I'm pretty hard to please when it comes to action games, especially side-scrolling brawlers--just check my past thoughts on titles like the D&D: Chronicles of Mystara collection, Code of Princess and Dragon's Crown. Hell, two games that I'll never, ever get tired of are Streets of Rage 2 and Turtles in Time, so I'm pretty exacting about what I want with this genre. On a similar note, for reasons I have yet to truly fathom, I have a soft spot for free-to-play action games. After all, despite putting hundreds of hours into the Street Fighter IV series, I've also spent an inordinate amount of time playing Rumble Fighter.
This game is hilarious until you get ganged on by seven people at once for winning the previous match
Much like mid- to lower-budget movies that show a lot of craftsmanship and charm, there are hidden gems in the free-to-play world. Elsword goes the more basic route, taking a very tried-and-true MMORPG template and applying it to a side-scrolling melee actioner with some very mild platforming elements. A variety of character classes let you tailor a fighter to your playstyle, from the plucky, titular generic anime hero well-rounded fighter Elsword to ranged specialist Rena (of course she's an elf) to Add, who's equal parts Accelerator from A Certain Magical Index and Nu-13 from BlazBlue, among a handful of others.
Elsword wears its anime-influenced heart on its sleeve--while you won't find a lot of originality, you'll at least find a lot of love... and a lot of dungeons. And a lot of fetch quests. Seriously, I ended up spending most of my time playing black-haired ALO Kirito-alike Raven, who's out for vengeance and broods and has a bitchin' metal claw, and yet I spent all my time running errands for the townsfolk in order to unlock main quest content. This didn't happen all the time, but it happened enough for me to take notice--side quests should stay as side quests, and work as an extra if you don't feel like all the sturm and drang of your character's main story.
While you won't get the ridiculous movelist of a Platinum game, Elsword has a frenetic and mashy combat system that's broken up into light and strong attacks, with simple linking combos. Experienced players will learn when to back off and when to rush in for the kill, but beyond that, there isn't much to learn. Elsword is very much about the grind, revisiting areas you've already cleared and farming them to build up your character's abilities. The HUD is pretty cluttered, which is frustrating because the game seems built specifically to play with a controller, so you have to keep going back to your mouse and clicking windows closed.
Early in the game, you'll probably end up mistaking a lot of low-level players for yourself--it makes sense in a game that doesn't have character customization as much as it has costume customization. You'll find a variety of armor, items and costumes to make your character look cute, badass, or functionally bland (hello again, Kirito), but steadily-upgrading weapons take a while to really look impressive... unless you drop some cash. Thankfully unintrusive microtransactions add to the customization options, but there are quite a few game-breakers available for sale. It's all fun and games until some random guy with disposable income one-shots a boss, right?
Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way--after all, I spend way too much time playing video games as-is, and I'm always of the mindset that only playing top-shelf AAA games does not a hardcore gamer make, as that's like saying you're a film buff and all you watch are summer blockbusters. Elsword isn't the most gorgeous game around, even for F2P. It's kinda clunky and familiar, and if you're looking for depth, you won't really find any. But it's a pretty fun game that has style and charm, and it's pretty addicting digging into the customization options... and it's nice getting to one-shot a dungeon boss on your own. Anyone here working their way through Elsword right now?
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