Initial thoughts on SOLO
Swords of Legends Online (Steam) is a Chinese MMORPG freshly brought to the west on July 9, 2021. This freshly-launched MMORPG sports a non-pay-to-win $40 one-time-purchase no subscription monetary model, a the classic tank/healer/striker classes, "classic" Western progression, and an Eastern aesthetic.
And it's pretty good so far.
In a market that's largely dominated by just a few games (FFXIV, ESO, WoW, GW2) and has been for years, the launch of a promising game that actually looks fun and isn't just a cash grab is a bit of a rare occurrence. Adding to that, this game seems to have barely received any public notice rather than hyping for years before launch - I only found out about it a week before launch from YouTube gaming news channels. With its Eastern look, many, myself included, were concerned about the monetization model being also classically Eastern, but thankfully this isn't the case.
The good
First and foremost, this isn't a cash grab. Second, gameplay is fun! I enjoyed leveling! I enjoy dungeons! I'm having a good time!
Classes are balanced and diverse. The classic trinity of tank, healer, and strikers ("DD", "DPS", etc.) works well, and as someone who enjoys healing, I very much like that each class has two distinct specializations. Every class has a striker specialization, and also another specialization that also falls into one of the three roles. Only one class has two striker specializations; the other classes either sport a tanking or healing specialization. This allows all classes to take on open-world and instanced content while also having more flexibility of what they bring to the group in multiplayer content.
The world looks good. The zones are varied, the architecture is interesting, character models are clear (though all fairly similar), and animations are cool.
The bad
Overall, the game feels like it lacks optimization. I currently play on an i7-7700k and GTX 1080 TI. This isn't top-of-the-line hardware anymore, but it's still high-end. I get anywhere from 20 to 90 FPS, a very wide variety, depending on how many other character models are on screen and taking action. Thankfully the game has easily-accessed options to limit the on-screen character models between all players, players in your party, or no other players (expect you and whoever you're selected) and also to toggle enemies on and off.
The voice acting is a mixed bag. I found the voice actress for the tutorial narration quite pleasant, and some of the characters' voice actors do a good job. Unfortunately some of the voice over content is just ... bad.
There's ceratinly a sense of "minimum playtime per day" due to dailies, but at least in the current state of the game and how little time it takes to gear into hardmode dungeons, it doesn't bother me, and I haven't been clearing all dailies every day.
The storyline is hard to follow, but that's largely because ...
The ugly
The translations are awful:
- some buttons aren't translated
- some cutscene text isn't translated
- sometimes VO will switch back to Chinese mid-cutscene or mid-dialog
- ability and training tooltips are incredibly confusing, sometimes to the point of being useless
Thankfully the core gameplay is fun, and translations are something that (I imagine, and have heard from the community) that can easily be iterated on.
Overall
I currently have 32 hours clocked with a Student 1 Summoner of gear score 52. Like I said, overall, I'm having fun, and I'm happy that my favorite gaming genre has a new entry that's respectful of players' wallets.