Crystal Saga is a free to play, 2D MMORPG Game which is the first game available on the new MMO portal from Reality Squared Games. Crystal Saga offers 5 unique playable classes Knight, Rogue, Priest, Ranger and Mage. Each class has access to 2 main MMORPG archetypes, such as Knight being able to tank and melee DPS, while the Ranger can range DPS and use crowd control abilities. This makes a nice change as so many games in today’s market throw 20 different classes at you, all of which are totally restricted to one particular role.

You begin your journey in typical MMORPG fashion, starting off in a basic tutorial area with other new players. The tutorial is really basic and easy to complete. You simply speak to a number of NPC’s that teach you how to interact with other players, how to equip and use items, and other basic features within the game. A nice little addition to the quest system is the auto travel feature, whenever you’re given a quest it appears on your quest tracker, you can then click the objective to run straight to it. This works for gathering, monsters and interaction objectives, making questing easy and painless.

After the brief tutorial, you’re introduced to the Crystal Saga combat system. It uses pretty familiar MMORPG game mechanics, you can drag your various skills onto your hot-bar and use them by pressing the appropriate keys. I played the Mage for this new player experience review, so my first ability was Fireball. Each class does have access to 2 different skill trees, each of which has 3 different progression paths. You can invest your points freely, meaning you can choose what ability you want to learn, from what tree. This allows for many different builds of the same class, creating quite a diverse mix for PvP and group combat. I was pretty impressed with the combat animations, within 5 minutes of playing I was incinerating bears with my Fireball, and freezing vultures with my Ice Cone. While I was fighting the starter area mobs, I did notice dozens of different players with all classes on display. The quality of the combat animations is obvious across all classes, creating a real urge to move forward and unlock better abilities.

I played until level 4 and I noticed a strange icon on the UI, after a couple of minutes checking it out I realized it was an automated leveling system. Crystal Saga has a feature that basically works like an in-game bot. You can edit the bot to perform various actions, such as using a potion when you reach a certain percentage of health, or even telling it to only target specific enemies. Although this does retract from the experience a small bit, I went AFK to do some housework and came back to play 5 levels higher. This is an ideal system for people that cannot devote 100% attention to a game all the time, and it works brilliantly if you’re trying to balance chores or other responsibilities.

Overall, the new player experience in Crystal Saga is pleasant. The graphics are one of the games weakest attributes but they’re still great quality for a browser game and they’re backed up with some top drawer animations. Crystal Saga is definitely worth a try for casual MMO players as it has a large array of features to appeal to the regular gamer.

Rating: 8.0

by Smith