one-shot sneak-attack was nice, and the ability to disarm was a wonderful piece of chaos, but most of the time it seemed I was little more than a suicide bomber. Warriors can do about as much damage with one of their abilities, and they don't have to be hidden to do it. I guess the one class I didn't enjoy as much was Sorcerer, but I also didn't try out the fire or ice magic as much. I'd also like to have tried out some of the sword-and-shield warrior abilities, but I was having too much fun smashing everyone to bits with a two-handed weapon.
One of the biggest concerns about the game, though, ended up being saboteurs: people loyal to the other kingdom making characters in ours, and intentionally wasting resources in battle to give the other side an advantage. There was no way to prevent it from happening, and the only countermeasure would be to do the same thing to them. If there was a way to report possible saboteurs, that would at least help the issue.
First Open Beta ended on the 10th, with 2nd Open Beta scheduled to start on the 17th (2 days!). We're told there will not be a character wipe after 2nd Open Beta, and anyone who was involved in a GM-run war during the first OB will get a code in their email to receive a nifty weapon once OB2 opens up. Despite the issues, I'm looking forward to it, as is my wife. I've actually been having trouble playing other games since it went down.
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