Anti-Aliased: Five free to play MMOs that are ahead of the class
Filed under: At a glance, MMO industry, Reviews, Opinion, Free-to-play, Hands-on, Anti-Aliased
Times are tough, the wallet is tight, and you still need a game to play. But what free games can you wrap your hands around that just don't suck, right? That seems to be the trouble with free to play games -- many selections all with very low quality.
But the market is not as bad as you might think. There are certainly some gems out there in the free to play market, just waiting for you to wrap your hands around them and play. Finding them however, hasn't always been easy, until now.
With the recommendations of my colleagues here at Massively, and my own personal experience, I've complied a list of 5 free to play games that are worthy of your play time. In advance, however, I wish to apologize to Chronicles of Spellborn, Wizard 101, and FusionFall. All three of these games made our favorites list, but I'm skipping them as their focus is more of a "freemium" experience, where massive areas of the games are locked out until a subscription is purchased. This column is only going to concentrate on the free to play, item mall driven games, just to clarify for all of you readers out there.
So which games made the best of the free to play list? Continue reading and you'll find out.
#5 -- Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine
Squeaking by at number five is Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, sometimes called MegaTen for short. Imagine is one of those games that borders oddly between very well conceived at parts, and down right unpolished during others. However, its unique presentation, combat system, negotiation system, and connections to Digital Devil Saga 2 have aided this one in making the list.
Imagine's combat system is one of the brightest points of the game, as it utilizes an interactive real-time combat system that goes beyond just simple skill presses. Characters have the ability to block, counter, and power attack enemies, as well as perform 3 hit combos to push enemies around on the screen.
If you need more firepower, you can always enlist a demon to aid you in your struggle in Neo Tokyo. The game's negotiation system lets you speak with demons and attempt to persuade (or force) them into a contract. Contracted demons can be summoned at any time to aid you like a pet, or you can even take control of your demons in combat by flipping back and forth between your character and your demon. This ability is especially useful, as your demon can survive the battle and resurrect your character should you die.
#4 -- Dungeon Runners
According to the Dungeon Runners website, they are "an MMO that doesn't SUCK." I'd honestly have to agree with them, especially when their game has hip-hop gnomes that eat your items and s#1t gold. How can you turn that down?! Honestly!
Dungeon Runners is an MMO that is a parody of MMOs. When you go in to play, do not expect anything to be serious. The entire game is tongue in cheek, and completely wonderful for it. Rare items are in rainbow colors, because, honestly, one color a rare item does not make. The quest givers in the game are 10 kinds of insane, and the main village that you live in is called Townston.
Overall, DR is a Diablo throwback game. You pick your class, you go into dungeons, and you kill everything in sight for massive rewards. That's it. Heck, you can even mix and match skills to basically become your own class. Yet what Dungeon Runners does is create a beautiful ballet of simplicity and monster limb removal. Also, you can get a vorpal pizza cutter as your main hand weapon.
My only problem with DR was the presence of ads in the free version of the game. There's ads in the top of the screen, ads when you die sometimes, and ads when you login and logout. Certainly, the ads provide the awesome benefit of letting DR give you all of the content without that many restrictions to gameplay in the free version, but the ads are really annoying. Of course, if you pony up the five bucks a month you never have to see them again, but something about having ads makes me miss the presence of an item mall.
But the market is not as bad as you might think. There are certainly some gems out there in the free to play market, just waiting for you to wrap your hands around them and play. Finding them however, hasn't always been easy, until now.
With the recommendations of my colleagues here at Massively, and my own personal experience, I've complied a list of 5 free to play games that are worthy of your play time. In advance, however, I wish to apologize to Chronicles of Spellborn, Wizard 101, and FusionFall. All three of these games made our favorites list, but I'm skipping them as their focus is more of a "freemium" experience, where massive areas of the games are locked out until a subscription is purchased. This column is only going to concentrate on the free to play, item mall driven games, just to clarify for all of you readers out there.
So which games made the best of the free to play list? Continue reading and you'll find out.
#5 -- Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine
Squeaking by at number five is Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, sometimes called MegaTen for short. Imagine is one of those games that borders oddly between very well conceived at parts, and down right unpolished during others. However, its unique presentation, combat system, negotiation system, and connections to Digital Devil Saga 2 have aided this one in making the list.
Imagine's combat system is one of the brightest points of the game, as it utilizes an interactive real-time combat system that goes beyond just simple skill presses. Characters have the ability to block, counter, and power attack enemies, as well as perform 3 hit combos to push enemies around on the screen.
If you need more firepower, you can always enlist a demon to aid you in your struggle in Neo Tokyo. The game's negotiation system lets you speak with demons and attempt to persuade (or force) them into a contract. Contracted demons can be summoned at any time to aid you like a pet, or you can even take control of your demons in combat by flipping back and forth between your character and your demon. This ability is especially useful, as your demon can survive the battle and resurrect your character should you die.
