SUMODOWNLOAD

Regnum Online isn’t a new kid on the block. The game has been under development for several years now by an Argentinian company called NGD Studios. Recently. they announced that it has left the beta stage and has gone live. I decided I needed to check it out.

There are several reasons why I tried this game. My main motivation was that my migration from Windows to Linux at my home computer has severely limited my choices for MMORPG’s. Sure I can run WoW or Guild Wars through Wine, but I wanted to try something different, I wanted to play Linux games and explore the Linux gaming world. Above it all, the game was free, so I had nothing to lose.

Downloading and installing the game went without a hitch for me using the installation guide from the Regnum Online forums. Unfortunately, like most Linux games, Regnum’s Linux client has problems with some ATI graphic cards. Ishida for example was able to install the game, but couldn’t play it since the game kept crashing on startup due to his ATI card.

At first, I found the game to be a bit slow. Sure leveling-up is not that hard, but the absence of health and mana potions in the game forced me to rest more often than I would want to.

Eventually, I realized that fighting in a party with a healer makes it a lot easier, and makes leveling a lot faster even though the experience points from kills are distributed among the party members. The system has grown on me, and I like how it promotes team work and makes full use of each character’s abilities.

Regnum Online features three realms at war. At the start of the game, you need to pick a realm to fight for, and as you get to the higher levels, you will need to defend it against players from the other realms. I haven’t gotten to a level where I could fight for my realm yet, but from what I have read, each battle involves defending or assaulting various castles or forts. The Regnum Online site keeps tabs on which realms are winning and losing wars, as well as clan and player statistics.

The graphics of the game was surprisingly good! The terrain, vegetation and weather effects are at par with most MMORPG’s out there. If I were to nitpick, and I will, the water needs a little work. The water effects on Silkroad Online was way more to my liking. I wish it looked a little more like that. The lakes and oceans of Regnum looked a little artificial for me. However, on particular lighting angles, the water does look good. The spells and other attacks of the players and monsters would also look better with a little more flash.

You can purchase some premium items using real money if you want to enhance your game experience. You can buy mounts, experience helpers and potions that will accelerate your healing in between battles. These premium items are designed not to give you an advantage over players who do not buy them, however, I am sure there is some advantage to them or you wouldn’t be buying them anyway.

Although the game is now officially live, it still seems like a beta game. There are several bugs that sometimes cause the game to crash, some quests are impossible to complete due to missing NPC’s or monsters. The game was originally in Spanish, and the translations have not been completed yet. Because of that, some of the menus have missing text. Even the in-game help file is empty!

There are some things I wish it has and I wish it doesn’t have. For example, I wish it had a proper map of towns and the surrounding areas. It was a PITA to find quest related NPC’s, or find places you need to go to. There is no buddy system so I don’t know if my buddies are online so I can chat with them, and finding them or your party mates is difficult since you need to use a cumbersome coordinate-based system. I also wish you could move using mouse clicks instead of the w,a,s and d keys. Since you could move the camera view, I wish it stayed where you leave it, instead of trying to constantly return to the character’s rear.

Overall, I like this game. Sure it needs work here and there, but it’s a work in progress. If you decide to play the game, look me up at Syrtis, I have a conjurer there named Galynn.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 5:06 pm and is filed under Game Reviews, PC, Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.