Webzen's MU Legend Online 1st CBT had just ended and I've prepared a first look review to share my experiences. Just like all my other reviews, the article features a lot of videos for those that want to judge the game on their own. A lot of my viewers on my SteparuTV Youtube Channel had questions about this game so hopefully my review will shed some light on the lingering questions and an early insight of or preview of the game.
Playable Characters - The Four
The first beta had four playable gender locked characters which are Dark Lord, Whisperer, Blader, and War Mage. There is a 5th future playable character teased believed to be Summoner or something else new. Unfortunately, the character wasn't playable in this beta. There is a fair amount of customization for each class along with two different race selection for each job. I decided to skip the character creation process, this time around in an eager excitement to try the game out for the first time.
Gameplay - Easy Peasy
MU Legend Online seems to be a really user-friendly game that isn't overly complicated. The level 65 cap during the beta was easily reachable within a short time frame. Offering simple gameplay controls with the classical style of point and click movement and re-bindable hotkeys for the picky players. Skills and spells can be executed using the default Q,W,E,R,T keys. As for the potions and other stuff, players can set them on the default 1~5 keys. In the later levels of the game, a player will have too many skills for their hotbar. This is where the F1+ keys comes into play. You can save various skill loadouts in this manner. For example, my F1 setup is for AoE training and party play while my F2 hotbar is set to tanking and healing spells mainly for boss battles, F3 for my PvP customized loadout skills and so on. I am able to switch between my loadouts anywhere and anytime I want as long as there are no skills on the hotbar with a ticking timer cooldown going on. Players can also unlock special rune slots to their skills the more times it's used. Once a slot is unlocked, a player can then equip passive runes on to the skills to receive special stat bonuses.
Leveling Speed - Not Grindy
I'm not sure if the difficulty of the game is dumbed down in the 1st Closed Beta, but most of the PvE content of the game is really easy. I was zooming through my main levels and quest hubs from area to area. I'm not complaining though since I had other games to test at the same time. Most people would enjoy killing 30 monsters per quest, but MU Legend is time friendly game and makes players kill 3-5 monsters per quest or mobs with low health. It's pretty convenient because you're moving from area to area really fast changing sceneries often, which also prevents getting bored of grinding the same zone for hours. If you've had enough of the quest hub questing, you can opt out of the sub quests and just focus on the main story quests and dungeons along the way. The dungeons in this game have various difficulty settings and offers a maximum of 400% boost in drop rate and a ton of Exp boost. However, it's not really worth the trouble to play the hardest setting unless you're looking for a challenge. Most players will select the easiest difficulty just to power level and hit the cap fast.
Aside from having a Main Levels, the game also offers Soul Levels at the start of the game. Soul Levels are like extra stats that you can use to make your character become stronger. I'm not talking about STR, VIT, DEX, INT, etc. These stats are more like Physical Attack, Magic Attack, Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Magic Def, Phys Def, and more. Perhaps it's a bit similar to D3's Paragon levels? For example, upon hitting the Closed Beta level cap of 65 my Soul Levels was around level 55'ish. I can no longer gain main levels, but I can continue to farm stuff and earn more Soul Levels. The Soul Levels window has a lot of stats, so it will actually take a lot of time and effort to max them all out. It's not something that can be maxed easily with just 200 Soul Levels. It's going to take a lot more than that, pretty much hardcore end game stuff. Lastly, I was able to reset my Soul Levels and distribute it into other tabs anytime I want, which was very convenient at the time because I had no idea what I was doing and pumped most of my points in physical attack when I needed more defense to tank stuff in harder dungeons in hell difficulty settings. There is also a pet system where you can raise their a pet's STR, VIT, DEX, INT though I'm not sure how that affects the player.
