First Impressions: Requiem: Bloodymare
Filed under: Fantasy, Horror, Galleries, Screenshots, Game mechanics, New titles, Opinion, Hands-on, First Impressions, Requiem: Bloodymare
What you behold is our First Impressions for Requiem: Bloodymare, a feature meant to give you some idea of what gameplay will be like once you've signed up for an account. Keep in mind: this is not a guide, there is no insider knowledge here. This post merely details the experiences playing this title for the first few hours; your mileage may vary. Up, up, and away!
To begin with, once you've entered your login information, you're taken on a ride through ... someone's ... bloodstream. Right off the bat: visceral horror. Nice! Remember: To view the hi-res versions of these images, just click on them and you'll be taken to their corresponding Gallery counterparts.
I decided to roll a female Kruxena, the "Barbarian" class of R:B. You'll find a pretty limited set of character customization options; presumably the creativity went to the horrific creatures you'll encounter instead.
What you see here is the password protection system, or "passcode". You create your own 4-number code and enter it every time you want to play. Note that the preponderance of the color red does ease up once you start actually playing, but then it turns into a surfeit of the color brown.
Continuing the grue, the loading screen displays a sewn-up wound that unzips as you get closer to 100%, with Se7en-like imagery flickering in the background. Turns out it's kinda hard to play when you don't want to touch the keyboard.
But I persevere, and find myself standing before this Final Fantasy-like structure. What does it do? I never found out. Instead, I spent a good deal of time looking around the area and playing with the camera. Left-click-and-hold moves the camera around; right-click-and-hold moves the avatar as well; scroll wheel zooms the view in and out. A welcome feature is clicking the middle mouse button, which toggles continuous run. This way, you can just use the right mouse button to maneuver around, leaving your left hand free.
And here's Our Heroine, Molly the Bartuk. She accessorizes well. The user interface does everything you've come to expect in an MMO, with no surprises.
Here's the first quest, heralded by our friend the Golden Bang. This serves to introduce you to the opening city and its denizens.
As an aside, R:B has a microtransaction item store, but I'm afraid of those things, so I didn't explore them in depth. You get a screenshot of the interface, complete with section for "Gravity Points", but that's it.
Here I am, entering Guard Village, where everything is in a lovely state of disrepair. I'm not being facetious here (for a change); I actually do think what Gravity's done here is quite nice. There's a commitment to the aesthetic that sustains itself throughout the game, combining future tech with industrial motifs to create a feel of once-functional, yet tantalizingly unusable machinery abounding.
For example, this structure here serves no purpose other than to be massive, imposing, and yet discarded. My only gripe about the look of the world is its overwhelmingly brown palette.
Here are some shabby lean-tos, only a few of which have actual vendors within.
Speaking of vendors, this is the lovely Andrea, owner of the only Tavern in town. For the most part, the NPCs lack distinct voices of their own, opting instead for a purely expositional tone with light friendliness overlaid. Nothing wrong with this, and in fact many players probably don't take the time to read what NPCs actually say anyway.
Who runs Bartertown? It's worth noting that your avatar can jump from a very great height and not take damage. Whether this is true of all 3 races or just the Bartuk remains to be tested, but it's still fun to take shortcuts this way.
I couldn't help myself -- as soon as I saw this building, I thought of the Mako Reactor from Final Fantasy 7. In fact, there are a ton of references scattered throughout the game that are either unintentional or spot-on, depending on your personal philosophy.
Once I finally made it to the wilderness, I found some interesting little touches like these large pipes that end abruptly, and those gaping caves that don't actually go anywhere. Some nice mutated plantlife, a la Gamma World, and of course, the crazy critters, which we're by and by coming to.
A word on combat: a right-click begins combat, and it's the standard button-press for special abilities. Health and mana bar are in place, and combat goes until either combatant is dead. I've found that humanoid enemies will sometimes attack first, but you can freely wander among non-humanoid creatures without worry.
The quests do a fairly good job of introducing you to the local vendors and what each of them do. There's a little too much forced travel between Guard Village and the Northern Watchtower, but there is a Hearthstone-like ability that's accessible later on that should help ameliorate this to an extent.
