Vindictus: A Closer Look

Customizing my character in the "Avatar Shop"

First let me start off this post by wishing everyone a happy new year! I know I'm a few day's late but it's been crazy for me these past few days and I'll spare you the boring details. For now, I'd like to talk about an MMO I've recently started playing called Vindictus. I haven't made any video game relate posts so I thought this would be a good start.

For those familiar with Mabinogi published by Nexon, Vindictus is a prequel to this game supposedly set 100 years before any of the events that happened in Mabinogi. I'm not too familiar with the storyline, so I wont get into that. Vindictus was released on January 2010 in Korea and on October 2010 in North America, making it a fairly recent game. It runs on Valve's Source engine, which is what really makes this game stand out from other free-to-play MMOs.

For now, we only have 3 characters to choose from: Lann, Fiona, and Evie. Other characters are scheduled to be released later in the future. The characters are gender fixed, which a lot of people aren't too thrilled about. Lann is a male character that uses duel-weapons like swords, Fiona is a female character that uses a sword and shield (like Link!) and Evie is the magician of the group that may either use staffs or scythes (as you may have guessed, she's female as well).

Evie, the magician class, defeating a monster.

The game starts you off in a medieval village called Colhen, where a you begin your adventure as a rookie. One thing I'm not too keen on is the fact that it's not an open world game. There is only one town that has access to a dock where you can take a boat to the dungeons you need to be at in order to complete your missions. The dungeons themselves are very straight forward and linear (almost like FFXIII) with very few light obstacles (a wooden door you may need to break open to continue to the next area) in the way. It's not too complicated, any idiot can clear a dungeon without too much trouble.

I think where the game really excels is it's combat system. Your main goal is to kill anything that stands in your way and defeat the boss at the end of every dungeon. Every character has their own set of skills that makes defeating enemies and clearing dungeons so much fun. You generally go in with a group and slash your way towards the boss. It's heavily based on co-op but you can still solo dungeons on your own if you'd like, it'll just take you a bit longer to complete.

Everyone working together to defeat a boss.

One thing I like about the game play is that it's really not about how strong you are or what level your up to. Like I said, it's a lot about working together, so whether your strong or not, you need help from others with certain dungeons. Damage isn't big, just as long as you kill the enemy and move on. This makes playing fun without having to feel self conscious about some obnoxious high leveled douche who boosts about his character being stronger than yours and calling you a "n00b". Speaking of leveling, the experience rate (in my opinion) is fast and you level at a good pace. Honestly, you're going to have too much fun to even realize that you're leveling. I played for the first few hours before I realized I was level 10 already. Unlike many MMO's, there's no feel of "grinding".

Great graphics!

With a good graphics card, the graphics for this game are amazing. Thanks to Valve's engine, the game looks almost too good to be free-to-play. The environments are crisp and incredibly detailed, and the objects are interactable (you can literally grab a pot sitting on a table and start smacking a monster to death with it). The playable characters look great too, making you feel good while playing. The weapons and equips also look great and what makes it even better is that they are easily crafted by the NPCs in town, which means no having to dish out real cash for a good looking outfit (although they still get you with that when it comes to hairstyles and underwear).

The characters even express emotions when in battle such as anger and fatigue. Customizing your character can be alot of fun in itself. The "Avatar Shop" lets you pick different sets of underclothes for them (because believe it or not, their armor breaks as you fight bosses, exposing their half-naked bodies XD) along with different hairstyles, make-up, tattoos, etc; for a price of course.

There's more to be said about this great game, but this is all I'm going to talk about because it's what I personally think defines the game's best qualities. It's a lot of fun and I would recommend it to anyone that is looking for a new MMORPG to play. Also, there's still a bunch of content and characters to be released in the US in the future, so don't think the fun stops here ^^