The oldest story: Maplestory!

So many people made a review of this game, i hope to be original (it will be difficult). My experience with Maplestory ( US version) started exactly 3 years ago, around the 20th of august. This strange but addicting game fascinated me, and from that day i never stopped to play. Maplestory grown up a lot during this 3 year, before it was like: grind, grind, party quest, grind, party grind, and so on… Now it’s totally different, Nexon Game made a very good job optimizing a game created by Wizet (that neglected it a bit), the company improved socialization, lowered up the difficult in levelling and added thousand of new content making Maplestory a pleasent and very very addicting game with more then 70 MILIONS account registered.

DESIGN

The thing that first i’ve noticed was the 2D horizontal side scrolling style with a cartoon design, an original characteristic that hasn’t nothing to envy from 3d games. Indeed graphic it’s fantastic, backgrounds are amazing, full of colour and always new and never similar to another one. When you create your Beginner (the neutral class), there are few option to customize it, but the Cash Shop offer an infinite choice of clothes, hairstyle, face accessory and pet (too bad they cost real money and expire after 3 month…).  Character are beautiful and so are skills, monsters and sounds, works of artists in my opinion.

There are a lot of skills for each classes ( there are  46 JOBS TOTAL between advancement and the new race!!!) all wonderful, shiny and well done, with some recall to religions and asian culture. Monsters are uncountable, tons of monsters from the cute mushroom and little snail to a huge dragon that fill 2 maps, animals, fairies, giants boss, ghosts and much more. Design is absolutely one of the best characteristic of this game and the one that made it so famous. A lot of clones tried to take the place of Maplestory but at the moment no one can compete against it, a REAL MMORPG with monthly patch that constantly add new zones, monsters, equipments and classes like one of the last patches that introduced Knight of Cygnus a “race” parallel to the other one: the “adventurer” but with several different characteristic.

GAMEPLAY

Maplestory succeeds where other MMORPGs failed: it attract all kind of players, the casual and the more expert gamer, the 10 years old kid and the 30 years old worker. That can be possible thanks to the various classes, skill constructions and game style possibles, there’s not a predefined “build” it’s all up to the player that can choose if goes stat-less, low-stat or normal stat and what skill rise up before. Starting a character is very easy and there is a place that works as tutorial zone ( simple to understand), when you reach the right level it’s time to job and don’t worry if you put some point in the wrong stat, when you advance the NPC reset all point.

A lot of quests are available from when you start until high level, some are funny with good reward and exp, other are repetitive and useless.  Nexon staff improved a lot interaction through player, thanks to the party quest an easy, very funny and fast way to level up, a negative point is that there’s no PvP but classes aren’t much equilibrated (some classes are way stronger then other) so it’s better like this. The main jobs are 5:

1. Warrior
2. Archer
3. Thief
4. Magician
5. Pirate

Each class has from 2 to 3 possibility of advancement and 4 jobs avalaible ( 1st job lvl8/10 – 2nd job lvl30, 3rd job lvl70, 4th job lvl120) with a level caps of 200 except for Knight of  Cygnus (the new race) that have a lvl caps of 120. Every job is amazing to play until a certain level where train become a little bit boring, but there are tons of bosses where have fun and spend time with buddy or guild mate.

Maintain a game that accepts many millions of player is very expensive, and Nexon can do it thanks to the Cash Shop, a store that sell everything for nexon cash, rechargeable with credit card (err also something that advantage players whom buy them, but there’s no PvP so who cares lol!), but with a new system introduced, you can sell game item in a special market (MTS) for Nexon cash, without spending a cent. Maplestory had (and it probably will have) problems with hacker, money seller web-site and of course with idiot (they are everywhere), staff and gm usually take some month to resolve this problem, that could be resolved faster, until someone create a new hack. A weak point of this fantastic games is the staff, GMs aren’t available to speak whit user ( except Maplestory EU, where there is a more direct contact), they are a bounch of lazy ass and they’re good just to organize event (sorry for this vent).

In my humble opinion this game is totally addicting and if you loose control you could spend like 12 hours playing in a  row (personal experience, gawd x_x), the game is always developing, warranty of  an endless success.

It’s time to summarize now!

PRIDE AND SHAME

The pride of this game are a lot but what about the weak point?

PROs

• Amazing design (characters, monsters, backgrounds, skills, everything)
• Easy to understand how to play
• A real multiplayer, where party is basic
• Thousand of monsters and boss
• Huge world to explore
• Monthly events and patches with always new contents
• A lot of beautiful and lovely classes
• MTS (market to sell item for nexon cash, very useful!)

CONs

• Incompetent staff
• A lot of useful items are sold just in the cash shop
• Periods full of hacker
• Unbalanced classes
• Too addictive!

WhipMe’s Conclusion

Maplestory can be considered the top in his genre, a beautiful game, very well done with a big community. Despite the 2d graphic this game offers more fun and is more enjoyable then many other 3d games. I suggest it to everyone, child, teenager, adults that want to spend good time playing in a lovely world.

Overall score: 9/10

Direct link: http://maplestory.nexon.net/

FREE 2 PLAY