See! Tell me that's not an homage! Regardless, it's a good one, so we'll allow it!
It should be noted that many of these screenshots were taken while I had been disconnected from the server, but could still run around the area, so there are no people in a lot of these shots. Otherwise, what you'd be seeing here would be NPCs that offer a way to get between cities in a hurry, much like World of Warcraft has. For the first couple of hours, I experienced intermittent droppage of connection, but only once did I lose what progress I'd made up to that point. I do still get sporadic framerate slowing from time to time, though whether that's a problem with R:B or my own Internet connection I can't tell.
More dilapidated ancient tech. Just a few examples of this sort of thing goes a long way toward selling an atmosphere.
Molly goes for a swim and gets pretty far off-shore before being halted by an invisible barrier.
And finally, what you've all been waiting for: a horrible abomination! Seriously, almost all of the creatures encountered were pretty nasty, many of which following the "skinned/disproportionate limbs" aesthetic. Look at this thing, with its two feet sticking out of its back. It really makes you want to kill it and put it out of your misery.
One thing I noticed between the beta and now is that the dying animation these creatures go through has been toned down quite a bit. During the beta, once the killing blow was struck, a creature would lose limbs, and go into spastic convulsions on the ground while it finally gave up the ghost. It was horrible to watch, but it's been taken back a few notches. There is still a twitching animation, but it's much more subdued, and that's something I'm thankful for.
Incidentally, that little blue flying thing is called a "Gentle Pez". No idea why exactly, because it will definitely eat your face off of your skull if allowed the chance.
Here's a look at the equipment interface, which is also fairly standard. I should point out that when I say "standard", that's not meant to be a put-down. There is very little at this stage of MMO development that points toward evolving elements that just work well. Why reinvent the wheel? The trick, in fact, is knowing when not to innovate, and it's here that Gravity has done right by its players.
To the left there is a player on a flying mount. There's a great, almost Baroque look to a lot of objects in R:B that should help with making it stand out to a jaded audience. I'm looking forward to seeing some higher-level content.
And here's the latest suppurating, pus-filled horror I must destroy. And I'm happy to do so. Requiem: Bloodymare is engaging in ways that might surprise you, and that's even before you pass level ten, with all the gameplay that doing so opens up to you -- item crafting, DNA modification, choosing a job class, etc. It's a solid title with a lot of disgusting monsters that you'll enjoy pulverizing. I've enjoyed my time in the world of Ethergia and anticipate further enjoyment the deeper I get.
Go check out the full Gallery, accessible by any of these screenshots, or by the Gallery link at the top of this post. There are more pictures there than are represented in the post itself, including shots of each of the playable races, and a series of storyline artwork that explain a little bit of how the world came to be. All in all, Requiem: Bloodymare is worth trying out for yourself. But don't play if you're a bit squeamish about blood and body parts -- trust me on this.
Go check out the full Gallery, accessible by any of these screenshots, or by the Gallery link at the top of this post. There are more pictures there than are represented in the post itself, including shots of each of the playable races, and a series of storyline artwork that explain a little bit of how the world came to be. All in all, Requiem: Bloodymare is worth trying out for yourself. But don't play if you're a bit squeamish about blood and body parts -- trust me on this.
Major failure plagues Second Life Mono deployment
WAR Preview Weekend attendees can start playing Friday, September 5th
EverQuest patch highlights: Station Voice and weightless coin
Hands on: The Second Life SLim client is here
Age of Conan: Still aiming for the 360
How to get to Altdorf, Ekrund, the Blighted Isle, or Nordland at level 1
The Digital Continuum: Six planets KOTORO shouldn't be without
Massively goes to WAR: An overview of Melee DPS careers for Order
MMOG Podcast Roundup: August 22nd - September 5th
Massively goes to WAR: An overview of Ranged DPS careers for Destruction
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-30-2008 @ 12:40PM
Brian! said...
What was your impression though? Meaning, I really don't have strong sense of what you think of the game.
