Asda Story is up with its open beta testing phase, and I've had the privilege of getting to play for several hours on two different classes. So I'll be writing a mini-review on it in this post. Also, I got to try Fiesta Story a few days ago as well, and they're also in beta testing phase. I'll discuss it very shortly later on.

Despite some initial bugs with the launcher/patcher window and server channel selection (both now fixed with a patch last night), the game seems to run smoothly. Even the server is pretty good. I haven't seen the channels being completely full yet, though. Americans are complaining about lag, but I don't notice it at all. I don't know where the server is situated (probably Korea, dunno).

Anyway the game's graphics are cute. Bright colors and a lovely design. Music is pretty nice, too, except that their bgms are so short that you really notice their looping. But the sounds aren't very good (yet?). They have some of the worst weapon swing/hit sounds I've ever heard in any MMORPG.

Attack speeds are fast by default, which makes the weapon swing/hit sounds even more annoying. You don't feel any impact at all as you attack or when you get hit, (except with some skills, that really look like they shake the enemies up). So you really have to pay attention to the numbers/miss messages popping out of you or the enemy to see if you any damage is being exchanged. I guess better sound effects could've helped cured this problem.

Their quest design is very good, though. Having small level-specific maps helps much with this, and after you're done with all the quests for the map, you're probably overlevelled for the place by then, and so you get to move on to the next map. For the duration of your stay in the map, which isn't very big, they send you to NPCs that are located near or on the way to other NPCs that might give you more quests. And the quests usually have targets in similar areas, so you could grab all your quests from town, go to the quest target location, do all of them, then go back to town, usually levelling you up so that you can get more quests and repeat the cycle. Because the system is so good, questing never seems tedious, and is definitely faster than just regular grinding.

Skill system is awesome too. There are three classes to choose from, with three specializations per class. Warriors can use 1h sword + shield, 2h sword or spears, archers can use bows, crossbows or "ballista", which look like big machine guns or hand cannons, and mages get 3 elements (or more, I never tried them). As you level up with a particular class, you get skill points that you can distribute any way you want among any specialization for your class. You can put them purely into your own specialization, but it's probably a good idea to get some of the most useful skills that can be used with any weapon. For example, there are ballista skills that can be used even if you're using a crossbow. In fact, there's a ballista passive skill that increases the damage of your crossbow-specific nuke attack by 50%. The only question is your timing for getting each skill.

Sowel system is a success. This system allows you to wear whatever you want, while your equipment's defense and attack powers are determined by the sowels you put into them. This being said, I wish the equipment you start off with had sockets for the sowels, so you're not forced to have to find one from monsters or buy one from players or NPCs.

Soulmate system is pretty new and I can't post much on it yet. To test it, I had two of my characters become soulmates of each other, so I naturally can't play with them both at the same time. I was mistaken about my original assumption that you can have soulmates following you around like pets when they're not logged on. What it really does is that you can log in as your soulmate to level it up for them while they're offline. You just can't edit anything like their equipment or their skills. But they'll be getting the exp. I'll post more info as I get more soulmate levels.

All in all, it's a cute game so far. Although it's almost pure hack & slash with nothing else to do, a few bugs, poor sounds, etc., it's still fun. It's worth playing at least now and then, if you can find time to get on at the same time with your soulmate particularly.

I give it a score of: 72/100


Fiesta Online, on the other hand, was far too laggy to get to test properly. It's too bad, because it had wonderful graphics and very nice BGM and sounds. The BGM made me feel like how I did when I was just starting to play RO several years ago. Because of the lag, I couldn't stand staying, so I didn't continue.