Rise and Shiny recap: Forsakia

Forsakia is a new Flash-based free MMORPG brought to us by alaplaya — the same company that brought us LOCO, Florensia and the soon-to-be Argo. I should have learned my lesson and taken my time to pick my next Rise and Shiny game, but in my pre-holiday haste I grabbed the first thing I could find. Granted, I wanted to find a Flash- or browser-based game to play since I would be writing a few upcoming articles about gaming with a new laptop or netbook, but Forsakia is still in beta and needs a lot done to it.

So bear that in mind as I look at it, got it? If there is one thing I have learned over these years of playing free-to-play or imported games, it's that a lot can change between betas and releases. I'm hoping that this is the case for Forsakia. It's got its charm and its convinience, but I found myself a little confused and somewhat bored. A good measure of how bored you might be is to watch the chat: If players are talking about getting groups together to grind — in the newbie area — then you might be in trouble.

Still, read on!

You start your journey off by picking one of six pre-made characters. We've seen pre-made characters used quite a bit in free-to-play MMOs, and it's normally not an issue. In games like Zentia, for example, you can customize your character and look pretty unique by the time you start gaining some levels. Let's face it, World of Warcraft has very little customization as well, and millions of people do not seem to care at all.

Forsakia, however, kept me looking literally exactly the same as any other player who picked my character. Would it change later on? I don't know, since I didn't get to the highest levels of the game within my week. I can understand the developer wanting to use less customization, however, since the game is meant to run in your browser. Heck, according to the website, gameplay should occur at your "place of work." If you're going to be playing on the sly, then I guess you wouldn't want to futz around with appearance clothing. I'd like to call a little B.S. on that one, however, especially since there are more robust, customizable MMORPG browser experiences out there. If they can do it, so could this game.

The quests start off as the usual kill-ten-whatever variety, but at least combat is slightly different than that in other games. Remember, the goal here is to keep system requirements low and to allow players to kill hours discreetly at work, so a few adjustments were made. First, you can automate combat. Since it's turn-based, you can simply click on one area of the map to auto-run to, and once you are randomly attacked by the unseen mobs, combat can be entirely automated. Of course you run the risk of missing opportunties to use special skills or potions during automated combat, but at the beginning levels this should not be an issue. Once you are done with combat, your character will even continue on his way. Then, just click the other side of the map and repeat. It's not a bot option (there are actually several MMOs that offer a literal botting option), but it's better to think of it as a My Brute or other hands-free combat simulator.

The combat is standard turn-based stuff, with you taking a turn alongside your pet and the monsters. It's not bad; it's just not something very unique. The pet capture system is OK, consisting normally of clicking the capture ability and targeting the desired monster. If the game allows you to capture almost anything, that might be neat. Otherwise, it's standard fare.

Honestly, so much of this game is automated that you could easily grind out a decent-level character relatively quick. Heck, you can just skip reading the quest text — it's busted anyway. Again, there are no more excuses for such issues, especially in this world of very high-quality browser and free-to-play offerings. Having busted text is so 2007, and there's no reason for it, especially in an open beta. A developer could easily hire a gaggle of college students to play the game for a weekend and simply write down all the busted English, spelling errors or missing text and fix it. It's not rocket science, I promise, and I have very little patience for any game that does this nowadays.

So, most of my time was spent killing a few monsters and capturing a few pets. I have no idea what is going on, lore-wise, simply because I gave up reading the tiny, broken quest text. Honestly, I wish I would have pre-screened this game. It's clearly not ready for prime time.

I read about the wonderful housing options but was successful only once in opening the housing menu. I found a white structure, ready for the promised intense customization, but I couldn't figure out much more than that. I decided to shelve the experiment for later, only to have nothing happen when I later pressed the same menu button (seen on the bottom left hotbar in the screenshot above). Perhaps I earn the housing status later? Who knows? Frankly, I am not in the mood to look it up.

In the end, Forsakia needs about five or 10 patches before it's ready for a decent first impression. I enjoyed the combat, sort of, but found the quests bland. I will give it some more time to grow on me, and I will definitely be checking back to see its progress. The larger turn-based group battles look like a lot of fun, so I will have to join in one of those some day. In the meanwhile, give this one some time to cook. While pre-playing games is sort of against the original premise of this column, I need to start doing it more so as to avoid games that are just not ready for this column.

Next week I will be looking at Dofus, an older Flash-based game by Ankama Games. I'm familiar with it, but it's been a while since I gave it a really good playing. So join me on the Rushu server — my name is Beau Hindman. Now go log in!

Each week, Rise and Shiny asks you to download and try a different free-to-play, indie or unusual game, chosen by me, Beau Hindman. We meet each Tuesday night at 9 p.m. EST; the column runs the following Sunday. I welcome any suggestions for games — drop me a note in the comments or email, or follow me on Twitter, Facebook, or Raptr!