Swordsman MMORPG - Open Beta

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Winnow
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Swordsman MMORPG - Open Beta

Post by Winnow »

If you're looking for an entertaining MMO based around martial arts, F2P Swordsman entered open beta last Thursday. It's new to the west, but there are 80 million players in China.

I've been playing it most of the weekend and have had a positive experience with it. Nothing ground breaking but it's solid.

Positives:

-Interesting 9 classes to choose from (only two of the classes are gender locked (Shaolin - male, Five Venoms - female)
-great animations for character combat and movement
-simple questing system. Not much wasted time looking for things.
-English text translation decent but all voices are in Chinese which is a good thing.
-UI is solid
-Audio (music/effects) solid

Good 3 minute video showing what Swordsman is about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MackEIFArAY

Easy to get into but deep in strategy if you end up sticking with it.

Fairly decent chart of pros/cons of each class:

http://swordsman.gamepedia.com/Classes

You start off with one skills set and then get a second set at level 20 and third at level ~40. You can start mix and matching those sets after level 35.

Main Story quest/campaign isn't too challenging but the cut scenes and story are decent enough. There are many instances (dungeons) that are challenging if you set them to medium or hard modes.

I've been playing the Shaolin class (monk with a stick) while my significant other has been playing the Zephyr which is mostly a ranged AoE/DPS class with a little AOE heal thrown in. So far so good with that combo although every one of the nine classes looks compelling and worth possibly trying at some point.

For those that like PvP, there's plenty of that in multiple modes to go along with the plentiful PvE content. Combat is satisfying.

You can solo through the game, but as with most MMOs, it's more fun if you are playing with someone. We were two-manning instances in the higher difficulty modes and it presents a fun challenge. Up through level 36, I haven't run into any need to actually buy anything and nothing that's prevented me from playing as much as I want. That's important to note with F2P games because it wouldn't be worth checking out if you felt compelled to pay to win etc.

There are three control schemes available to choose from so it should accommodate most preferences. Those three styles can further be customized to your liking.

Download here:

http://games.arcgames.com/en/prod/swordsman
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