The Spiritual Successor To Ragnarök Online Is Every Bit As Awesome As Expected
In the beginning, goddesses watched over humans. They taught them how to use fire and how to cultivate crops. They blessed the land with bountiful harvests and guided travelers to their destination.
But one day the goddesses disappeared. A divine tree suddenly emerged in the middle of the human capital, its sudden growth ravaging it, giving birth to monsters and chasing the people away from their homes.
Four years later, people claiming that they had dreamed of the goddesses gathered together in one place.
This whole divine tree business sounds a lot like Norse mythology, right? Well, Tree of Savior is indeed expected to become the spiritual successor to Ragnarök Online, and rightfully so. Want to learn more? Read on!
1. This Really Feels Like A New Ragnarök
The graphical style is almost exactly the same.
When you see Tree of Savior, you are instantly transported into Rune Midgard again. The vibrant, colorful world, the isometric camera with highly detailed 2D sprites, beautiful animations and cute monsters look almost taken straight from its predecessor.
This is not surprising. Indeed, it's Mr Kim Hakkyu, the spiritual father of Ragnarök Online, who is also in charge of Tree of Savior, and the game looks like it could really be a worthy successor to its venerable ancestor.
The graphical style looks almost identical to that of Ragnarök, but improved. An awesome soundtrack by SoundTeMP adds to the similarity between two games. The composers clearly understood what made the OST of Ragnarök memorable and unique, and the groovy melodies that one can hear in Tree of Savior contribute to recreating that atmosphere.
2. Dozens Of Different Classes
Each of these characters is a different class!
Just like its predecessor, Tree of Savior boasts a large number of playable classes that all stem from a base class. Every class has a unique, recognizable sprite and an exclusive set of skills. Currently there are 80 classes in total!
This system reminds a lof the job advancement system in Ragnarök Online, although there are fewer base classes in Tree of Savior than there originally were jobs in Ragnarök. Upon creating a character, you may choose a starting class among the four available: Swordsman, Archer, Wizard and Cleric.
As you level up, you will be given the opportunity to choose an advanced class, then advance it again and possibly again. For instance, a Swordsman may become a Peltasta, then advance to Hoplite and finally become a Centurion.
When you advance your class, you keep the skills from your previous class choice but also gain access to the skills of your advanced class. If you choose not to advance and keep your current class, you will be given more skill points to further improve the skills you already know, but will not learn any new skills.
This class advancement system looks every bit as complex as it was in Ragnarök, and every bit as rewarding!
3. Character Builds Are Back, More Complex Than Ever
Let's see what shiny new things I have just unlocked.
Modern games have accustomed us to automatic stat increase while leveling, dumbing down and streamlining interactions between character attributes, elements and other parameters that existed in older games.
Tree of Savior is bringing this feel back. Upon leveling up, your character receives stat points that you are free to distribute the way you want, allowing you to build your character exactly the way you want.
Some players may remember fondly how manual stat distribution played such a big part in Ragnarök, where the same class had radically different gameplay depending on what stats, skills and gear the player had chosen to focus on. Rejoice, then, for Tree of Savior features the same system!
The elements and monster types are back too, with familiar interactions such as Ice being weak to Lightning and Ghost being pierced by magic damage. There also are interactions between the type of armor your character is wearing and physical damage type. For instance, slashing weapons deal more damage to cloth wearers, but are not as efficient against metal armor.
All in all, Tree of Savior is resurrecting that old MMO vibe by bringing back complex, interactive systems that many players have no doubt missed.
4. No Merchant Class, But Utility Classes Are There
A Squire set up this tent for her party members.
If you played Ragnarök, you remember Merchants, Blacksmiths and Alchemists. They were jobs that brought a lot of utility to a party, in addition to being quite unique to play. Merchants had carts and could transport far more items than other classes. Backsmiths could craft weapons and armor, and Alchemists produced potions.
These unique utility classes are back in Tree of Savior, albeit they function a little differently.
The Squire, for example, can set up a shop where they can repair other players' equipment for a small fee. They are better at this than NPC blacksmiths, who offer generic repair services. Squires can even retouch a weapon to temporarily add extra power to it!
Another thing Squires can do is set up base camps in the wild, which allows party members to remotely access their storage, and cook food that gives buffs.