PvE Content - Casual and Hardcore
Aside from the open areas of the game, MU Legend offers an endless amount of dungeons! There is pretty much a dungeon in every corner of the game along with various daily dungeons in the main city that can only be done 1-4 times a day. If you're the type of person that enjoys dungeon crawling, then you'll certainly fall in love with this game. There are also tons of difficulty settings so if you're a very busy person and don't have a lot of time to play games, you can just mow through the easy modes. If you're the type of person who's got a lot of free time and likes a good challenge, you can try the hardest setting of the game which offers 400% boost in everything including swag! Monsters also hit like a truck in that version and at often times the boss will one-shot KO the player with specific skills. Heck, I died a few times playing the hardest settings for fun. The game also had one end game dungeon that I didn't have a chance to record since I was busy PvPing during the last days.
PvP Content - Targets Hardcore
There a couple of ways to earn enchanting stones for upgrading weapons and armor, but the most efficient way to obtain them is through the capture the point PvP system. It's a medium size 10vs10 arena stage where players capture points on the map or go on a killing frenzy. I enjoy PvP content in most of the games I test so I was having a bit of fun in the arena even though I kept getting one shotted or dying randomly due to lag? It was kind of funky. Anyway, enchanted gear seems like it definitely plays a big role in the PvP arena given the game is based heavily on enchants. I wonder if they're going to consider adding extra modes for players who join in on the farming fray late? As in equipment equalization and stuff since the players that farm PvP a lot will have a big start early on gear enchants. Other than that it would be nice if players earn Soul Level EXP from PvP so they're given an option to farm PvE or PvP for Soul Levels.
Other System - Random Features
MU Legend's crafting system seems rather simple just break down all of the equipment you come across the game and craft new gear around your level. Recipes automatically unlock as you close in on the level gap and it seems like players are able to craft decent gear without much farming like crazy. There is also an enchanting system where players can upgrade their gear. At around +8 the equipment will start to glow (at least for the wings) and from what Koreans say, when wings your wings hits +15, it's possible to evolve it, I've yet to try. There are special daily dungeons and quests that reward Green token like gems. These gems are used for a lot of things such as buying a new mount, costumes, wings, enchanting cosmetics, and more. It's essential to collect as many of the tokens as they're very useful in many ways especially for enchanting fees.
Graphics and Sound - Good Enough
At first, I wasn't really interested in MU Legend, but after watching the recent trailer, it became a game that I wanted to explore. I was like whoaaaa this game looks really cool and super seizure flashy. The graphics looked really nice in the trailer, but once I was in the game, it looked a bit off. I suppose it's the way the trailer was made revealing all the nice areas, but in reality, there are nice looking areas and bad looking ones in the game. Does the game look good? Yup, it does! The only problem is that being an Unreal Engine 3 game, you'll most likely experience a lot of FPS dips here and there inside dungeons especially areas with congested mobs or certain open areas of the game. In addition to all of the fireworks skills and spells that go off, your FPS will most likely drop down to the low 5-10's despite any computer setup. Heck, the trailer alone shows the crazy FPS dips, scary!
Hmmm, the one thing that probably bothered me the most during the beta was the sound FX randomly going out of sync or disappearing during combat. Sound FX should play a big role in this kind of game because skills feel a bit floaty and have no crashing impact when they disappear or randomly desync. It's the 1st CBT, so I won't get all serious mode on it. The background music was good enough even though some of it was from C9, perhaps it was just a placeholder!
Conclusion - Ready for Round 2
MU Legend is the first MU game I've played and it seems like a game that can easily be enjoyed without knowing anything about the previous MU titles. The servers seemed to be very populated and there were a lot of users actually playing the game instead of the usual test the game for a couple of hours and just log off. Most of the cities and towns were really crowded that I often get FPS drops with so many players being rendered! You can also tell that some of the players put a lot of time in the beta because they had very high Soul Levels and enchanted their wings to become super glowy and stuff. Now if you ask me, I thought the game was above average. Certainly not groundbreaking amazing, but at the same time, not a snore fest that I would have given up playing on day one. The Soul Levels, enchanting system, collecting full set items, and PvP is probably going to keep me busy alone. Anyway, this review is getting long so I'm going to run off and play more games or work on my next review! Hope you enjoyed it and see you around~!
Developer: Webzen
Publisher: Webzen
Game Site: http://mulegend.webzen.co.kr/
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