Type: Browser Based MMO Sandbox
Payment Model: Free To Play in Game Purchases
Cash Shop Review: Cash Currency is referred to as Royals and is billed in USD (United States Dollars). At time of writing 100 Royals was the lowest amount available for $5. Items available in the shop range from attribute boosting items to vanity and are not badly priced, with many items available for under 100 Royals. Given the ability to purchase stat boosting items it is possible to have players laying down large amounts of money to easily over power other players however the items do need to be equipped so the boost is not unlimited.
Key Features: Resource Gathering, Town Building, Exploration
Community Review: The local chat can be deceiving at first as the various npc bots chatting are convincing for a while until you see the repeats. Turning this off early under the menu is a must. The community in general is friendly and helpful.
Tutorial Review: Initial Tutorial is very simple and completed in under 5min, the remaining tutorial elements are given to you as quests, in some cases the quests are to simply talk to NPCs that provide you with more detailed information on the various aspects of the game
General Review
Ensemble Online has a very cute anime art style and is fairly easy to get into. The game play is very basic, click on something to interact with it if you can and the starting tutorial is not overly invasive with additional starting tips and hints being passed to you via npc quests. Combat is a little clunky in that you need to activate an attack, click on your target and then click on it again to resume your normal basic attacks.
Resource gathering is done on resource nodes such as bushes and rocks, which I struggled to find around my starting point (besides the starting rock) and I had to make use of resources around the town to get going. Gathering itself is very hands off, you click on the node, or farm and you gather the resource, you then wait for a certain amount of time, (first wait is normally about 3 seconds) then you gather again. Each time you gather the timer goes up on how long you wait. They refer to this as depleting the node, and it does regenerate over time.
The character progression system is also rather basic, but I do enjoy the simple leveling system where you make a choice in an Archetype and it auto assigns points to the relevant stats, however if you prefer micro managing where your stats go, you do have the choice to do so in the advanced menu. I witnessed 3 areas of progression, Gathering Combat and Building. Each one levels as you perform the relevant tasks and you need to assign points to improve certain aspects of your abilities. This makes for an interesting possibility for communities to specialise in one field or another, but does leave you feeling that you can't go it alone (however that is a personal opinion)
Town building is as easy as you would expect, gather the required resources, click and place the building. At time of writing, there where only 10 Structures to place, I'm unsure if you get more later on, however I did notice some vanity structures available in the cash shop.
Overall a fun game that is pleasant to play, will it keep me entertained for more than a week? Doubtful but I would not consider the time I spend in it wasted.
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