Russian Beta open

[BB Shockwave]

I am surprised no-one posted it yet...

www.royalquest.ru

The server can be downloaded from the site (1.7 GBs) and you need to register on the website, that is all. Game runs smoothly on my computer, and the graphics look about as good as KB, maybe even better.

Sadly of course, I understand nothing from the text, and unlike KB you cannot cut/Google translate/paste back the text for the game. You can modify statistics on level-ups - Strenght (increases attack/damage for melee), Endurance (HP), Intellect (Mana), Agility (dodge/armor, attack speed), Accuracy (chance to hit, for spells too) and Luck (critical chance, etc). The skill system reminds me of Titan Quest - you have active skills/spells, and passive modifier talents to upgrade them. Combat is simple, left-click for attack (continues until you change target) and push the numeric keys for using a skill (like Dragon Age, there is a huge and easily modifyable skill-slot interface). I was playing a mage, and I found that most spells have a charge-up time that monsters can easily interrupt - hope this is fixed in the future, or there is a way to avoid this, as I died a few times because of this. On level 20 you can choose two upgrade paths, unlocking two different skillsets.

The inventory is sadly quite limited, WOW-style, and items only group up to 10. What I disliked the most (mainly, I am not an MMO player) is that in the open world, people are running around everywhere, so often someone of higher level runs by to kill a monster you just attacked. I hope there will be a way to play this in a single-player environment like DiabloIII. Thankfully, there is no PvP or I haven't been attacked at least, so far.

The creature animations/designs are amazing, I am in love with them. Not just the way they are designed, but how they move or emote. Basic level enemies I encountered in the first areas, the enchanted wood, are living Dew Drops with tiny legs and a leaf as a hat, who wobble as they move, tree branches running around on stick legs with tiny glowing eyes, flying chibi rhinoceros beetles, big tasmanian-devil-like green horned beasts who sometimes sit down to relax... In contrast, the PC models are... uninspired and boring. They look like standard, somewhat chibi-ized anime people, and worst of all, all 4 classes look the same, only clothing is different. Adding more races, or better customization (seriously, you cannot even have a beard) would be much more welcome.

All in all, sadly the foreign language makes it hard for me to guess a lot of the things - most of the skill descriptions I got from a russian site using Google Translate, but in-game it is really hard to guess what questgivers ask you to do, for example. Hopefully we get the english version this year and then we can learn more.