Pandora Saga: Weapons of Balance is a game with room for improvement

    Pandora Saga: Weapons of Balance is a free-to-play MMORPG developed by Atlus Online. Atlus maintains a number of MMOs with different themes and Pandora Saga is their token fantasy roleplaying game. It is hailed by its community for it's PvP combat, which I found interesting, but I think it could still use a great deal of improvement before I could play it regularly.

Art & Races

    Although the graphics are more like N64 quality and the character races are a bit too androgynous (and creepy!) for my taste the art still maintains a distinct anime style that lures you in with its charms. The main cities are nice looking as well, but not big enough. There are many things in the background within the cities that I want to explore but they don't allow the players to do so with barricades and invisible walls.

    There are six races to choose from. Above are a couple of human models. I added a picture just to give an example of the graphics. I wont spend much time talking about them because you already know what a human is! The only thing you really need to know is they're the only race in this game that has a definable gender.

    To your left is an elf. You can't tell by looking at it, but this is actually an adult elf male. When I first saw this I said to myself, if the elf males look like little girls, then the elf females must look like even smaller girls right? In my head I was hoping I'd be wrong but unfortunately as I clicked to see what the elf females look like . . . I was right. ->
 
    The elves in this game function much like you would expect from any other fantasy role-playing game. They love nature and they're a great choice for the archer or sneaky type roles. According to their description they also don't like Dwarves or Enkidu. What is an Enkidu you ask? Look no further, I shall tell you:

ENKIDU

    Apart from all the other races in the game, Enkidus are VERY BIG. For the longest time I sat and stared at these things trying to figure out what they remind me of. And then it hit me,

Gorons! ->

    One thing to note about the races in Pandora Saga is that none of them are particularly well developed in terms of personality. Here's the word for word description of Enkidus, "A hostile agricultural species that inhabits the plains. Because of their great physical strength they excel at fighting and defending." Let me just pick this apart piece by piece. Okay, first of all, I'm pretty sure it's obvious by the ridiculous size of those arms that these guys are meant to be damage and tanking classes. Secondly I can see the hostile part but I'm not understanding the agricultural. Hostile and agricultural aren't typically two words you expect to see together. But whatever. They're hostile, they're agricultural, and just in case you didn't get enough giant shoulders from World of Warcraft, they've also got really really big arms! Also, for no explanation at all you can't toggle the gender of these things. I guess the men and women Enkidus all look alike, that or they're a cross gender species.

    Next you have your dwarves. Like Enkidus there appear to only be male dwarves. This is fine by me because I prefer to think of dwarves in the Lord of the Rings style, and as Gimli says, "they [dwarf women] are so alike in voice and appearance, that they are often mistaken for dwarf men." The dwarf pictured to the right is actually named Lilly. Go figure.

    Dwarves are a great choice for any specialized melee damage class. They can also be good tanks. Besides that there's not much that is said about them in the description for this game. No deep back-story about their race hailing from the underground and prevailing as a people to be found here. Dwarves are just dwarves, plain and simple. 



    And just like in every MMORPG there's always at least one race that's over sexualized. In Pandora Saga that race is the Myrine's. Similar to dwarves (or every other race except elves and humans) players are not allowed to pick a gender as a Myrine. But this one actually has an explanation. Apparently there aren't a lot of male Myrine's that are born. At first glance one might mistake them for the ever common dark elf, found in many fantasy role-playing games. But when you look at where the ears are supposed to be you'll see that in place of extra long ears are strange looking . . . feathers? Myrines truly are a strange race, but I can't help but think that the developers wanted to put dark elves in the game but changed their minds halfway through and came up with these things. People who play them tend to keep them scantily dressed, which makes it obvious why people pick them (besides the fact that they make good assassins). In my travels on this game it was rare to see one wearing pants and if they were the pants were usually ass-less and crotch-less. It really is remarkable how many ass-less pants there are in this game.
    
    I'm sure there are some of you who have played MMORPGs, skimmed through the races and said to yourself, "I like these races but none of them are really loli enough." Well, for all of you sick loli bastards, I present to you, the Lapin. There are really only two reasons I can think of that anyone would pick a Lapin: 1) You are pedobear. 2) None of the other races were quite androgynous enough. Some people say, "oh but they're great for magic classes" but we all know that's just a cover up for the reasons above.

    You've probably guessed by now that you can't choose a gender for these creatures. Male and Female lapins cannot be distinguished from each other, and unlike  Enkidus this is actually stated in their description.  As for their personality, they are timid but adventurous and come from gently sloping hills. This description plus the fact that they have drooping bunny ears and cotton tails suggest that they are bunny people. I know it's hard to imagine but just let that sink in for a while. . .

. . . BUNNY. . . 

. . . PEOPLE. . .

Classes & Language Filter

    Now that we're on the subject of classes this would be the perfect time to bring up an annoying feature of Pandora Saga's chat system. As it turns out you can't actually say "class" in chat. The reason behind this is because there is a spam filter that prevents any bad words from going through, and since "ass" is in "class" you can't say it. This also rules out any other words that happen to have "ass" in them, like assume. Assassin. Lass. Grass. Mass. You get the point.

