I’ve been hanging around in the new mmo from Funcom: The Secret World. In the last month I already dabbled into the beta and decided I didn’t want to play any more then the first beta weekend. Not because it was bad, but because i didn’t want to get spoiled by it. That’s how much I loved it. So after playing for several days I’ll put down a short review on here.
Graphics:
The game looks good. There’s a lot of detail in the surrounding and once you find the first questing area (Innsmouth) you’ll be blown away with how much it looks like the real world. The monsters look amazing and very detailed. Every main quest has a little intro cinematic. Now I could be a nitpicker and say that it doesn’t always look great, but I love how ‘real’ the NPC’s
are. They swear, they say things how it is and they look as if the shit just hit the fan.
Character creation:
I liked the engine to create my characters. You pick a faction; get an intro video and then you start making your character. There are a lot of options and I was happy to say that my characters looked semi-pretty. I guess what I also really liked, was the fact that the clothes that you pick in the beginning, aren’t the only clothes options you have. During my time in the game I got more outfits to put on. This is not like your normal mmo though. The clothes are pure aesthetics and to me it feels like playing dress-up. I love it.
User interface:
I’m still having some issues with the ability wheel. You can only have 7 skills on your action bar and 7 passive ones. In a way I like that because you only have to focus on that, however other games work with talent trees and train their skills, in TSW it works a bit different.
You get an ability wheel where you spend AP (which you earn by questing, killing, exploring, etc.). I specced my character into ‘swords’ because I love hacking at things. Now Funcom advices to take a second ability with it. I was really confused what would compliment it. Luckily, there are ‘decks’. It’s basically a pre-made build that you can follow. If you click it it will show you where to put your points and which abilities to have on your bars. Now the interesting thing for these decks is that you actually get the outfit associated with that build. I went for the ninja-deck! Luckily everything has a video tutorial to help you on your way.
Story and Lore:
I love the main story that’s running through the entire game. This is a game that has me thinking again. There are tiny little icons that represent lore-icons. Once you collect them, you get a tiny fragment of a story of what happened in the area that you are running around in. It’s really dragging me into the area and I’m running around trying to find them all.
The quests themselves are quite interesting too. You get a few of them that are the typical ‘kill 10 foozles and bring me their ears’, yet it doesn’t feel that way. All the quests have a certain kind of dread feeling about them or you start to think what has happened in the area to spawn certain ‘happenings’ or monsters. I think that this is one of the strongest points in the game!
Game play:
The questing system is good. I like it that I can’t pick up loads of quests at once and I am actually forced to focus on the story behind one type of quest. I say type of quests because you pick up the storyline quest, one main or sabotage quest, one dungeon quest and three short pick up/deliver quests. I never thought I would like that kind of questing, but I guess because of their stories it is making it easier to deal with.
I am not a big fan of the combat. It feels clunky compared to other games I’ve played and I do hope it will improve in the future. I haven’t dabbled in pvp so it might be really annoying in that part of the game. During questing I got frustrated now and again, but not enough to make me want to stop playing.
Character Development:
Even though I see other people running around me, I do get the feeling that the story is about me. I’m getting pulled in and I get rewarded for sending the reports (finished quests) to the head of my faction. I get new outfits and stars next to my name that represent how higher up in the ranks of my faction I am. The same goes for titles.
Overall I love The Secret World. I doubt if it has a lot of reply value, but for now I am enjoying the story immensely. I did try to run around on two alts, but because I already figured out the puzzles and the quests it’s not pulling me in as much. I am surprised to see that the factions
are treating the quests (when it comes to giving you info about it) a tad different from each other. The Dragon (my main faction) is always very cryptic, where the Templars seem to be more practical and telling me in a far more clearer way what actually happened in their field report.
Would I suggest the game to my friends? It depends. If you love creepy games, adore H.P. Lovecraft, great storylines and don’t get frustrated with combat, try this. If you are the opposite, play Tera Online.
yeah… I know.
The Blue Haired Geek 