The Alchemist can also set up a shop, where they will refine gems for other players. Gems provide a stat boost at the cost of a penalty, and the Alchemists are able to reduce this penalty by refining the gems. They can also randomly change stats on weapons and craft potions for other players.
Pardoners are a Cleric advanced class that can craft spell scrolls. By using those scrolls, you can cast Cleric type spells even if you are not a Cleric yourself.
As you can see, there is a lot of potential for interaction between players, as many classes bring something unique to the table.
This video provides a bit more insight into the utility classes.
5. Unlock New Customization Options For Your Character As You Play
You will be able to dye your character's hair rather than choosing a color in the beginning.
A feature requested by players was to add more customization options when creating a character, for instance more hair or eye colors. After all, what's an MMO without extensive character customization, right?
Yet Tree of Savior has deceptively simplistic craracter creation, or so it seemed until the developers explained that it was already possible to change a lot of things about a character's appearance, but rather than choosing from a set of options when creating their avatar, the players had to find ways to unlock these options in the game.
The developers explained this choice by their belief that it would allow players to become more attached to their character when it takes hard work to achieve a distinct look instead of just selecting it right from the beginning.
You can also acquire new poses, stances and various dances by playing!
6. Freely Trade Every Item You Acquire
There is no such thing as bound items in Tree of Savior, which breaks the now well-established tradition of soulbound items that you have to obtain yourself.
You can freely trade every item you acquire to other players. Developers have found a compromise between a player-driven economy and the need to encourage players to actively explore dungeons and fight bosses by making traded items drop in Potential.
Potential is the measure of how many times an item can be upgraded before it breaks. Every time an item changes owners, its Potential drops by 1. It means the item is still in very good condition after a few trades, but eventually you will need to drop a similar item yourself or buy a new piece of gear to replace an item whose Potential dropped too low to be tradeable.
7. Resting Is Actually An Active Experience
Resting around a fire.
In a lot of Eastern MMOs, you can recover your character's health and mana by resting or meditating. In Ragnarök you could use the Insert key to sit down and recover HP and SP faster.
You can also rest in this way in Tree of Savior, but there is more to sitting down than an increased HP recovery rate. When you enter Rest mode, your action bar changes and your character gains special Rest mode skills.
You can light a fire using wood. The fire goes out quickly, but it can be used to ignite torches. You can also craft consumables and other items while resting as well as interact with other players next to your fire. Tree of Savior manages to transform a passive and boring wait for your health bar to fill completely into an active experience.
8. Adopt Companions That Act As Pets, Mounts And Transport
Like in many other MMOs, you can adopt a companion to, well, keep you company. You can buy these pets from the Companion Merchants in towns, but presumably also find them in the wild.
There are many types of companions, and it is difficult to sum them up with a single word. Some are non-combat pets while others can act as mounts and even fight alongside your character.
You can improve your closeness level with your companions. As your relationship improves, your companions will start assisting you in battle. A companion that could previously not be ridden will suddenly allow you to use them as a mount, and so on.
Your companions are shared by all your characters, but of course their mutual relationship levels will be different.
There are several ways to interact with your pet.
9. It Will Be In English – And In Any Other Language You Want It To Be
The number of available languages is constantly growing.
A common concern among players is whether a game will be released on the international market.
Tree of Savior features a system called OTC, or Open Text Client.
Basically, all text data is released to the public and may be freely translated by anyone then placed inside a specific language folder. Once this is done, the new language can be elected from the settings menu.
This allows developers to release language patches submitted to them by the community as official language packs and to continually improve the quality of the translations.
The developers believe that this method will allow them to shorten the time necessary for the international release to be ready. Of course, it also means that Tree of Savior is going to be available in about any language that the fans will have created an OTC pack for.
10. It's Been Greenlit On Steam, Too
Get ready to party with lots of people from all over the world.
IMCGAMES submitted Tree of Savior to Steam Greenlight! What's even more amazing is that the game has been greenlit a mere 10 hours after its submittal, indicating just how many people are intersted in it.
Why is that a good thing? It gives Tree of Savior even more visibility, ensuring it has a steady flow of newcomers interested in trying the game. That means more people to play with, and a world that feels alive.
More players also means more money for the developers to develop content, and, of course, Steam's own social features will only enhance the social aspect of the game that was so present in its predecessor.
Are you waiting for this game just as much as we do? Leave your impressions in the comments below.
