Day 03 - Travel Abroad

So here's what I was talking about back on day one. Not to begin with a rather abrupt introduction but, this is the embracing feature that allows one player to carry another. Here you can see as I carry Tori; my better half, around the countryside. It may not seem like a major deal to everyone, but believe me, if you ever have that little limpet always following you, you're going to love this! Oh, and the above picture was taken through one of the many picture taking frames located around the world, neat huh?

For starters we set off to explore for a bit. In particular, we scoped out the Ancestral Spring and Shadefall Cavern south of the Yaoh starting area, the Ancestral Ruins. Outside the caverns the springs and waterfalls were beautiful in the evening light, green pools reflecting the moon up against the rocks. Inside we found a crazy cyclops guy with some monkey guards. He didn't have anything of signifigance to tell us, perhaps we'll have to come back later. We did some more exploring and then I took my leave for Pokari City, where destiny was supposedly awaiting me.

The Journey was long, relative to the trips I had been taking, but soon I was standing in the vast city, it's population easily dwarfed the Ancestral Ruins I had come from. Not only is Pokari vast in size, but it's got a lot to do as well. First things first, I found the vocation trainers, and learned mining and guardian craft. Guardian craft is essentially the game's smithing vocation, covering heavy armors useable by Dragoons and Shamans.

Of course while I was here I also picked up a wide breadth of quests, from slaughter all of these monsters, to deliver this item. Seems I was the new go to guy for dirty work. This wasn't strange to me. What was strange to me was some of the available dialog options for a lot of the townsfolk. One told me about Charles Dickenson, the other about Mesoamerican Pyramids, and even another about Mark Twain, the list goes on. One even went on to quiz me about the two brothers who established Rome. I'm not sure if the game is supposed to be educational, or if the original game had "Did you know?" sections about Chinese mythology, which would make sense given the basis of the game's story in Chinese mythology. And in some strange and terrible move instead of simply translating the Chinese mythology, they tried to add facts about American history in the localization. Who knows?

So anywho, off I went out into the areas surrounding town, pickaxe in hand incase I spot any iron veins, and a variety of objectives to complete for my various quests. After completing a reasonable number of quests I finally got something that looked promising. A quest to unseal an old magical cloud. And it payed off, after completing the quest I got a magic cloud! Referred to in the game as a glider, it drains mana while allowing me to fly around, you can also use vigor to speed up the cloud. Either way it's a lot of fun, and really helped to make navigating the game world a heck of a lot easier, especially areas filled with rocky and difficult cliffs.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I found a new pet on my journey, a Baby Homunkitten Imp. The little blue horned dude hits a lot harder than my old fox pet, but he's also got alot less health. My adventures continued onward, using my new magic cloud to get up to areas that had been up until now unaccessible. Though the freedom may have played a large role in me getting lost more than a few times! I traveled to the Shinzu home of Eloquence Peak, and back to the Yaoh home on a few of my quests. Everything seems a lot different from the air.

After some more laborous questing I was level 14 and ready to learn how to capture monsters! So I traveled south, far far down to Lornden's Treehouse, where I was suppose to catch a sheep. Unfortunately, though I did as instructed, I was informed the sheep were too high level... How embarassing! Regardless, the treehouse was a killer view. So anyways, back to questing, and I'll work my way up to 15. Thankfully I've got quite a few things to look forward to at 15. Including a new ability, and a new set of armor and spear I hand crafted myself!

And after finally grinding and squeezing out the last bit of the level, here I am at level 15 with my spiffy new weapon and armor. Woo-hoo!

There are a lot of great things besides armor at 15 though. I learned a new ability sprint, which despite it's namesake does not involve running, it's actually a sweeping forward jump that does not go very high, but lets you close a lot of distance horizontally. At the same time I learned my first Ethyr skill, "Essence of Flame." Aside from the impressive visual, the spell does a reasonable amount of damage and lowers the target's resilience, making them easier to strike. Last but not least, I can now capture my own pets at 15, if it weren't so expensive for a new player like myself, I'd be out there capturing even more monsters. But I'm on a budget unfortunately.

I seem to have... acquired a pet, assassin, somehow... Oh, and yes the pet dialog that was already sketchy just got one hundred times more so. Either way, it's time for me to call it a night, preferably as far away from this crazy lady as possible.

Until next time, Akakiba signing out.

Day 02 - Transformations

Akakiba's back and it's day two in Ether Saga. I'm playing as I write, a great little advantage of the game's automatic pathing system. Last time was more of a broad game overview, this time I'll really start to get into the adventure itself.



First things first, new duds! After completing a few more quests, I was able to pick up some new equipment, and find out that equipment can be upgraded with spirit (the same currency used to learn new skills.) Additionally, after inspecting the equipment menu, I was happy to find something out. There's two types of equipment; fashion and armor. Of course armor is your standard gear, it's what you're wearing, and what gives you defense and stats. Fashion on the other hand, is equipment you can wear that gives no stat bonuses, but changes your appearance should you choose. Fashion includes all the things you can buy in the online store with real money. So from what I can see of things, all of the items as far as gear on the online store goes are mostly just visual bling. And ironically, the button to display fashion gear instead of armor was literally the bling button, ha! So with an upgraded spear, and new duds I set off on my adventure to learn the art of transformation.

