After plenty of build-up and anticipation, Wangyuan Shengtang Entertainment and Gameforge have officially launched their MMORPG Swords of Legends Online! Hosting a unique storyline based on Chinese mythology, players will experience a plot unlike many others they have before. Tie that in with the full RPG features including a multi-layered set of menus and a set of sophisticated, complex combat mechanics. It definitely is a detailed game, but is it worth playing? For the most part, I would say it is.

Story

After the death of Pingu, the creator of heaven and earth, the world underwent change as his remains turned into two substances: pure qi and dark qi. From these two qi’s came the creation of multiple gods and the human creation of the Ancestral Sword, powered by the sacrificed soul of the original wielder’s brother. It was a weapon that was so devastating, so incredibly potent, that it could wound the gods themselves!

The creation of this sword inspired the wicked Longyuan Clan to sacrifice the souls of untold numbers of innocent victims to create the Seven Ancient Swords. These abominable weapons were so destructive that the blacksmith who created them was banished to the underworld, a realm of cold and ghosts. Since then, many wars have been fought, many battles won and lost, but the memories of the gods and the mythical swords began to fade. The gods themselves have been silent for a long time, and the dangers of the past remain undefeated.

Now, a new generation of warriors must learn how to awaken the power of the ancient swords and finally put the evil powers of dark qi to rest!

Gameplay

As mentioned above, this game does introduce somewhat complex mechanics overall. They did a great job adding a much clearer tutorial than what they offered in the beta, so it should be fairly easy for players to learn them. To provide a brief breakdown of them, you will have two different versions of your controls: combat-focused and control-focused.

Combat-focused controls allow the player to move their viewpoint on the screen with their mouse while moving their character with the A, W, S, D keys. While in this mode, you will have a main attack on your left mouse button, a second attack on your right mouse button, and more skills set up on your quick-use slot menu. These are all completely customizable, so once you have a few skill choices to go through, open the skill menu and place whichever attacks you want in their proper location.

Control-focused controls allow the player to move their viewpoint by click-and-dragging the mouse on the screen while moving the character only forward, backward, or sideways in accordance to where the point-of-view the screen is on at the start of the movement. This mode is mostly for menu use and not really for combat, but it can be handy when you are trying to use a multitude of skills since some of them can be placed on a lower row that doesn’t have a hotkey setup.

You will have multiple menus to work with in this game. From inventory, skills, maps, quests, and more to the stores, stash, and other trait shops. Each one has its specific use and getting to know how to pull them up quickly becomes useful. Not to mention that learning what each menu screen has on it and what the overall layout is will come in handy when trying to upgrade gear, expand inventory, alter skills, and more.

All in all, I highly suggest taking some time to look over the menus once you have been given your first mount (the flying sword) and have enough equipment to start playing around with everything in them. The shortened version of this would be to check things as you get them, if you want to use them or replace your gear with something new then just right-click on it, and anything you don’t want you should sell or put in your stash for later use. Keep in mind that there is an overall account stash to share between your characters as well, so don’t be frivolous either.

Once you get far enough into the questline, you will also unlock the ability to cook meals, make or improve equipment at the blacksmith, and more. Combat is the main focus of this game, but don’t forget to take some time and look into what else you can get your character to learn how to do. Of course, you will have to find recipes for everything, but most of them are found while you are already venturing around doing quests.

When it comes to leveling up your character, questing is definitely one of the best ways to go about this. However, the main part of utilizing the MMO aspect of the game is through the dungeons. You can team up with other players to do the various dungeons throughout the world, each one sporting its own queue menu to join others or look for teammates. They are also available at different difficulties and as you would expect, the harder the difficulty the better the reward.

After getting your feet on the ground with this game and enough time in that you should have a fond understanding of the menus, dungeons, and overall combat system, you will be granted access to the housing system. This is where you can make your own resting area to do pretty much whatever you want. Customize the house to however you want, given you have the materials and/or money to get what you desire, and then enjoy a calm area in this hectic world. You can also visit other homes or bring players to see yours, so don’t be shy and let your creativity fly!

Last thing to go over would be the Player-vs-Player aspect of the game. Once you are confident in your abilities, you can challenge other players to combat. It is pretty straightforward, but it will become available a little time later since you will need to be long out of the “Beginner” levels of the game.

Visuals and Audio

The overall aesthetics of this game is simply marvelous. Everything you can see is well designed and fitting to the culture of which it takes its roots from. Characters, cities, backgrounds, the sky, the cosmetics… there is really nothing to complain about when it comes to any of the visuals of this beautifully crafted title.

As for the audio, the same can not be said. Unfortunately, they tended to have a few errors throughout the English version of the game. Some of the menu items were still in Chinese (although they were slowly being fixed), some of the dialogue that was said by the player character was not in English, and then they committed what has to be the worst aspect of voiced dialogue - cutting sentences early and late while also not properly matching the subtitles. At least the music and sound effects were all on point and very well designed to match the game.

Replayability

You have multiple classes to choose from, plenty of different options when it comes to your skill tree and ability point choices, tons of quests, multiple dungeons that you can run with players, and so much more to this game! There is plenty of reason to keep on playing this game, be it to improve your main character or start new ones.

What Could Be Better

While the majority of the voice acting is very well done, the way it was input into the game was very poor. I can’t vouch for any version aside from the English version, but they should make the subtitles match much better and alter the timing of the lines so that they aren’t cutting them off. It isn’t like they are being cut off because I was moving too quickly either. These lines kept getting cut off because they started too late or the next line started too early in the middle of a cutscene.

Having plenty of quests to do is fine, but it is impossible to tell what is the main quest and what is a side quest. Unless they are trying to say that every quest is as important as the other ones, there is no guided way to tell which quests will progress the overall story of the game. I ended up just doing everything that I came across to make progress and sometimes they felt more important than other ones, but I had no definitive way to tell if it was or not.

Conclusion

Swords of Legends Online is as fantastical to experience as the world it is set in looks! I have been enjoying my time in the game and plan to keep on grinding my character further moving forward. There are so many things to do in this game, it is hard to get bored with it all. While it may be a little bit overwhelming at first, getting through this game has been a wondrous adventure with a pretty interesting story. It has a few issues here and there, but nothing that can’t be patched moving forward. Definitely a fun title for fans of a modernized version of the classic MMORPG-style games!