Secrets of Mirage Review
Overview: This is another free MMORPG I've been spending some time with lately. It consists of a persistent World inhabited by many people from around the World.
Visuals: It's not exactly pretty, but there are some perks to the visuals. The monsters are all rather varied and there are a large number of player sprites to chose from (both in the beginning and at lvl 50 when you can choose to change your sprite). One downside to this is a lot of them are "borrowed" from other games, take the Magus sprite (from Chronotrigger) which is used in place of Vampire type monsters. Items all have distinct icons, although you won't see them unless you drop them on the ground (no icons in your inventory). SoM (as I will be referring to it from now on) uses no 3D effects, there's no lighting, no magic effects, nothing. Not even something to show you've hit an enemy, you have to check the text area for that.
Sounds: Secrets of Mirage has a couple of music tracks, but nothing worth getting giddy over.
Gameplay: Well, Secrets of Mirage is an online game, as previously stated. You basically walk around with your fellow humans solving quests, killing monsters and gaining exp/treasure. The game World consists of three types of areas; red, grey and white. In red areas it's all for all if you die you lose items and possibly exp, in grey areas there is no penalty at all (even for pkers) and in white areas players cannot be killed, unless they have killed someone else in which case red area penalties apply to a death (only pkers can be targeted in white zones).
The controls are simple, hold ctrl to attack a nearby enemy, hold shift to run. That's about it. To speak to people on screen just type what you want to say. If you wish to broadcast a message to everyone all you need is to put ' in front of your text, then there are methods of speaking with guild members, specific people, etc same as other MMORPG's.
Trading is quite ingenious. Basically if you wish to purchase an item you go to a shop and press the "trade" button, this brings up a window showing the vendors wares, if you see something you like, select it, click "deal" and the transaction will be made. This works for giving items to people too. I have seen some problems with this though, sometimes the weapon/armor I just purchased doesn't show up in my inventory but the money is still deducted, however this was very rare.
Equipment all requires certain requirements, weapons need str, armor needs def and helms/shields need speed. To adv skills you get skill points upon lvling up which can then be distributed between your 4 skillls (str, def, magi, speed), this makes for a good design becuase you can customise your character to how you want it (though you'll follow the same path as every other character of your class due to having no reason not to). Speaking of characters there are about 10 different classes to choose from, each with it's own strengths and weaknesses.
Every game has it's problems though, and this one is lag and disconnects. sometimes the lag can get pretty bad (although due to the nature of enemies it's not nearly as dangerous as other online games) but the disconnects are bad. Plus the server is often down, and not for short periods of time either, it is constantly down for up to an hour (seems to happen at least once a day). On the plus side the lag problems don't occur often so when you can get on to play it's usually a pleasant experience.
Lastability: Well, there are plenty of classes to choose from, so if you want to have an uber selection expect to play each for quite some time. Also from what I've seen the game World is rather large and consists of many areas to visit. The constant downtime will also help spread your adventures over a longer period of time as well.
Conclusion: Disconnects and long downtime really put a damper on this one. Even with such faults though you'll find an enjoyable experience underneath it all and a lot of fun can be had (especially with pking in the grey areas).
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It's a fun game with a good control and communication system but the downtime is so bad, it's frustrating to know that you're 15 minutes from a level up and you can't connect. |
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Ordinary if you ask me, although there are a lot of sprites and icons some of them are borrowed from other products, which shows little effort on the game creators part (possibly in the future though). No magic or attack effects either. |
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SOme background music but nothing worth getting excited about, in it's defense though it's not like sound is needed and would probably be out of sync with the game anyway due to it's online nature. |
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Huge World, plenty of monsters to kill and plenty of quests to conquer. Pity that half your time playing SoM will involve clicking on Login and reading the "server down" message. |
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Don't get me wrong, I enjoy playing this game, but unless the servers are fixed up and there are a few more, original, sprites it stands as this. |
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