Even with the simple low poly graphics and cartoon like style of Ether Saga, the beauty can often be striking. There were many times where I simply had to stop and take a picture of the countryside. Not far outside of town on a small island I found a fat old pig man who insisted he was going to teach me how to transform. After a requisite number of kill and fetch quests of course. I didn't mind terribly though, there were lots of new things to see.


Finally, I finished his fetch quests and learned a lot about the history of the world. Although the translation is humorously awkward most of the time, the general gist of the dialog always gets across, and it's easy to follow where it's going. Enough about dialog though, my first transformation! A cerulean pixie, a cute blue guy who moves by slithering on a wiggling tail.


So how do transformations work? Well, you hit N then select the creature you want to transform to, or you can set them to hotkeys. Much like many other games, there is a wheel of power for creatures. Certain creature types are strong against others, and inversely weak against others. Transformations are learned from creature cards that can be found in loot, from quests and purchased. Not only do creatures affect your combat stats and abilities, the coolest part is creature size matters! Large creatures won't be able to fit through small gaps, and you'll even need to transform into small creatures to fit through small gaps! I love seeing stuff like this done in an MMO.

After learning my first transformation I returned to my starting area, the Yaoh town not far away. From here I was sent off on a quest, a test of endurance, strength, wisdom, mercy a road of enlightenment. So after completing a quiz, gathering some herbs, traveling and defeating some enemies, I used my return home spell to return to the Ancient Ruins, the Yaoh starting area. Here I spoke with the Goddess of Mercy, and apparently having done even their Buddha proud, I was ready to be an emissary for the Yaoh race.

Off I go, to Pokari city. I was informed that there I'd be able to learn more, as well as form clans and fellowships, and that clans can ally with other clans through rituals. It sounds like there's still a lot to see and learn. Oh and I didn't mention this earlier, but I learned my first Nascent skill, one of what seems to be 8 skills based on my Zodiac and day of birth. The first skill was Blaze up which raises my affinity to Pyr, the game's fire element. But it's been a long adventure this evening and I think it's about time to take a break.


Have a good night, see you on my next adventure!

Day 01 - First Impressions

Today What They Play sent out their Ether Saga closed beta keys. If you're here you probably already know what Ether Saga is, if by chance you do not I'll attempt a brief explanation.



Ether Saga is a MMORPG developed by Perfect World Entertainment, a Chinese company responsible for the game Perfect World Online. Ether Saga is a aesthetically a strange fusion of Dragon Ball and Pokemon, as far as gameplay goes, it's a very familiar landscape at first. The controls and even many of the hot keys are reminiscent of WoW, no surprise there.


The big draw of Ether Saga for a lot of people, and Perfect World, is that the game itself is free to play. PWE draws their income from the online item shop built into the game. Here players can charge a new costume or perhaps a new hair style or some other item on their credit card or paypal account.

Some people see it as a bad thing; explaining that the player's status is no longer indicative of the amount of time they put into the game.

For me, someone who is always busy and will often be unable to play games for huge chunks at a time, I'm glad that I won't have to pay for the game when I'm not playing it. As long as it is still possible to play the game without using the shop; and it appears it is, I don't mind shelling out a few bucks here and there for some fun aesthetic knick-nacks.


So when we finally got our beta keys today, my roommates my girlfriend and I all booted the game up and dove right in. The initial thing that hits me about this game is its charm. The style is a very timeless and ageless style, and the characters are all very vibrant. The wide array of little details, from the depth of some of the emotes, to the random things you can watch a vendor do when he thinks no one is looking is what really made me notice.

Expect some awkward dialog though, where the game art is incredibly polished, the localization and translation are capable at best, sexually confusing at worst. (It gets a little sketchy when my Baby Fox pet starts making passes on me calling me Princess, and I'm a guy.) Gameplay wise, so far it's been fairly standard fair. There were some interesting things though, pets are an integral part of game play, not just for specific classes but for everyone. The player can fuse with their pets as well as transform and raise various different pets.


One of the more interesting ideas that I found though is that when you first create your character you'll have to give your Chinese sign and date and month of birth. Based on your Zodiac you actually learn different abilities as you progress. Spells and abilities are learned as you level. The other systems include ethyrs that are accquired through various means and equipped up to 4 at a time as abilities; and the combo system that lets you string together moves and standard attacks into a looping or non looping macro.



So looping combos sound pretty useful huh? And they are, it takes out a lot of work. So does path finding quest destinations! I though this was really interesting, say you have a quest that tells you to go talk to Tim the Enchanter in the Forbidden Woods, and you're not sure how to get there. Double tap his name in the quest log, off you go! Your character will find his or her way right to the guy. Now, this is really up to you if this is a good or a bad thing. For me, it fits in this sort of casual MMO, I can go grab a drink while I'm off to my next destination.

The biggest thing for me though? Embracing! What the hell am I talking about? Well, you can embrace other players, which will - should they choose to accept - allow you to pick them up and carry them, even carry them on your mount. To some this may not seem like a big deal. But I play games with my better half all the time, and this sure as heck beats /follow! It's cute and fun and it means she won't get stuck on trees and fences anymore! Unfortunately I was too busy enjoying myself to capture any pictures of it this time, but I'll toss some up soon.


That's a wrap for today, until next time.