Onigiri

[Astro Dude]

Anyone know of the new game Onigiri. There are so many ads for it everywhere.

 

First of all, is it free?

 

Second, if it is free, how much does it cost to play a month?

[mitchermitcher]

It's a free MMO meaning you don't pay a cent unless you want to buy the high-leveled goods reserved for people who pay real money.

 

I myself would like to play it, but I have a shitty ol' laptop and meh internet connection, so MMOs ain't for poor ol' me.

[Rodrigo]

Second, if it is free, how much does it cost to play a month?

 

 

OT: Yeah, I've seen the ads and an introductory video. I'm not interested in MMOs, but the fanservice is top notch ^^

 

Seems to be free.

[Astro Dude]

Okay. You'd think they'd have prepaid cards for this. I'll give it a shot.

[Desu the Blue Nerd]

Well I figured it looked not very good and since it's free (there's a cash shop you can spend money in) I may as well give it a shot. I was sort of right. It plays fairly poorly, the game looks 10 years old (I shouldn't complain because otherwise my computer wouldn't run it very well) and the writing is piss poor (although that's fairly mute in an MMO). That said, it does have some very interesting things going on.

 

The partner system is actually pretty great (has a present system similar to what DFO once had but actually not sh*tty) and the extra conversational bits reminds me of what might be done in a better game even if still not incorporated very well. The main bit about the partner system is leveling up your relationship with them in order to increase their effectiveness in combat and the other things they do such as weapon indentification for one partner or enhancement for another character. Sure, that doesn't particularly make sense and it's still not great that in order to do this you're mostly just giving them presents (greedy a******s) and then doing a quest/having a randomly starting conversation as a requirement with them rather than also getting these points from using them as a partner in combat or maybe more small talk (which would also be interesting if there was a timer in place so that quickly skipping through dialogue didn't give you these points towards their level up). Regardless, it's still a nice little system in place.

 

It's not class based so you can use any weapon type. You can also switch between four equipped weapons on the fly which is really nice for when a different situation calls for a different strategy (if the game had more depth in combat that is) or if one weapon breaks. There is a pretty good amount of weapon types but the Problem there is that the weapon types don't really feel very different as combat is just holding down the left mouse button and right click to use whatever skill you got set to use at that moment and the biggest difference between weapons is mostly weapon speed, basic combo length (but you pretty much immediately pick it back up after finishing one), and range of weapons. I do want to repeat though that you can just hold down the left mouse button so neither of the first two really change the feel for anything.

 

Skills are also very well implemented. Not a new concept with them but utilized very well nonetheless. They're not set based on the character but by the individual weapon. You can switch which skill is set to be used with the number keys although why the mouse wheel isn't used for this is beyond me. I really don't like to have to move my fingers away from the movement keys. Just a simply bad design choice that might be easily fixed in options. I would like to note though that this works well with the four weapon switch on the fly as you might not be switching just between weapon types but also the skills between the same kind of weapon. This is actually the better way of doing things as well since allocating certain stats after leveling up such as Power or Dexterity also increases the power of different weapon types.

 

Onigiri has interesting ideas. Don't get me wrong on this. Behind the perverse advertisements thought has been put into the game. It's only a shame that this thought wasn't put into a better game. I came into this game not expecting much and although I still hold my ground that this game isn't very good it did leave me surprised at how good some of its aspects are.

 

Edit:

Forgot to mention how bad level scaling was. I do all the side quests before doing the main mission and still found myself being three levels under the recommended level to do a dungeon. The game isn't hard but one or two hits would wipe me out pretty quickly and killing monsters would take a while. Ran with the bow and arrow though so I wouldn't get hit very often.

[Astro Dude]

One problem I have is with the recovery items. I'm using an HP computer but the f1-f4 keys are screwed up. How can I make it so I can reassign item keys to use on the fly.