Hellgate First Impression

Hellgate has been resurrected from the gates of hell to rejoin us once again, this time as a free to play game. The dissolved company Flagship Studios has now seen both of their games resurrected, by the same company no less. The first being Mythos, and now Hellgate, both of these games have been revived by t3fun, Redbana, and Hanbitsoft. But how does a game whose graphics felt dated back in 2007, hold up to other mmos now that we are in 2011? I never actually played this when it was first released, so this is a new experience for me as well.

Well first and foremost, if you aren't familiar with Hellgate, the game was originally a retail game that featured both a single player and multiplayer campaigns. I have to tell you this however, you will not be able to access the single player aspect of the game, it should be obvious, but for Hellgate Global, it is purely a multiplayer game. At its core the game is an action RPG with a dark setting pitting you against the spawn of hell as you go and adventure through randomly generated dungeons. The game's main focus is both solo and co-op PVE but it also does feature a dueling area for players to duke it out in their spare time.

Now, as some of you know from my blog, I got in through the 50/50 chance that t3fun put up, which was pretty neat of them to do, considering how hard it was to get a key through my normal channels. Those of you who are in the beta probably also noticed how things went to hell on the first day. After awhile a friend of mine and I got in and created our characters, at this point we got into the tutorial only to have it crash, I killed two zombies, my friend zero in that time frame. Needless to say the community raged both in the forums and on facebook. Which in a way was to be expected, but the company was on it. At that point I gave up for the day and tried the next, which has worked a bit better and allowed me to try out this game.

First and foremost is the character creation. The game features six different classes you can choose from each with their own roles. In my case, I chose the Blademaster which is a melee dps type character, which typically wield two swords. I did however like the customization in the game. While it is a rather basic setup in which you choose the face, hair, and facial hair. (if you're a guy, no bearded ladies) It does however also allow you to choose the skin and hair color as well, again nothing new, but the amount of choices in faces, hair, and ect is fairly nice, about twelve each to choose from. You can also change the height and bulk of your character, whether you want to be a steroid ridden warrior or an anorexic mage, the choice is yours! Yes, you can also bulk up the female characters, which luckily when bulked up don't look like those creepy heavy weight lifting women you see, who look more like men.

The combat is something I actually kind of enjoyed in the game. It is more action based, you click, and you attack. Or you can set the mouse buttons for spells, or just save that for your skill bars. But more than that the game does feature randomly generated dungeons, which is always a plus as it gives a bit more replay value. The enemy variety seems to be rather stagnant at lower tiers, since most of what I saw in the sections I checked out was mostly the same, but as I leveled up I did start to experience a more variety in monster, which is good, but it could use a bit more on the lower levels. As for the combat itself, the attack animations seem nice, but are only a few, which can make combat look a bit dry. On my Blademaster for instance, he only has two attack animations which are mirrors of each other in opposite directions. So staring at him while he attacks can get dry and boring fast. This may not be as big of a deal for the other classes however, since most of them are ranged, but at least for the melee class, the attack animations are rather dull.

One aspect of the game I did really like is the skill system. As you level you are free to put points in both stats and skills. The skills are also split into three classes you can invest in. You can invest in one or all depending on how you want to build your character. The different classes also differ offering a broader choice for player to choose from, when setting up their character. Probably my most often used skill on my Blademaster was a skill that grappled the enemies and pulled them close. The range was affected by the level, and the usefulness of this for a melee hero was immense, especially for those pesky ranged enemies that insist on running.

The variety of weapons in the game also caught my eye; each class has a good amount of choices to choose from even on their current level. My Blademaster had a variety of different element type swords such as fire, electricity, toxic, and specter. There were also a variety of standard one hand and two handed type blades as well. The variety also passes on to the other classes, as I have picked up numerous types of weapons for the different range classes as well.

I did get a chance to check out the pvp in the game. It was flawed, but in some aspects I like it. It just depends on who you go against. The positive is, well it is pvp and can be team based. The negative is how some people play it. In the room I played it was the first to fifteen kills, or when the timer runs out, which it was set to ten minutes. The match seemed interesting at first, but quickly you realize how much they dragged it out. I was able to kill boss monsters quicker than I was able to kill an envoker. (Envoker is a mage type class) I did manage to kill him, and he killed me as well. But as the match dragged on he was able to do something that seems very annoying. In the middle of the arena there were three wards. One healed your hitpoints, the other two healed the mana/stamina of your character. Now these are useable by both groups, even in combat. So near the end of the game, the envoker just kept running through them as I chased and hit him. From the low damage I apparently do to humans vs the healing amount he got from the middle ward; I wasn't able to really damage him. With is fairly annoying in a pvp match. So I responded by just leaving the area, and waiting until the timer ran out, and I won the match. But being that those wards are there in the first place, and so easy to abuse is a fairly annoying feature of the pvp, and with how long matches get dragged on due to the low damage to other participants make them feel rather boring and dull in comparison to the PVE. Hopefully since they do plan on making a lot of changes to the game, this will be one of them.

In the in game dialogue and quest system, Engrish seems to be the key word. I admit, typically I don't read quest info at all. I click accept and kill who I need to, and take whatever items to whoever wants them. But complaint from my friends and other players did make me look, and it seems some of the quests do incorporate a more Engrish type dialogue which makes things seem a bit awful. The others I have seen look fine. An educated guess would be that some of the translation from the Korean version was rushed for the beta, that or they just have horrible translators, though my money is still on the first. Moving on to the quests themselves, there is nothing really new here. Most of which is gathering items from slaying monsters or just slaying monsters, though this is to be expected in this type of game, but the quest system does feel a bit dull. To add insult to injury there doesn't seem to be a tracking system for these quests, except when you turn them in to see the notification. I haven't noticed on the actual minimap any of my objectives, which is always a negative in my book, though this may be due to the randomly generated aspect of the dungeon making it more difficult to set it up, just a guess.

I mentioned earlier that the graphics felt dated, even when the game was released, this is true. But if you know me, you know I am not really a stickler for graphics. If the gameplay is good, that is enough for me. But for some of you who do care, I will still try covering it. The graphics overall are decent, they do hold up for current mmo standards, at least with the ones that have been released lately. Enemies don't exactly look fearful but the detail on them is still rather nice, and I feel the game while it did age, still looks fairly decent. The most disappointing aspect however is the animations, most notably is the running and sprinting animations. For sprinting and running, the animation doesn't actually change and both look like your character is in a constant state of constipation. While amusing at first, it quickly loses its charm and tends to get old.

Overall the game is on its second wind, it is early in the testing phase and as we heard about the big changes to come from the new developers it is unknown at least to me, if any have taken place yet. It does however seem that the game does need a lot of work still, and hopefully the company will get on it and make the game something for the old fans to be happy to play again. So it is a nice good game with potential but has flaws that can hinder it unless the company gets on them.