More about Atlantica.

So, I really like Atlantica. The reason mainly being because it's a free to play game but with a system that deviates noticeably from the norm.

First, a screenshot: My character (Aemris) and Jon's (Shiren) in Sapporo, one of many Atlantica cities (the geography of Atlantica is based on the real world, but with a lot of fanciful elements and interpretations of history).

Like most MMOs, you make your own personal character. You've got quests mostly collecting things and talking to people and stuff like that. There's a crafting system. And so on. But the part that I find really cool is actually the strategy game aspect.

Your character can hire on mercenaries to make her own unit. I think there's up to 9 spaces in the unit, right now I only have 5 filled. There's various different unit types you can hire and mix together... a lot of them based on fanciful interpretations of history as well (there's even a Spartan unit, whose Heroic promotion is called 'Leonidas', I shit you not). You can equip them all separately, set what abilities they'll use, train their skills and so forth.

Battles have a wait time similar to Final Fantasy. Your unit members (including yourself, of course) have a acting order according to their speed, but beyond that there's also a timer -- around 15-30 seconds -- for you to input actions for your whole unit. Once that phase is done, the enemy phase begins and the AI (or opponent if you're doing pvp) gets their own short period of time to act.

There's different types of actions, too, of course. There's basic attacks. There's special abilities which use AP. There's items and scrolls you can use for various magical effects. Then there's other strategical elements including timing and placement of attacks (you can actually have one unit attack while another is charging a special move, for example.)

Types of actions depend on the weapon the mercenary uses. My PC for example is a spearwoman, so she has 'piercing' attacks that'll thrust two units deep into an enemy force. Bows can hit the back row even when there's guardians up front. Shamans get buffing and healing effects. And so on. There's six weapons total, with subclasses based on each weapon: swords, spears, axes, bows, guns and cannons. The Spartans I mentioned earlier are a spear-based class; Shamans are staff based... there's these cool beast-riding units that are Axe based, and so on.

I'm not sure whether PCs get access to all the subclasses (yet?), but mercenaries of all types can be hired. You can even name your mercenaries, with the right item... they'll likely stay with you through the course of your gameplay in Atlantica, unless you fire them (and firing actually costs *more* money the higher level they are, go figure!)

Oh, that's right, I should mention... Atlantica is currently on open beta. So the game isn't really in full swing yet, but I'm already quite thrilled by what I've played. I secretly hope it will hit it big, but not too big that I'll have to deal with idiots swarming all over the place. So far, actually, I've not met many idiots at all... especially not the sort that'll randomly walk up to my character and ask 'r u a girl' or try to rub up against her. UGH, I got those all the time in Last Chaos! I couldn't stand it!

There's still l33t speak and crappy character names, but these I can tune out just fine. I'm mostly just playing with Jon, anyway -- and yes, oh yes, you can actually combine units in a party. When we party, both of our units are on the field and we can strategize together, time our actions for devastating attacks. I totally love it, and I am pretty sure I'll never even bother with the PvP (or should I say army vs army? I dunno...) aspect. I just can't stand competitive play. :P

There actually IS a great deal to do for people who like PvP though. Plenty of arena battles and competitions, including those hosted by the GMs. There's even a system in place -- though not quite active yet, I think -- where guilds can war for supremacy over different cities in Atlantica (and there's a LOT of them. There's Tokyo, London, Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, Manila... pretty much all the major cities you can think of in Asia and Europe.) A guild with supremacy over a city can take control of its economy, determine its major industries, exact taxes on the items sold there and so on.

The last thing I will say (for now) that I really really appreciate about Atlantica is that the translation doesn't totally *suck*. I'm tired of azn MMOs with crappy English, it really detracts from the experience for me. No problems here, which is good!

So I'm going to be playing this game for a while. It's gripped my interest enough to stick with, and it's free (I wouldn't mind dropping a lil' money into this game for good items, mercenaries and/or perks though! But I'd keep that sort of spending very sparing) If anyone cares to try it out, Jon and I are usually on Macedon server -- he's Shiren, I'm Aemris. But I'm not sure if we'll stay on Macedon or not, depends on how the game's playerbase grows, I guess.