F.O.G. #2 : Maple Story

Submitted by Psychoknight on Sun, 10/12/2008 - 3:50am.

Here's the review I promised originally,

Maple Story is the kind of game that's geared more towards younger people or those looking for social gaming (just hanging out with friends in a game, chatting and having fun.) There's a small bit of humor to it as well.

Unlike most MMORPG's, Maple Story is a side scroller, where you move from screen to screen, fighting the different monsters or exploring the towns.

I couldn't find a story really, but what I did get is that you travel between continents, striving to be a great hero.

Signing up brings me to the first problem I have with the game. When you set up your login information and prepare to log in, it then asks you to create a pin to use when you log in. Now I can understand having extra security to prevent hacking and whatnot, the problem I have is that when it asks you to enter your pin when you log in, you have to hit the number keys first, and THEN it brings up an onscreen keyboard where you have to click on the numbers of your pin. Either start off with the keyboard up or let us use the number keys, not make us use both.

You start off the game as a beginner class, traveling the small area of Maple Island, doing various quests to get you familiar with the game. once you feel ready, you can take a ship to the main island, where you will be spending a lot of your time leveling and working on your job class. When you create your character, you roll a die to set up your stats of Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence and Luck. Baised on what you roll, the game will tell you what your recommended job class is, Warrior, Bowman, Magician or Thief. You can keep rolling the stats until you get the set for the class you want to be. After going to the main island, you travel to the city you need to go to in order to get your job. For a warrior, thief and bowman, you need to be level 10 and level 8 for a magician. Once you raise yourself up to level 30, you're able to take a second job, which is really just a more specialized version of your first job. At level 70, you get the 3rd job, then at level 120, you get the 4th and final job. I believe the level cap in the game right now is 200.

Side Note: There is also a Pirate Class, but it's only available in Korea, Taiwan, China and Japan.

The graphics are more like super-deformed, anime style. For those who don't know what that is, it's japanese animation style, with big heads and small bodies. Even the enemies are cartoony, and you can definitely tell the game was mad to be appealing to kids. In fact, except for marriages set up in the game, I'd say it's just for kids. The landscape is interesting to look at with good detail, but a lot of times, you'll be worrying about killing monsters and staying alive instead of admiring the scenery.

The gameplay is simple and straight forward. Alt jumps, Ctrl attacks. Various things can be set to hotkeys, which are Shift, Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up and Page Down instead of the number or F keys. The controls are customizable so you can set things to the way to want. The combat, while simple, is also where my second and third problems with the game lies. First, when you hit a monster, there is a brief moment where they can't be hit again, same when you're hit. Not bad, but the problem is that the pause between hits is just slightly longer than the pause between your swings, so sometimes when you're hitting the button to swing, you'll find every other swing missing the monster, giving them just enough time to get close enough to hit you, which knocks you back, and if you're at the edge of a platform, you will fall off. The other problem is that you can only hit one monster at a time, and you often find yourself swarmed by a lot more than one monster. I had one part where I was being attacked by 6 monsters at one time, and when I hit one, knocking it away from me, the rest of them were running up on me and hitting me. This become quickly frustrating. There are some attacks that hit more than one monster, but the only ones I know for certain is a magic spell, and that's ONLY if your magician follows the ice/lighting path.

The quests you get in the game are very straightforward. Kill X number of monsters, collect Y number of items. For the whole time I spent playing, these were the only quests I found. I decided to check a list of available quests and about 90% of quests are just this, with the occasional quest to find someone. So for the beginning, most of what you'll be doing is grinding to raise your level. Just an example, I started on the mage's path (cause I like's me some explodey magic ) and the first 3 mage's quests were to kill an increasing number of the SAME ENEMY. Something like 8, 12 and 35 kills. There are some quests in the game where you need to kill 999 of one monster. There are also party quests which yield much more experience and some decent items. Party Quests are limited by the level of your character.

Cash Shop section:

The cash shop uses the points system, where you purchase and spend those points in the shop. The going rate is about $1 per 1000 points. For added convenience and those who don't want your credit card online, you can purchase Nexon cards at 7-11's and Blockbuster video stores.

The majority of the cash shop items are things like clothing, pets, accessories and such. There are also scrolls which double your experience or drop rate of items and money . Also you can increase your inventory space in the cash shop. The price of items usually ranges from 2500 to 19,000 points. Where the game gets you is that every item has a time limit, usually of around 90 days before it has to be repurchased. The scrolls for experience and items are different though. The only last for 4 hours, but you can some that last for 4 hours just after you purchase it, or work for a specific 4 hours of the day, every day for a set amount of time, either 7 or 30 days, or just one the weekends. Example times are 6am - 10am, 4pm - 8pm, etc, all in Pacific time. I can only assume this was set up for kids who's parents don't want them on the computer all day long, or for the adults who are up at night since there is a 12am - 4am scroll and a 3am - 7am scroll. Other things that can be purchase are facial expression, such as looking very happy, special effects, an example being your character looking like he has a fire aura around him (like in Dragonball Z) and shops to be able to sell your items to other players. A little extra points spent can even get you a shop with a worker who will sell your items for you even if you aren't online.

Nothing in the shop is game breaking or gives an extreme edge over other players, and lack of PvP in the game means no worrying about over-powered people trouncing the newbies.

Overall it's a fairly fun game, but unless you enjoy grinding, you may get bored very fast. Also those looking for intense combat or PvP battles will find no home here. These game is just for simple fun with some friends without deep involvement in a story line or loaded down with quests. If you're looking for light fun, check it out.

One last note, when you log off, give it a moment, it has a pop-up advertisement telling you to invite your friends.