Silk Road Online Review (no fat)

Game Description

When the world's greatest explorers started to roam around, their discoveries often ended up unused for a long time. Look at Australia. People were laughing at that remote place, and it was partly understandable, after all you were quite close to the edge of the world. Others, like the Silk Road, meant big money. Silk Road Online is not as expensive to play (actually it's free), but it will probably eat some of your time to the extent of an addiction.

Silk Road Online Gameplay

Silk Road Online is set in the strange universe of the silk road, in China for now, although further development is planned. What it tries to do is capture the way the society's clock ticked at that time, from the merchant to the thief and from the bounty hunter to the prince.

You can assume several roles in this game. The central part of it is the trade, an operation which can involve you in three different postures. The obvious one is to be a merchant and trade goods. You buy cheap, sell more expensive, and you get rich. The other option you have is to be a thief, which allows you to get things very cheap and later sell them if you want. Somewhere in the middle are the hunters: merchants need their help to guard their goods, but they will often be hired to kill a certain troublemaker. All these are bound by an extensive set of guild features.

Guilds play a major role here, for any of the three character types. In fact, as a thief you will rarely find yourself able to do much outside a guild, especially as your level grows and you naturally need to have some PvP experiences. Only high-level players are allowed to create guilds themselves (although you can create a guild by asking a NPC to do so even without having the required level).

Everything spins around these premises. Although the concept itself might seem a little bit arcane, there's no intrigue other than the idea that thieves and merchants will do some fighting against each other, it works surprisingly well.

SilkRoad Online - Growing up

Like in any other MMORPPG, the abilities players possess can be enhanced as the game progresses. This is also the case here. There are four Force Masteries in the game: Fire, Ice, Lightning and Force. If it reminds me of that movie, you're right. Magic plays an important role, both through the powers you have and through the alchemy, which acts much like the magic cube in Diablo II. There are also three Weapon Masteries, one for each weapon class in the game: Spear/Glaive, Sword/Blade and Bow. How everything progresses in reality depends very much on your decisions, many of moral nature, involved by the NPCs.

The NPCs are able to give you some quests, although most of them are quite about the same: kill some beast, get the items they leave behind and bring them to the one who gave you the quest. If there's anything else you encounter along the way, you're free to keep it. This is not the only part of the game that involves fighting. In fact, there's a lot of fighting in Silk Road Online.

Experience and skill points are gained independently, but this doesn't mean that you will be able to easily get a lot of skills without having too much experience. It simply means that your skills are no longer tied only to your level.

This makes PvP fights quite interesting, since you are no longer bound to taking decisions based only on the opponent's level. The PvP option is quite simply implemented: players level 10 or above can buy colored caps, enabling them to attack anyone outside a town, as long as the one he attacks wears a different cap. Players level 20 or higher can attack anyone with level 20 or higher, but if they do so too much, they may end up carrying the "murderer" sign, which means that anyone can kill them.

Silk Road Online - Drawing a line

The gameplay in SilkRoad Online feels fun and entertaining, although you will probably sense the need of a few more weapons. There are only three weapon classes, and weapons either have good magic damage but poor physical damage, or the other way round, bringing little variety in the game. Besides, there's the obvious problem of MMORPGs: everyone wants adventure, but the truth is, most people living along the Silk Road were not adventurers, merchants, thieves or hunters. They were simply people who lived there (peasants, to call them so) and didn't care much about money but more about crops, horses and sheep.

Nevertheless, the universe is quite well rendered, through rich graphics and very detailed environment, both inside and outside the towns. There are three main settings designed so far (China, Western China and the Oasis Kingdom of Hotan), providing enough space for some interesting adventures without getting overcrowded. In fact, it's a good representation of the huge scarcely inhabited areas along the Silk Road. The sound side of it is not as bright though, but this is not something that will bother you too much.

Price

SilkRoad Online is free and you can get it on its official website, http://www.silkroadonline.net