www.tantra.ph
Posted: April 14th, 2007, 9:13
I think this game is a few years old, but I only tried to play it a month ago, when it became Free 2 Play, with their income coming from special Item shops using money that you can buy with real cash.
The game itself is kind of fun, set in an eastern/arabic setting. Some of the characters remind me of Diablo 2 classes(particularly the Naga - their barbarian/knight type). You don't have to grind that much(I think they raised the exp rates to 10X the original, when they went F2P) and the game lets you reach a nice level(around 40-50ish) first before it lets you encounter monsters that will fuck you so hard, the person standing next to you will get pregnant.
It brags about having 8 different classes, but it's really just four with different sprites for male and female. Stat builds are also easy to allocate if you're familiar with the stuff. (i.e. raise the melee fighter's muscle and heart for more hp and more damage/raise the magic user's mental for magic damage/raise the archer's nerver for dodging etc.)
Equips have a durability stat, which means you have to get it repaired every once in a while, just like in Diablo. They also have a level restriction, which means you can only equip stuff designated for your level. You can get them strengthened through refining and enhancing, though - like the card and oridecon/elunium stuff in Ragnarok online. One more thing about the equips, the npc stores only sell level 40s and below. The stronger and the rare ones are drops. Or sold by overpricing jackasses on the main town.
Quests are of the standard fare. Kill X amount of monsters, get X amount of drops, Go to X and give X, Go to X and answer her questions etc. But there are a couple of ones that are impossible to do solo because they require you to be in a party...which brings me to my only game-breaking complaint: The Community.
It's one of the things that make MMORPGs addicting - the people you're playing with. Otherwise you're just randomly clicking the screen - but Tantra's community totally licks balls. All the negative stereotypes about online gamers are in here, money beggars, killstealers, PKers, etc....only worse because majority of the players don't speak english. So not only is that person being an asshole, he's being an asshole using words you don't understand.
Adding even more injury to insult and injury, the game allows player killing outside of town. It's not even the duel type thing where you need the other's permission to hit him. When you get past level 12, any random hobo can click a PK switch in his hud and attack you. The only detterent for this is it lowers the killers karma level and changes his name's color, which opens a whole new can of worms with its implied racism. Do we really want to train kids into thinking that colored people...are killers?
The only positive thing I can get out of the PK function is if I become strong enough and/or get more strong people to join a clan and then, like the mercenary's guild in Shartak, charge people to exact revenge on assholes that they don't like.
I'm still playing in the Manas server, with a level 55 Deva(wizard type), and a level 47 Naga. I'm doing fine soloing so far.
The game itself is kind of fun, set in an eastern/arabic setting. Some of the characters remind me of Diablo 2 classes(particularly the Naga - their barbarian/knight type). You don't have to grind that much(I think they raised the exp rates to 10X the original, when they went F2P) and the game lets you reach a nice level(around 40-50ish) first before it lets you encounter monsters that will fuck you so hard, the person standing next to you will get pregnant.
It brags about having 8 different classes, but it's really just four with different sprites for male and female. Stat builds are also easy to allocate if you're familiar with the stuff. (i.e. raise the melee fighter's muscle and heart for more hp and more damage/raise the magic user's mental for magic damage/raise the archer's nerver for dodging etc.)
Equips have a durability stat, which means you have to get it repaired every once in a while, just like in Diablo. They also have a level restriction, which means you can only equip stuff designated for your level. You can get them strengthened through refining and enhancing, though - like the card and oridecon/elunium stuff in Ragnarok online. One more thing about the equips, the npc stores only sell level 40s and below. The stronger and the rare ones are drops. Or sold by overpricing jackasses on the main town.
Quests are of the standard fare. Kill X amount of monsters, get X amount of drops, Go to X and give X, Go to X and answer her questions etc. But there are a couple of ones that are impossible to do solo because they require you to be in a party...which brings me to my only game-breaking complaint: The Community.
It's one of the things that make MMORPGs addicting - the people you're playing with. Otherwise you're just randomly clicking the screen - but Tantra's community totally licks balls. All the negative stereotypes about online gamers are in here, money beggars, killstealers, PKers, etc....only worse because majority of the players don't speak english. So not only is that person being an asshole, he's being an asshole using words you don't understand.
Adding even more injury to insult and injury, the game allows player killing outside of town. It's not even the duel type thing where you need the other's permission to hit him. When you get past level 12, any random hobo can click a PK switch in his hud and attack you. The only detterent for this is it lowers the killers karma level and changes his name's color, which opens a whole new can of worms with its implied racism. Do we really want to train kids into thinking that colored people...are killers?
The only positive thing I can get out of the PK function is if I become strong enough and/or get more strong people to join a clan and then, like the mercenary's guild in Shartak, charge people to exact revenge on assholes that they don't like.
I'm still playing in the Manas server, with a level 55 Deva(wizard type), and a level 47 Naga. I'm doing fine soloing so far.
