Most MMOs in today's market have been have straying away from old fashion MMORPGs and instead are leaning towards MMOs that focus on other genres. We have MMO shooters, MMO action games and what not, but these MMOs only focus on one genre at a time. So how about an MMO that focuses on three?
Soul Master is a new MMO title published by GamesCampus that mixes arcade action and RTS game play with the features of an MMORPG all rolled into one pretty package. Players can travel the world of Soul Master and participate in story driven PvE or competitive PvP. While the idea of mixing these genres together sounds great, the execution of all three can arguably be seen as hit and miss.
Joining the world of Soul Master Gold starts out with the game's lackluster character creation. You have a choice between three races (Valiant, Harmony and Holy) and only one character class from each (Knight, Bearcat and Priest, respectively.) Picking a look for your character only comes with five tops, bottoms and hair colors to choose from. To make things worse, each character class is gender locked, so you'll have to go with playing either a male knight and bearcat or a female priest. There are plans to un-gender lock the classes in the near future, though. For now, it's either take or leave it.
After you've created your character, the game opens up with a few story cut-scenes and then it teaches you the control scheme on how to handle both your main character and battle units, which is simple enough for both casual and hardcore gamers to get a grasp of. Main character movement works with WASD keys, attacks using left mouse button and special skills using the right mouse button. Controlling your battle units is as simple as pressing E to line them up and then pressing left or right mouse button on enemies to make them attack. The main tutorial takes about 15 minutes to complete, but there is also an ongoing tutorial you'll have to work through in the first couple of story chapters.
While the game is called an MMO, the MMO part of Soul Master Gold 's game world comes from the three towns that function as lobbies for players to meet, greet, shop for stuff and party up. The rest of the game is instanced for questing and PvP.
