First Impressions: Atlantica Online part 2

Here's another shot of downed enemies. To retrieve items from an enemy's corpse, you will have to use up a turn.

This is a look at the Inventory screen, which is divided by character. As stated before, with the exception of weapons, any character can use any item. In this picture, our main character has the bulk of items, but you can drag and drop items between characters. It's wise, for example, to equip each character with at least one health potion as they can use it during combat with the press of a key.

When using certain items that level attributes, it's important to make sure that the item is in the proper character's row to make sure that character gets the boost when you double-click the item.

This is the detail page for a Life Potion, which resurrects a character from death. You can see a "Craft" button on the left page, meaning that this item is craftable once you've collected the proper reagents and have that particular skill available to you. We did no crafting in the course of our play.

This is where you get to choose your next area after you've completed the tutorials. We chose Sapporo. It isn't known whether these areas are joined to each other in any way.

We took a moment to soak in the ambiance. With light bloom enabled, as well as Sky Detail, Water Reflection, Fog Effect, and Soft Shadows, Atlantica can look very pretty indeed. Of course, enabling everything can affect your frame rate, so you'll need to play around with these settings.

More pretty sky, with a castle in the background. The blue glow on the ground is the portal to the next area. An interesting note: once you've accepted a quest, you have the option to auto-move to the NPC or area where your quest requirements must be met, instead of trying to find it on your own.

This is a shot of a Bad Fairy. One of your early quests is to retrieve a certain number of items from defeated enemies. Running around in the world, you will see enemies walking around randomly. These are representative figures; each one holds within it an entire combat party. Clicking on one will initiate an attack; after you've defeated the party, you return to the world and watch as the enemy collapses and disappears.

This is the lead-in to the first town of Sapporo. Notice in the upper right of the screen a green circle with the numver 96 in it. This is the Stamina count. Each battle with an enemy costs one Stamina point. The count begins at 100, so if you manage to play 100 battles, you'll have to spend time resting to bring your stamina back up to full. Every 10 minutes brings one Stamina point back, and there is a daily reset of all points. Though we didn't experiment, there is likely a way to pay money to bring a percentage of Stamina back as well.

More of Sapporo. The architecture and layout, while not ostentatious or flashy, do a good job of being beautiful and feeling like a real settlement.

This building represents the equivalent of a civic center, where you'll find a shop, a hospital, a guild hall, and the like.

Here is a window with a list of buildings to visit. We're in the Hospital at the moment, looking at ways to resurrect our fallen Spearman.

It's deserted and quiet for now, but this will teem with life once Atlantica comes out of beta.

Here is the Graphics setting window, for your perusal and edification.

The influence of World of Warcraft is felt even here.

Here's an out-of-doors merchant. You'll find NPCs on the mini-map, marked by a white N in a blue circle.

After playing for about an hour or so, we're definitely intrigued enough to want to delve deeper; there is a lot of minutia that only extended gameplay will unearth. The actual combat is appropriately hectic, and the potential for large army battles is great. What we'd like to see in the eventual release: more customization options for your character. Thanks for joining us for this First Impressions post, and don't forget to check out the Atlantica gallery!

%Gallery-25535%