We recently took some time out to check out the free to play browser-based MMO RPG Wartune, a fantasy based party building saga where players must improve their own hero, acquire new items and gear, recruit new mercenaries and fellow heroes to their cause and make their way through exciting magical realm. With a number of different MMOs of this nature on the market it was interesting to see what this title might offer up in the way of originality, or would it be just another linear, auto pathing, auto combat mouse button clicking MMO where the player feels like they are being told a story instead of being part of.
From the first look we weren’t all that hopeful, the graphical style the dozens of flashing icons offering free items, free gold and insane levelling speed promised an experience similar to those we have had to injure a previously. Starting with character selection we had three characters/classes that we could choose from, each with a male and female version, that were listed as being a Knight, Mage or Archer, but lacking in any description other than the classes name to determine the differences between them.
The starting story arc that we experienced wasn’t terrible, though the constant “sex sells” approach that the developers of these games often take where practically all the women you encounter have bigger chests than Power Girl had our eyes rolling, but far from surprised. There is still a level of pointlessness to the first few levels of gameplay where the creatures that you come up against often aren’t worth being there at the time it takes to load the battle is usually longer than the duration of it fight itself anyway as these minions die with a single hit.
We didn’t have much hope. However, one by one, little things started to surprise us. Where in other games in the combat is completely automated, and players don’t even need to click a button once it is initiated, in Wartune we actually had abilities that we could cast to determine whether we wanted to attack single targets with a lightning bolt or open a volley of fireballs against all the minions. Albeit there were still an auto attack that we’d perform if we didn’t push the button to activate and ability, so in reality we properly could still have stepped away from the computer and won the fight, but one can only hope that in later levels, becomes more challenging. Some of our spells could only be activated once we’d built up enough rage, showing that there is still an element of user involvement in combat.
The game is still fall in style of many MMO’s of this type, the ability to login and earn rewards, Spinner wheel to earn rewards, get rewards chest every five levels and such. Character upgrades revolve around a skilled talent tree that for some reason was particularly linear in the early levels only one goal is to unlock specific skills, even though it was broken down as a tree that wasn’t much customisation available from what we could tell. All of this combined with the ability to upgrade your own gear using the Blacksmithing feature goes to your overall Battle Rating, a numerical indicator of how strong you are in comparison to other creatures and players; the game all very staple.
The most surprising moment was when we reached level X and were preparing to wind down and end there are video when we returned to our kingdoms capital city, the story driven element that the game revolves around. Our city had a number of buildings that we were able to upgrade, most interestingly the barracks that gave us access to upgrading of troops who could defend our city, adding into the game a completely different genre city building type MMO that was completely unexpected. As with these games many of the features are tiered and locked off until you level up so we didn’t get the chance to explore it in much depth but it definitely loot to add something more to the game than other titles of this nature do.
If you want, you can watch now our first look gameplay commentary video. And if you want to know more about this title, you can click on the "info" button below.
