First off, the concept seemed very similar to Netgame's Hero Online. I liked Hero, except that it was fairly lonely and didn't have so many features yet, being a new game at the time I played it. So I thought maybe I'd like 12Sky too. First thing that hit me was this glaring fact: 12Sky's graphics are outdated.

Supporting screenshots:
This is me running the game at its highest possible graphics settings. Highest possible. Including their idea of shaders and lighting effects, and filter. What's with the filter anyway? It looks like a 2D game given a filter to look like a 3D game. o_O I mean, considering the technology we have these days, why does the game look like it was made for Windows 98? Why didn't they use the normal 3D engines we have in most other games? This was probably much cheaper, but it's certainly uglier.

My character, up-close. The poor graphical quality does her no justice. Notice the strange blocky blur they have, which may have been their idea of cool. o_o

The highlight of the graphical advancement is how their shaders/lighting effects work. I mean, look at how majestic that glow on the brazier is! I've never seen light so splendid and realistic in a game! You see the rings of light (for some reason). And no, it's not just because it's close up. See, the brazier in the distance has it too. Oh and the scrawny guys on the left side just standing around (literally) are the low level enemies.

On the topic of just standing around, non-aggressive enemies have some of the worst AI I've ever seen in any game. It's not that they make stupid decisions or anything. It's that they make no decisions. They literally just stand around the entire time. They spawn (by sprouting out from the ground, seriously), stand around for hours until somebody kills them, then die where they stand. They never move around. They're just... there. Even the aggressive monsters have nothing better to do than stand around until something comes close enough for them to attack. It's not all that bad, but it gives the game a feeling of being dead, if your enemies are just standing around like twigs planted into the ground, only to spring right back up in a few seconds.

Next point:
Notice "katana". Since when was a kris ever a katana? Even the way they're used is different. Even the place they're from is different. It doesn't even look anything remotely like a katana. I mean, if it were a straight or even curved sword like a thin scimitar or something, I'd have been more forgiving. Or rather, I'd be even more forgiving if not for this:

Okay... If they were planning on putting in a katana weapon, why didn't they name this one the katana instead? Could it be a translation error? I doubt it. I mean, a katana is a world-famous weapon. I'm sure even in Korea or China or wherever the heck this game was made in, they know what a katana is. Even if they didn't know what to call the kris, they should've put the name katana on the actual katana, and just named the kris "wave blade" or something obvious like that.

Also, their newbie help is the most annoying thing ever: It's nice that they have such detailed information, in case the player is completely new to this sort of thing. But that big message box on the left hand side of the screen can not be closed, can not be toggled off, and blocks off your already small view due to the non-adjustable resolution. Yeah, it can't be closed. You have to wait for it to go down in like 2 or 5 minutes or whatever.

Lastly among the bad parts, the sound effects and music; an aspect I always stress about. Counter-immersive and downright annoying at some points. Everytime some system message pops up, you hear the sound of those big war drums or something banging, and considering the frequency of such system messages... The music inexplicably stops looping sometimes, which is clearly a bug, but actually quite welcome, since the music isn't much to talk about anyway. May be best to just turn the thing off the entire game so you aren't sometimes annoyed when it decides to randomly play.


Now, to be fair, the good parts, though few as they are. I liked the game's level system. It gives huge rewards for levelling up, pretty much allowing you freedom for what kind of build you can make. You get 5 free points to distribute freely among any of the four stats, and each point increases the stat a great deal depending on your clan/class. I also liked how they promoted party play, by giving big bonuses for having 5 or more members in your party. Also, you get exp per hit on your enemies, so even if somebody kill steals from you, if you did most of the damage, you get most of the exp. It may have become a grind game, but with such things in place it may not have been that tedious in comparison with other MMORPGs (except for the ugly graphics and terrible monotonous AI).

All in all, it could've been way better. I also wish they didn't hype it up as being like some super awesome martial arts MMORPG on the website. There's barely anything about martial arts in it (especially in comparison to the superior martial arts game Hero Online). If they think having Asian weapons makes it a martial arts game, then almost every Asian-based game is a martial arts game, and almost every Asian-based game is superior to it in that.

I give the game a score of 15/100.