Eden Eternal Polished, Pretty, and Pricel

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist Eden Eternal is a completely free to play anime styled MMOPRG developed by X-legend and published by Aeria Games. This is a social game with a persistent world, encouraging you to team up with other players to achieve your goals and have fun!When you start up Eden Eternal you can select multiple servers with a lot of different channels to choose from. This makes the servers not too full and alleviates the issues of massive KS wars in the starter zones. When you have selected the server you want to play on it is time to create your character. Now the character customization is very basic but does its job, the features you can customize about your character are race, gender, face, hair, hair color, skin and eyes. The races in Eden Eternal at the time this review was written were the Human and the Zumi, although the Anuran has since been released. The Zumi is a class that looks like a mice and might be one of the most unique looking races I have seen in a game. The Anuran look like lanky toad people and have a feel of warrior pride to them.When you have created your character it is time to get into the new continent in the world of Eden Eternal. Since I have a really good computer I decided to play this game on maximum settings with everything turned on. Now this was a big mistake, usually I am a big fan of a little blur in the game. In Eden Eternal however this is not a wise choice, as the blur effect put a major strain on my eyes overtime. When I got into the world and got my first quest I was a little bit surprised, normally you get a really advanced tutorial. However in Eden Eternal I unfortunately didn’t get any tutorial so it was a bit of a learning process to figure out all the features hidden within this game.I must say the world map in this game is really well made and there is an auto walk option if you click on anywhere in the map. I decided to play as a magician as I usually do and I really liked the class, and even if I didn’t I was not bound to this class and could have changed to any of the five archetypes by about level 15. Each class is unlocked upon reaching certain achievements, with the basic class for each archetype being simple level requirements while more advanced classes put you through intense challenges.Now the story is pretty basic and simple but gives a lot of openings for other races and thus for more game content. Races from all over the world decided to abandon their homes and set sail to the horizon. Each race eventually arrived at untouched land in the center of the world. On this new continent all the races decided to live together and build their homes. After a while all the different races had their own vision of building a perfect Utopia.As you can guess they were too stubborn and tension rose as arguments turned into fights and a war started. Because of the conflict the land shattered and ripped the new world apart. The apocalypse was only prevented by a group of mysterious humans born from blue crystals who restored order and sealed the monsters away. However history seems to be repeating and it’s up to you to take up the role of a hero of your people to solve the mysteries of this impending doom and fulfill the role of the crystal people once again.The controls in Eden Eternal feel marvelous and might be one of the smoothest movements I have experienced in a MMORPG. You are able to move your character with the WASD keys or you can point to click your character. The skills are activated by pressing the hotkeys in the bottom of your user interface; these skills cannot be used when you click on them however so if you are a clicker you might have to learn to use your keyboard. The skills are really well made and the effects are beautiful with each unique spell you use. Concepts such as slash versus blunt damage and a triangle of power between elements add further strategic value to skill use. I never felt like I was just button smashing mindlessly to kill monsters in this game.One issue with movement though is this game has a fetish for invisible walls. Every object tends to have a much larger collision detection radius than the actual object leads you to believe. For example I saw a bench in the starting town, I went over to it to sit or jump on it I got blocked off by an invisible wall. This makes the game feel like a closed environment, and unfortunately I am a big supporter with an open world where you can basically jump on everything. Nonetheless this is just a minor setback of the game engine and the actual combat more than makes up for it.The dungeons are the real selling point of this game. The graphics might be chibi but the challenges are intense. When ColbyCheeze tried jumping straight into the game on DizzyPW’s tank, his party spent 5 hours wiping on a level 3x dungeon because he didn’t fully understand the intricacies of all his interrupt and agro management skills. I can attest that playing the game from level 1 up is vital in the learning process to make sure you are well prepared for the challenges and random monster ambushes awaiting in the end-game dungeons. DoubleDoor and his school of witchcraft and wizardry made me rage the whole way through but was so satisfying seeing that old man face down on the floor! The graphics in this game are really stunning and really advanced for a free to play game. To play this game you would need to have a Intel Pentium 4 processor or something equivalent, along with 1 gigabyte of ram and at least a Geforce nVidia GeForce FX 5200 or ATI Radeon 9600 video card. The recommend system requirements are a little higher than normal but should run on most modern machines. This game is a really good looking game with a well-polished and optimized engine. Hopefully other companies realize what Eden Eternal has accomplished and use it as a bar to aim for in the free to play anime-styled market.In Eden Eternal there are several ways to play PvP (Player versus Player). You are able to duel other players in the game to test your skills as a friendly match. Recently the Territory War has been announced, in the Territory War the system puts guilds in a free for all brawl. This will push the limits of teamwork, forcing players to work in a timely manner to either claim or defend the various territories. To win the Territory War you have to capture several places and monsters on the map. After you have done this you are able to destroy the Sand Crystal in the Sand Fortress. There are several different battlegrounds and you can find the dates and times these are available in your event schedule.Earlier I mentioned the well thought out skills and in PvP this really comes into play. Nearly every skill has a side effect beyond just pure damage and a relatively long cool-down compared to most MMO’s that give every class one spammable skill. This forces players to get creative, stun-lock enemies, use skills in specific orders, and save interrupts to block ultimates in clutch maneuvers. If you’re going in as a healing archetype or tank, expect a rough time because every skill you use is vital to your team’s success.Eden Eternal is a really fun game to play. The graphics are beautiful and the gameplay along with the controls feel really smooth. The game might feel a little grindy even though there are quite a few of quests to pick up. I really enjoyed playing this game and I will definitely play it more and see what the future brings. Eden Eternal feels like it is the top student in its class and has set a new bar in the anime-MMO genre. I would recommend everyone play this game because it takes a bunch of features that work in its genre, and perfects each of them to a whole new level of polish.