Thread: Vindictus

Anyone played this recently? It's an action-heavy MMORPG made by those weird dudes at Nexon.net, and it uses the Source engine. It's free to play, and apparently they recently got rid of the token system it had before. I don't know what the token system was beforehand, but I guess it was "give us money to play high-level stuff."

Vindictus is very... uh, asian. Spend 10 seconds playing it, especially as either of the girl characters, and it's pretty damned obvious. I've seen the girl characters running around in a cat getup (cat boots, cat gloves, whisker thingies, and then of course a cat ear hairband thing), which made me stop and puke all over the wall. Still, the actual gameplay is pretty mindlessly fun, I just wish the art style and sound and, well, everything wasn't so nauseatingly JRPG-esque.

It seems there are four classes right now, and customization options are limited for each. You have Lann, the typical dual-wielding rogue-y kind of guy, though he seems to wear heavy armor instead of leather. You have some random chick whose name escapes me that handles all the spellcasting duties, and seems to wear lingerie instead of armor. You've got a ridiculous huge roidasaurus that swings around a giant peni-- sorry, a giant tree/log/thing and I'm not really sure what his role is, other than to be a badass. You also have a chick named Fiona who's the sword-and-shield type. She's the only one I've fiddled with so far.

Combat's pretty simple. You mash left mouse to do basic attacks, and they combo together automatically in an extremely flashy manner. Right click executes a smash attack, which I guess is their way of saying "heavy attack." They're even flashier than usual, and I've noticed that the particular smash attack depends on how many regular attacks you made before using it. You have a stamina bar that's consumed by sprinting, using smash attacks, or carrying/throwing/swinging large objects. You also have a dodge ability, which is used to avoid the big attacks bosses and some monsters might use. Fiona has a guard ability where she predictably uses her shield to block. I'm not sure if the other characters get this ability or not.

You can carry three item types and one secondary weapon with you into battle. You start with a healing potion, phoenix feather (revives dead teammates), and repair kit (your shit takes damage and can eventually break during combat - you can run off and quickly fix your shit using a repair kit.) Your starting secondary weapon is a spear, which is thrown rather than used as a melee weapon. All of these items are finite, and choosing harder difficulties when you start the battle can limit how many of these you can take with you (you can have 7 spears on normal difficulty, but choosing hard restricts you to only carrying 4 into battle.)

Everything's done in an instance. You run up to a boat, choose which "battle" or dungeon you want to go to, and it ships you and your party into its own little instanced version.

Boss fights are both fun and tedious at the same time. Like any proper action game, each boss has a limited set of moves with specific tells, and you have to learn these tells and learn to avoid the boss's attacks, using time between each attack to zip in and stab the boss. I haven't played with a party yet, but doing things like throwing crates at the boss or throwing spears at the boss can make them briefly fall to their knees, allowing everyone to get close and mash buttons until they get back up and start swinging an oversized weapon again. So far I can basically tank the boss and not really have to worry about moving away very much, but I'm told there's a specific boss commonly referred to as the noob crusher, since he apparently hits incredibly hard (apparently he can literally one-shot most players of the appropriate level.)

It's free to play, and it's fun to see the Source engine used in such an unusual way, so I do recommend everyone at least give it a quick glance. If you're into those sickly-sweet JPRG things, you might actually find something you can get into. For me, I think I'll be stopping after another hour or two of play, simply because it's getting to the point that I'd rather stick a knife in a light socket than keep playing, despite the actual gameplay being pretty fun.

It was a fun game, but the levels and bosses got repetitive. Dodge this strike, hit 2-3 combos, dodge again, hit 2-3 combos...It was all just the same. Quite a few Disorder people played it (even had our guild created in there) and it was fun, but far from sustainable.