    This makes talking in chat very annoying. Chat filters rarely work correctly, and when they do if players really want to cuss they'll find a way around it. They can simply put a space in the middle of the word for instance: Fu ck. So in essence all this chat filter manages to do is be annoying and force me purposefully to spell things incorrectly.

    What boggles my mind is how they will allow a character with a screen name like this, but the word "ass" in any form is out of the question. How about synonyms? Butt. Turns out people can say butt, but not ass. Crap, but not shit. What's the point?

    But I suppose the purpose is to keep our friend Pedobear from saying naughty things to little children. But as demonstrated, the chat filter can be by bypassed in certain ways and we all know how determined Pedobear can be now don't we.

    Due to this annoying little chat feature, this game uses the word "job" to address character classes rather than the word "class". But since they call them classes in every other game in existence I will continue to refer to them as such throughout the entirety of this blog post.

    That being said, I must admit the customization that can be done with the classes is really quite impressive. It starts out simple with just four basic classes to choose from: Warrior, Scout, Acolyte, or Mage. After level 20 the player gets to choose between two branches of that class. For instance, a warrior can become a Knight (which focuses on boosting stamina to stay alive longer) or a Gladiator (which focuses on boosting strength to do lots of damage), so essentially you can split off to a tank or damage class. Each branch will cause new abilities to become available that will assist the player in doing the job related to his chosen specialization. As the player levels his character further, to level 45, they get to choose one more of two specializations that will fine tune their class abilities. For example, a Gladiator can become a Juggernaut (a bit harder to kill and EVEN MORE damage) or a Dragoon (a damage class with a wide variety of mounted combat abilities).

    All together there are sixteen possible class specializations players can end up with. Allowing players to customize their characters in this way does many good things for the game. It adds variety without becoming too complicated to grasp because everyone starts out with one of the basic four and work their way up to slowly learn more skills.

Leveling-up, Quests, & Trade

    55 is the cap level in Pandora Saga. You can get all the way to level 30 by just completing quests. Quests are very grindy but you get nice big chunks of XP with the completion of each quest, and those chunks will usually get you to the next level. They also don't take very long so you're switching scenery often. I'm told that after level 30 (which only took me about three days to get to) it takes a greater amount of time to level up and quests no longer become worth the XP. It's recommended to join an active guild, form parties, and fight monsters around 10 levels higher than the party. But I would imagine, even that would get boring.

     The quests are pretty much what you would expect from your basic MMORPG: excuses to kill lots of things. With the occasional, "go find this lost note" or "go talk to this guy on the exact opposite side of the city as me" quests mixed in between. There are three main problems I have with quests like that in this game:

     First of all, despite the fact that this is a relativity recently developed game, the quests don't do much to veer away from the cliche of what MMORPGs have done for years. It just seems like their goal is to cause the player to waste as much time as possible. One good thing that this game has that most don't is a few cut scenes for the main quest line and I must admit some of those cut scenes were quite hilarious. The animations, horrible, but the script, defiantly entertaining. And even if the graphics and animations during cut scenes were lower than N64 quality an MMO that even bothers to include such things is noteworthy.

    Second, some of the quests tell you exactly where to go with a marker on the map, some quests don't. Instead they tell you the area you're supposed to be in, describe what you should see, and let you find it on your own. Normally I don't mind a little bit of exploration, thinking, and problem solving. But in Pandora Saga there are monsters of severely different difficulty levels strewn all throughout the entire world. So you could be walking along a road, when all of the sudden a giant maggot or spider shows up behind you and kills you in one hit. This makes exploration much more dangerous than it needs to be. 

     A great example of monsters like these are these stray wolves, that can be found everywhere in the world in Pandora Saga. The wolves are neutral mobs, so they wont attack, but few can kill them, not even at the cap level (which is 55). It's rumored that only a few players have actually killed one of these wolves but defeating it only rewards 1 XP and the carcass can not be looted. Noobies (or maybe just me) make the mistake of attacking them without looking at their combat level (it's a mistake I only made once). Look at them, they don't seem like they would be able to kill you instantly right? But no, the wolves of course kill you in one hit and then you must to respawn back at town. Players use them to get back to town quickly after completing a quest, and they receive no XP penalty for dying before they reach level 20, for this reason stray wolves have become known as "noob teleporters".

    The third problem I have with this game is the boss fights. There are boss battles included in the main quest line. These battles require a group of people to do, one of them requires a full group of eight. Finding people for these battles can be a challenging thing. Then after all that waiting you finally get to fight. But the quest cannot be done once for every single person in the party, that would make things too simple. Instead, each person in the party needs to activate the boss battle individually in order to complete it for each person. So you may find yourself doing the same boss battle eight times in a row. I suppose you could just leave after your quest is completed, but that would be considered rude as the party would have to find another person to fill your spot so that everyone else can complete it.

