MMORPGs over the last few years have experienced a new boom of interest that has prompted many developers to throw themselves into this world as fascinating as it is dangerous. Many titles that have had incredible success, one above all World of Warcraft, which still dominates the rankings of the best MMORPGs on the market. Obviously not all the titles that have tried have succeeded, indeed, it is known to everyone how many MMOs, sometimes even interesting, have sunk into the abyss due to the difficulties in managing this project.
The Korean Astellia Online, aware of the partly hostile terrain for this kind of titles, has finally landed in the West, with a formula designed specifically for us who hate Pay-to-Win. The access formula for Astellia Online is in fact a Buy-to-play, where for a modest amount you can have access to the full game, with the promise of having a game without micro transactions, almost. As already seen in titles of the caliber of Black Desert Online, in the shop, in addition to the classic cosmetic items, some tricks appear as usual for people who want to "invest" real money, which according to the developers should not create imbalances in the gameplay, but how you will often already imagine this is not the case.
But let's start immediately with a substantial difference compared to the Korean version, namely the abolition, but only in part, of the gender lock in the classes, which now allows the player to choose the gender in the classes Warrior and Assassin, while the choice in the other classes remains blocked. This aspect honestly did not convince us and we hope it will be implemented for all classes, so as to give players greater freedom of choice. After choosing our class, we begin the customization of our character, decidedly pushed as regards the female characters, who come with deliberately exaggerated shapes and little covering armor, but we are used to this so we went ahead with the customization, which is still a lot interesting, in fact, pyou will be able to modify every single aspect of your character, from the type of hair to the length of the tip of the nose. After the customization we are introduced to Astellia by a short movie that introduces us to the game world and with the first tutorial missions, from which we learn some of the main game systems.
One of the most innovative features of Astellia Online are precisely the Astels, or companions that we can hire, buy or receive from missions and who will fight alongside us during our adventures. Obviously each of them will have different skills and an equally variable consumption of skill points, which will force us to carefully modulate their use. In an excited situation we can choose to invoke up to three Astels simultaneously consuming many AP per second but managing to survive, or deciding to summon only one in the longer battles, such as those we will often face in the various dungeons. Our little companions during the fight will acquire useful experience points to level up, improving their skills, which can also be enhanced through the use of special materials obtainable from gathering or quests.
As for the rest it is a full-fledged MMORPG, with many quests to play, enemies and bosses to kill. Fortunately, the gameplay offers some hints of originality, obviously starting from the Astels and passing through the management and improvement system of the decidedly numerous and varied skills, which allow the player to create interesting rotations for boss fights and PVP clashes. The end-game of Astellia Online turns out to be quite interesting if played in the company of a guild, with which you can face Bosses, dungeons, the Colosseum and various other activities that in addition to giving you more and more powerful equipment will also allow you to get new Astel Cards with which to enhance your roster. Since this is an initial phase, we have decided to reserve an in-depth study on the end-game when we have tested every single mode present, so as to be able to offer you a broader view of the game.
From a technical point of view we were quite disappointed, with a high-end configuration, graphics settings at maximum and advanced filters active the game comes with strong aliasing and with definitely not well-kept textures. Artistically, however, we found a fair amount of care, in fact landscapes, enemies and characters themselves really well cared for and characterized by that Korean style that so distinguishes their games. It will often happen that you stop to admire your character, who as the level increases and the obtaining of more and more powerful equipment begins to become more and more "cool", thanks to the maniacal care for aesthetics, especially the costumes in the item shop, which Koreans dedicate to their games.
Even the color palette itself is set to completely different values from the titles we are used to, with light colors often very bright and cheerful and at the same time dark themes very characterized by a mix of blue / purple turning towards black in some contexts. Last but not least the technical optimization, definitely of a very low level if we consider the graphic quality that is offered to us. It goes from peaks to 90-100 fps in constant dips of even 40 FPS in the most complex areas. As if that were not enough, we have very often had problems with blocking bugs in the quests that forced us to accept them again.
Astellia Online presents itself as one of the many MMORPGs that arrived in the West after a not very hot launch in Korea, which however tries to adapt to our style by offering ideas that we certainly found very interesting. The Astel Cards system is certainly something that had not yet been seen in the world of MMOs and it has certainly given us a lot of satisfaction during the approximately 30 hours of play, which however allowed us to evaluate practically the whole game, except for some aspects. PVP that we will have to test more thoroughly and which we will talk about in a future study. The end-game is in fact limited to a few activities, which are however fun enough to play in the company of a guild, while in solo we believe it is an experience that is too repetitive and difficult to deal with.