However, it is a nice walkthrough with pictures.
I was in the beta for a while and my impression there was that the game had a heavy grind feel. The quests were not planned out well and had a feel that I needed to run all over the place.
The gore was fun for a while, but it only covered up a bland me-to MMO. I feel really good MMOs should look at all the things the genera now does well and then tries to evolve in the places MMOs get the biggest complaints while slipping in a few new systems never seen before in the MMO worlds.
Take WAR. Public quests... just a way to make world raiding inclusive to everyone standing around. Very cool. Oh, and I love their quest idea that if you go and kill monsters in the woods, likely someone will reward you as opposed to the MMO that you have to find someone first to ask you to go kill those monsters, even after you have slain 100s of them nearby.
Reply
6-30-2008 @ 2:36PM
Tony said...
I played the beta too and all I thought was this:
"This game is trying way too hard".
I know it's horror themed, but nothing about it is scary or horrifying. It's just dark and almost needlessly gory. All the enemies just look like they've been turned inside out and given an extra set of teeth.
And then there's the name. Bloodymare? Seriously?
Reply
7-01-2008 @ 12:07AM
Kaoy said...
I have been playing for about a week now, and I feel I can clairfy a few things. That struture that is shown in the first image past the loading screen is the buisness end of a teleporting skill. When you use a teleporting skill that you get pretty early on, you will warp to your 'Home Point'. At level 22, I have only run into 3 of these: 1 on either side of the Guard Vilage and one in the next Hub town(not the 4-5 little cities you will go through on your way between them).
The 'flying mount' is not actually flying or higher level conent. It is a mount that you can buy from the game shop for 30 days. It is on the cheaper end of non-consumables. They are firmly rooted to the ground though. the only flying in this game is done through that air pad with the Wing symbol in one of the pictures. for 50 of the games currency(really cheap), you can fly from town to town in a minute or so, as compared to a 5 minute treck it would other wise take. If you are flying long distances, you may have to hop 2-3 of these flyers to get to where you want to go. Saddly, these are not present near hub towns. This is agrivating, becuse many of your pre level 20 quests start of in Guard village. You have to walk from the nearest town to get to it. It's a minor oversite, but a bit of an annoyance, ecspecially when you are going to the second hub town, as there are many aggro mobs between it and any near by town.
Also, you race does not define your class. It more so defines your overall play style. Turans(humans) become Defenders(think Paladin, but with a big ass wallop) or Templars(healers, powerful spell casters, and some good buffs). Surprisingly, they are the mose surviable class do to the fact they can heal easy and buff thier own mana regen from early levels.
The race that Akela chose become a barbain like class(whos name escapes me) or Shamans, who are the most direstly powerful casters in the game and get Good AoE's early one. They get a good Con boost when they level, but lack any ablity to heal thier own self, making them ever so slightly easier to kill than Turans.
My race of choice(with the crazy ass name I can't even begin to spell) can become either Assasins or Soul Reapers. Both are good at DoT's, and are the most squishy race of all(hell if I know why... I'm partially made of metal). The Assasin is about what you think... ast attack, decent DoT and DPS and hard to hit, except for thier ever so massive weakness to casters do to low health and the difficutly of dodging spells. The Soul Reaper is a DoT caster that can also steal helth, make an opponet stuck in place, confuse monsters, and in mid levels(35-ish) start getting abblities to summon undead.
And about the setting... wait till you get to the 2nd Hub town... it blew my freaking mind. Instant realization of 'So THAT'S why everone isn't dead'. Then again, there is a 2nd Island you can start on, and I know nothing of it. Not gotten so far that I am about to go Island hopping.
Reply
7-01-2008 @ 12:14AM
Unknown said...
Kaoy: Thanks for the details! The other Bartuk profession is Warrior, and Kruxena is the name of the cyborg race.
Brian!: I'm definitely interested in playing more of it, as I say in the final sentence of the first paragraph. I'm not that invested in too many games at once, but we'll see how far R:B takes me.
Tony: I know. Bloodymare is kind of stretching the motif, but hey, it's memorable!
Reply