    And while we're on the topic of waiting let me tell you a few things about in-game trade. By now most MMORPGs have a method of exchanging goods between players without the player having to be online. Such as auction houses in WoW, you go there put the items up that you want to sell, set the price, and log off. Anyone searching for that item can find it and if they buy it you'll receive an in game letter containing your money. In Pandora Saga there is no such thing. No way to trade while offline. Instead you set up a "booth". The player selects items that they want to sell along with a price, and opens a booth. Then the first four items the player puts up are displayed over their head. Other players can click on them and browse all the goods they've posted and decide to buy or not buy.

    This is especially annoying if you're playing Pandora Saga through Steam because even though Pandora Saga doesn't take up many resources you can't play another game on Steam while it's open. To me, it's just generally annoying, because I have a gaming laptop, not a PC, and I don't like to leave it on when I'm not using it. Also, it would be nice if you could do other things in the game while you sell your items, but you can't. So it's too inconvenient for me to sell any items in this game. This is one of the biggest reasons I can't see myself playing regularly. That and while I was playing it I felt like I was doing more waiting around than actually playing.

Waiting for health!

Waiting for party!

Waiting for trade!

Waiting for PvP battle!

PvP

     The big thing that this game claims to hold up to is great PvP. Each week a different battle is held in the ongoing war between three factions in Pandora Saga. After you complete the main quests you'll eventually be given a choice of which faction you want to join. And that's the faction your character will fight along side for all of the battles. Players have to sign up for the battles ahead of time, but if they miss the deadline they can also sign up as a militia fighter anytime thirty minutes before the battle starts, and anytime while the battle is being fought. The difference is militia fighter's don't have the benefit of respawning in the battlefield when they die. Instead they respawn back at the city of their faction and must get back in line to be let into the battle. Once in line you have to wait for other militia fighters to die in order for you to take their place.

    Although I never had a chance to compete in one of these wars I'm told they're very fun. I watched several videos of them and they seemed entertaining. Different goals are involved in each type of battle, like capturing towers, or breaching each other's castle. All the battles seem to require a great deal of strategy and teamwork..

    All and all it seems like a pretty good system, except that it costs ten-thousand gold to sign up ahead of time as a regular soldier. Something that would be easily acquired if I felt like leaving my computer on for 24-hours in order to sell all the crap in my inventory.

    Aside from the wars there are also practice fights that people can participate in the main town that everyone starts in. However no one participates in these for some reason so finding people to play them with is pretty much impossible.

    In addition to this there are also battles that take place underneath the cities. Instead of huge wars with clear goals these are more brutal free-for-alls. Should you choose to go alone you'll likely be killed easily. But you can get some friends and fight as a team as well, another reason why joining a guild is highly recommended.

    But from what I've gathered from the community most of the fun awaits after you have reached level 45. Because by then you've reached the top tier of your class and learned almost all of the abilities you are supposed to have. Participating in wars or any PvP events anytime before that is not nearly as fun, because you can easily be killed in one shot by players who have already reached the cap level of 55.

    One of thing that I like about PvP and combat in general in this game is that it includes mounted combat and there are a number of mounted abilities you can learn should you choose a class specialization that includes such abilities. 

The Store

    As you all know, all free-to-play games need to make money somehow and Pandora Saga sells helpful items for real money in their store. There are plenty of things in the store that make this game a little easier to level up including XP boosts. However, navigating this store is a pain in the ass. My biggest beef with it is that there's so search bar, plus just the general layout annoys me. I don't know how anyone can find anything here, and half of the items that I am able to find I have no idea what they are or what they do. If the store wasn't such a pain I might actually buy things from it. In the event that you actually do find something you want to spend money on you have to go through a convoluted process to do so. First you have to buy crowns from Atlus's website. Then you have to convert those crowns into PPs (Pandora Points). The conversion is one crown to one PP so I can't understand why they don't just sell PPs or list an actual dollar amount by all the items!

The Verdict

     I can't say that I can see myself playing this continually in the near future. There's just too much grinding to be done in the later levels, even with a guild. And there's no way to take a break from the grind with something fun because you can't have fun with PvP until you're at the top level, or at least the top tier of your class (45). Plus there's no way to sell items offline and I need an MMO where I can. Overall I'd say it lacks ingenuity, there could be much more to do and the quest system could be improved greatly. The game belongs on the guillotine with a score of 2 out of 5.

    It had a few redeeming features that kept it from getting a zero which was entertaining quest dialog, cut scenes, mounted combat, unique class specialization, and PvP (though I never got to play it I'll give it the benefit of the doubt due to community appraisal. Besides, I can't see any other reason why anyone would keep playing it if the PvP was not good.) So if you have the patience to sit through hours and hours and hours of killing the same monster over and over in order to get to the good stuff in this game then go for it, if not, avoid Pandora Saga like the plague. But it is important to remember that this game has only been around for about a year so there's defiantly time for improvement. Improvement that it desperately needs.