#4 -- Dungeon Runners
According to the Dungeon Runners website, they are "an MMO that doesn't SUCK." I'd honestly have to agree with them, especially when their game has hip-hop gnomes that eat your items and s#1t gold. How can you turn that down?! Honestly!
Dungeon Runners is an MMO that is a parody of MMOs. When you go in to play, do not expect anything to be serious. The entire game is tongue in cheek, and completely wonderful for it. Rare items are in rainbow colors, because, honestly, one color a rare item does not make. The quest givers in the game are 10 kinds of insane, and the main village that you live in is called Townston.Overall, DR is a Diablo throwback game. You pick your class, you go into dungeons, and you kill everything in sight for massive rewards. That's it. Heck, you can even mix and match skills to basically become your own class. Yet what Dungeon Runners does is create a beautiful ballet of simplicity and monster limb removal. Also, you can get a vorpal pizza cutter as your main hand weapon.
My only problem with DR was the presence of ads in the free version of the game. There's ads in the top of the screen, ads when you die sometimes, and ads when you login and logout. Certainly, the ads provide the awesome benefit of letting DR give you all of the content without that many restrictions to gameplay in the free version, but the ads are really annoying. Of course, if you pony up the five bucks a month you never have to see them again, but something about having ads makes me miss the presence of an item mall.


















Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
vincentakuma said on 7:21PM 4-30-2009
my top 5:
1. Free Realms- AWESOME, do anything, play it, nuff said
2. Requiem- often overlooked beautifully gory MMO
3. Ace Online- Star Fox the MMO= oh yeah!
4. Atlantica- turn based goodness Final Fantasyish MMO FTW
5. Lunia- obscure beatemup MMO with onlockable classes
Special Mention:
Savage 2- gorgeous MMO/FPS/RTS, wow.... and its free
Reply
PewPew said on 1:38PM 5-03-2009
Don't forget CONTINUUM aka SubSpace
(it is an mmo right?)
Reply
Tholine said on 10:46PM 5-05-2009
Continuum is STILL going? Man that thing was the hottest thing in '01. I remember getting pwned because I was carrying three flags in Extreme Games pub and not knowing why people were abusing me. I did figure it out in the end (still no good at aiming and shooting though) and it was a blast. It seemed to die off slowly though, I know Trench Wars was slowly declining...
But that's seriously a game to play when not wanting to play a game... good fun.
Mr. Digital said on 3:51PM 5-06-2009
Based on the criteria you gave, I'm not sure how you can consider Free Realms to be a free game, because it's just another freemium game. It has an item mall like Wizard 101, but it also has content you can only access if you have a monthly subscription, also like Wizard 101.
So considering this list isn't supposed to include freemium games, Free Realms shouldn't be on the list because it is most certainly a freemium game.
Reply
Colin Brennan said on 4:04PM 5-06-2009
I'm defining freemium as a content lock. Spellborn and W101 only let the user go up to a specific point until they have to pay to progress, such as buying new zones. (Which is darn cheap and totally worth it, by the way.)
Free Realms does not have these limitations -- the player can progress to the end of a silver job without having to purchase anything. Certainly if they wish to unlock extra jobs they can pay for them, but there is no glass ceiling on a player's progression.
Mr. Digital said on 4:21PM 5-06-2009
However, there are still jobs, quests, etc. that you can only access if you have a monthly subscription. Maybe you technically don't need them to access the majority of the game, but if you don't have access to everything the game has to offer, then you still don't truly have full access to the game. In order to access all the content of the game, you still need a monthly subscription.
You could technically say that you don't need those quests to progress. But you could say that of any MMORPG. In any MMORPG, you could skip a quest here and there and just grind on monsters if you'd rather. And with Wizard 101, you could simply declare that whatever areas are available for free constitutes the entire game and the other areas are just extra. But then you'd say, what about all the people accessing the other content, surely only the free area isn't all the game has to offer.
The same goes for Free Realms. To have the full experience of a game, you have to be able to access all parts and all things in that game. In Free Realms, you have to have a monthly subscription to be able to do that. Therefore, Free Realms is still just a freemium game.
amateuremale said on 8:06PM 5-15-2009
Hiltor the Alemagne should be a character in Dungeon Runners because it isn't serious, and even though he would likely not use a vorpal pizza cutter, maybe a bastard sword +4 in his collection. "Alemagne" is a poetic name for Germans, and Hiltor is a near-anagram for... Hitler! No, this post isn't racist, either.
Reply
ssrox said on 6:41PM 9-05-2009
SubSpace rocks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpT3l5-G0Y8
Reply