Rise and Shiny recap: Sacred Seasons 2

Each week Rise and Shiny asks you to download and try a different free-to-play game, chosen by me, Beau Hindman. Some of the games will be far out of your gaming comfort zone, and some will pleasantly surprise you. We will meet each Tuesday and Friday night at 8 PM Central time, followed by this column the Sunday after. I welcome any suggestions for games, either in the comments or at beau@massively.com.

There seems to be some confusion as to what the point of this column is. Just to clarify, my job with this column is to act like an actual newbie, to find small or unusual games, and to report on my findings after one week of play. While this might seem a bit harsh, I am very upfront about my intentions and think that the experience that a new player would have within a week of play is not only valid, but one of the most important times for a player. Unfortunately, this means that sometimes I will play a game in ways it was never intended, or I will review a game without knowing what might come further down the road. I generally stay away from the game's website and only gather information from the offerings in-world.

This means that, when I do find amazing games, they have done a darn fine job. This can also mean that, as in the case of Sacred Seasons 2, I stumble across a game that is very much in development.

Being under developed hasn't stopped Sacred Seasons 2 from being really, really charming though. The intro trailer is quite beautiful, and the steady art design inside the game feels as though it came from a larger studio. In fact, the graphics are originally what grabbed me and kept me playing.

You start out by picking your "season" and class, then you are dropped into the world. There are some basic tutorials that not only show you how to fight and how to interact with items in the world, but also introduce you to some intriguing elements of the story. There is a grand story arc about a nature queen and how rumors of her return have spurred on wanna-be heroes to take back the land that was once theirs. Of course, I am a little fuzzy on the details, but the details inside the game make me want to learn more.

Sacred Seasons 2 is filled with details, actually. The hand-drawn maps and characters seem to come from a loving set of hands. Even though most of the scenery items do not move or are not interactive, the world still feels bright and alive. I wanted to run off to explore as many lands that I could, but instead I stayed around the new-player areas to finish up quests. Quests are made up mostly of the "kill-ten-rats" type, but there are some nice item-interaction goals, and some that feature small puzzles. There is some nice variety, but I had a hard time keeping track of how many items I needed and for what, and where to turn the quests in once I was finished. I like being lost, though, and the lack of a stout quest-helper made me remember playing MMOs before many of them featured informational databases within the UI.



Still, you will spend most of your time killing monsters. Lots and lots of monsters. There is a good balance to the grind, though, and the sheer variety of monsters will keep things fresh. Combat feels snappy, despite it being turn-based. Instead of giving the player unlimited or very large amounts of time to make a decision about which spell or ability he or she might use, choices have to be made in seconds, while monsters hammer the player with his or her own spells. I did grow tired of grinding on certain mobs to find rare quest items, but I could easily log out and pick up where I left off without feeling lost.

As I noted above, I do not use the website for much information, and hope that the game would provide me with almost everything I need to know. If I want lore, NPCs should tell me. If I need combat tips, players can help me. It's one of my measuring sticks for a game: Can the game teach me everything, or mostly everything, that I need to know, through only gameplay itself?

So, after asking in chat if there was anything else "to do" besides killing monsters, I was told that "jobs" and crafting would be added to the game "soon." I have no idea what this means, but I did wish for different activities and hope that "soon" would come, well, soon. I see nothing wrong with a combat-only game, or a game that provides the player with a robust-enough combat system to make it a game in itself, but I simply cannot stomach so much of a grind.

Once I grouped with another player, though, the combat and grind were suddenly much more fun. As I am a player who mostly solos due to the nature of this column and of my personality, grouping provides me with a window into "normal" players. Suddenly I was not alone in the world, and I found the same creatures and combat feeling more dynamic than before. This is to be expected, but that does not change its pleasant effect. It's nice to play with other people, it really is, and I could see a group of players grinding out an entire evening without batting an eye, having fun the whole time!

The social aspect of this game, and with any game that allows interactions between large groups of people, makes almost any game worth much more than its free status implies. It's something the general gaming audience takes for granted, I think. For me, grouping can make a game like Sacred Seasons even more charming.

So, will the game stay on my hard drive? Well, not really, being that it is a browser-based game. I love the fact that netbook owners or hand-me-down PC players can run it successfully, and that I can access it within seconds. So, the better question is: will I return to it? I think I will. The story intrigues me, and I want to see what they add to the game. I would like to chat with the developers and would love to talk to the artists responsible for such a pretty game. This game is a good choice for players who like turn-based grinders with a good story and original artwork.

Next week we will be playing another Flash-based side-scroller called AdventureQuest Worlds. Now, now, stay strong. While it might look like a "kid's game," I want you to take a moment to notice what the designers have done within the limited confines of a 2-D world. Check out the animations and the character advancement. While you're at it, notice how many players are online at once: thousands. My in-game name is BeauHind and I am playing on the Cysero server. Report back here next Sunday, and look for me in game on Tuesday and Friday night!

Now go log in!