RandomNPC – Video Game RPG Reviews, Editorials, and Features

Asda Story is one of the many free-to-play MMORPGs that have become available to English speakers in recent months. In this flood, having unique features is a great asset to a new MMO. In Asda Story‘s case, this came not only in the form of its fairly unique in-game Soulmate and Sowel systems, but also in an advertising campaign that guaranteed the fun of players. Making guarantees and living up to them are two entirely different things though.

Despite its title, Asda Story features very little actual story. There are bits and pieces that can be picked up from NPCs, but most of the story seems to be the minor development of the NPCs as characters complete quests for them. The number of these quests begins to trail off once the player reaches level twenty or so as well, hurting both story progression speed as well as gameplay variety. This is further hindered by poor localization. Some parts of the script seem to be periodically updated into more readable texts, but the quality of the writing still has a long way to go, particularly when it comes to the skill trees.

Speaking of skill trees, they are one of the best parts of the game. After reaching a certain point, players can choose from one of three classes: Archer, Mage, and Warrior. While this may seem limited, all of these classes is further divided up into three subclasses, each of them with a variety of skills to choose between. Since characters aren’t restricted to one particular subclass, they can mix and match skills however they want. There are obvious incentives to focusing more on one than spreading things around a lot, but there’s still a good deal of flexibility that many other MMOs lack. Having a Soulmate will unlock additional bonus abilities that don’t conflict with each character’s individual skill points, adding even more to the player’s skillset.

Another way that characters can customize themselves is through Sowel. Sowel are a mix between souls and jewels that offer various bonuses such as defense or dexterity. Sowel are the primary factors in determining a character’s equipment statistics since they rely on Sowel for the majority of their power. For example, a level 10 piece of armor will offer almost nothing to the wearer unless there’s a Sowel to take advantage of the armor’s inherent stat multiplier. Option Sowel work a bit differently in that their power is always the same and doesn’t rely on the equipment’s amplification rate, but not all equipment has slots for them. By messing around with Sowel, it’s possible to get stat bonuses that will further amplify the effectiveness of their chosen skillset.

The bad news is that after all that customization and building of a legendary hero, most battles will simply end up some combination of clicking on enemies and watching them get hacked away at with the occasional skill thrown in as needed. Forming parties will certainly help here, but the game is very much hurt by the fact that most enemies follow the exact same tactics. Dungeons offer some variety thanks to enemies that will actually use skills, but the patterns found there remain much the same between similar looking enemies too. It’s far more likely that players will die as a result of getting in over their heads, one of the game’s many bugs resulting in a very bad situation, or getting disconnected from the server and slaughtered while defenseless than due to the challenges that non-boss monsters provide.

As a whole, the interface is decent enough. There’s nothing really special about it aside from a map that allows the player to click and automatically head to that position. There aren’t any major shortcomings either, but there are a few minor ones such as the game not disabling potion usage when the player’s at full HP in case the wrong button is hit. Another minor issue is the language filter which prevents players from saying words such as “dungeon” but fails to filter out a variety of actual swear words and common phrases used by gold sellers. Those issues aside, the biggest problem is that the hotkeys may occasionally stop working for a while, but that’s more the fault of the game’s many bugs than the interface itself.

Asda Story‘s visual style is very bright and cartoonish, complete with lots of mechanical parts, pipes, and the occasional giant robot scattered about. It will definitely appeal more to some players than others, but at least the character and enemy designs are pretty good. Thanks to the Sowel system, players have more options when it comes to choosing an outfit that won’t significantly hamper their effectiveness in battle. Though some outfits are definitely better than others, a few points of defense won’t matter much when the player has thousands. It’s a shame that the most variety is offered at the lowest level where armor potential is so low that even the best Sowel can’t help though. Another big problem is that since each continent has its own theme and there are currently huge level gaps between continents, players will find themselves fighting through grasslands and more grasslands for a huge portion of their playtime. Dungeons can help mix this up, but upon reaching the second dungeon, players will discover that they too are burdened with the same problem. It certainly doesn’t help that each of these regions has a number of enemies that are palette-swapped versions of one another. This is common in games, but some areas have more than half a dozen versions of the same enemy, complete with the same fighting tactics, often right next to one another, and sometimes even much the same color aside from some very minor differences that can only be seen when paying very close attention.

Another aspect of the game that suffers heavily from re-use is the music. The number of background tracks each continent has can be counted on one hand, and none of them are all that great to begin with. The end result is hours upon hours of listening to the same mediocre tracks unless the player opts to turn off the sound. The sound effects are a bit better, but they’re not good enough to make up for the lacking background music.

Perhaps the most glaring problem with Asda Story is not related to the game’s design or even lack of content so much as the incredible number of bugs that have yet to be caught. Most of these bugs are little more than minor annoyances such as hotkeys suddenly not working or the toggle that filters out talk from non-party members failing. That said, there are some large and more crippling bugs which, though far fewer in number than the minor ones, can have a far more negative impact on the player’s gaming experience. Most of these bugs take place in dungeons, and they can range from not being able to target oneself and/or both enemies and allies to getting stuck in an endless loop with NPCs when attempting to take on a quest. Since dungeons and quests are such a large portion of character growth, these bugs are doubly problematic and make life difficult for mid-level characters, especially if the player dies and is subjected to the game’s incredibly high exp penalty as the result of one of these bugs.

As it is now, Asda Story is quite buggy, has a surprisingly high shortage of content starting at mid-levels, and is in dire need of a lot more variety in general. If the player dies more than a few times, either due to bugs or their own fault, the lack of quests and extremely low enemy exp will make it very difficult to catch up without a lot of boring grinding. There are some items that may be purchased with real money that can help decrease this problem, but such items should not be required in order to make the game more playable. The good news it that the class system offers a great deal of flexibility and is one of the better aspects of the game, along with the Soulmate system. Sadly, they aren’t enough to make up for the game’s many faults at this point. Asda Story does have some potential, though it has a long way to go before it can compete well with most other MMOs, even many of the other free-to-plays. It simply seems to have left the beta portion of its development far too early with very poor results.