Monday, August 9

Zentia



I saw this one thanks to Lani's reader page. A new F2P game called Zentia. Obviously Lani already knows about this game, but I don't know if our beta junkie does :) The reader linked to this Massively.com article. But what really did it for me was an older article it linked to. Free for All: Charmed, Zentia, I'm sure. Since I only read about it this morning I haven't actually tried out or downloaded anything. But a charming game sounds quite, well, charming. I will be downloading it tonight.

Hopefully it will last a bit longer than the 15 minutes I played League of Legends over the weekend. Nothing wrong with LoL, but I just don't want to get into an RTS. Which is a good thing a bit, since it only makes my stand to skip StarCraft II stronger. And with Torchlight II overshadowing Diablo III I won't have any temptations to fill Blizzard's pockets. But that is all besides the point. Zentia, COH-GR, FE and GW first.



Geek's bit :)

I rolled myself a Master Summoner in the form of this cute chimp. In this screen he has the first pet (you get a choice of cat or dog), that pet was soon replaced once I learned how to capture my own. To capture a pet you need to engage a mob in combat, get its health down then use your skill. You get an egg from the mob which you need to get identified (most merchants and the pet trainer will do this), I got into filling my bag with eggs, getting them all identified then choosing the best one. You can have two pets (not sure if this increases later in the game). That stick thing is my summoned soldier.

This is 'Weasel Boy' (I kid you not) a later pet. Pets are important, they are your guide to the world, like a guide dog, tell them where you want to go or who you want to see and they take you there.

This is me trying to capture a new pet and yes I was armed! You can see another pet watching me from behind.

The game has gathering and crafting, I didn't realise you can only have 2 'life' skills so I ended up with 2 gathering skills, it is set up so you must rely on other players to be an effective crafter. Gathering is not something you'll want to do unless you're happy to go AFK and let your charcter get on with it, it didnt look like nodes had a limit, just park yourself, start gathering and go do something else until you have enough.

The graphics are very simple, the overall effect is definately charming. Here's a nice waterfall discovered before I knew how to hide the interface.

I'll be playing it again when OB starts so perhaps we can join up and do some group quests together, that Crab King was making mince meat of me way too often...

11 comments:

  1. I added it to my reader in hopes of remembering to give it a try as I liked what I read as well.
    I promptly forgot about it afterwards, so it's a good thing someone follows my Shared Items Reader :-)
    BEsides charm, the game oozes casualness, which may be just what I'm looking for right now while waiting for something to really sink my teeth in.

    Isn't League of Legends a reskinned version of Evony? The game more known for lowering the bar on using underdressed women for advertisement than for its gameplay? I know they did a new game and think it's LoL but I may be maligning the wrong game here.

    I'm with you on the skipping SC-II. It's not really my genre and I do not like their staggered purchase approach that much. I have very little interest in the Diablo-clone sub-genre of CRPG's to be honest so I'll probably pass on TL-II and DL-III both, unless someone convinces me to come play TL-II with them in multiplayer :-)

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  2. I don't think LoL is related to Evony. That was more a civ/settlers kind of game. I decided to try LoL after a few guys at work actually played it over lunch. One of them is really good at it supposedly. But SynCaine's comments about it in several posts made me really decide to download it. He thinks they did the perfect balance between F2P and cash-shopping. So I wanted to see for myself. But after playing through the tutorial I had to wait for a random person to team up with me. Three players logged in and out within 10 seconds. I then realized this game is not for me.

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  3. I stand corrected then. I was malgining the wrong game.
    Or maybe I was using the wrong argument to malign the right game? :-)

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  4. "Obviously Lani already knows about this game, but I don't know if our beta junkie does "

    Now what kind of beta junkie would I be if I hadn't already tried this one out ? ;p

    The only problem I have with it is moving around, the character doesn't move left or right unless you stop or left click on the ground so holding down the right mouse button and using wasd doesn't work as I'm used to.

    It is definitely worth a try, it has a unique look, I'm running around as an insane looking chimp, keep meaning to roll a different class so I can run around as a toothless grandma.

    There's some great little mini games, I've yet to beat the shrimp vs crab war, probably because I didn't realise what the point was on my first attempts.

    The controls are really the only reason why I haven't explored this one further, I also like the way they are marketing it as a wacky mmo.

    Closed Beta ended today, Open Beta starts on August 16th.

    If Phe doesn't mind I may edit this post and bung in a couple of screenshots.

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  5. Oh yummy! More screenshots. Yes, please!

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  6. Woot! Nice job Geek :-)
    Definately interested in joining up with you come Open beta.

    I'm not to thrilled about the interdependency of Crafting. I've seen that backfire a few times (EQ-2, Vanguard and to a lesser extend AoC). People tend to think Killers are only into PvP but the Real Killers can be found playing the auction houses of the virtual worlds.

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  7. Spiffy! I should have know you were on the ball on this one. I signed up, and checked on the forums and they said I should able to play directly now. Just sign up and play. Beta testing is over it seems.

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  8. I have created my first character as Tai-Chi on server Hare. She is a blade warden called Chennie. But she is only level 3 so I can easily create something else.

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  9. just updating the client and I'll see you on Hare as Nahkti :)

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  10. Just a word of warning - Do a virus scan after installing the client, it's been reported there are trojans. I just completed a scan and found two in my temp folder, not sure if they where there before or came in with the client.

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