This time we're going to take a look at a game called Echo of Soul, it's a free-to-play MMORPG published by Aeria Games. As usual we'll spend a few minutes talking about the game and showing you some of what it has to offer. So let’s jump on in.
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Watcha Playin'? is a FreeMMOStation show where we give you a first look with commentary on the most popular free-to-play MMO games available.
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Echo of Soul is a pretty standard MMORPG. It doesn't really bring anything new to PC gaming or MMORPGs for that matter, and follows the generic point-and-click, fetch quest gameplay that the genre is riddled with. It does have a nice art style, even if the graphics look like 2006 tried to jump out and scare you. The game actually runs pretty smoothly though, my frame rate hasn't dropped much at all, so, I mean… that's pretty good. One of the game’s selling points is its simplicity. Seriously, they advertise the game because of its simple gameplay and use it as a selling point.
Character creation wasn't anything special; there were some generic presets and features that you can choose from: faces, hairstyles, the likes. There's enough there to make your character look interesting and different, but not enough to guarantee that you won't see another person running around that looks almost exactly like you.
There are five classes: Warrior, Rogue, Guardian, Sorceress and Archer. All of the classes are gender locked, which is unfortunate. I've never understood why a game would choose to limit their potential playerbase by making classes gender locked. Of course sometimes it has to do with the lore of the game, but I have a feeling that is not the case here, probably because I wasn't interested in the game’s lore. At least it doesn't look like there's a lot of fan service, so there’s that.
Upon getting in to the game, I was greeted by a soothing yet oddly disturbing disembodied voice that began telling me how to play the game. As much as I liked his vocal capabilities, I went ahead and skipped most of it because I already had an idea of how to play the game. The quests in the game are pretty generic, the usual kill “x” amount of creatures, demons or prairie dogs and gather “x” amount of items, plants or small children. The combat was also nothing special, being of the tab-targeting variety. If you like simplicity with your combat, then you're in for a real treat. There are no skill points, upon reaching a certain level you will automatically receive new skills along the way.
At level 8, you get a llama to ride! Congratulations, you've received your first mount! It looks nothing like a llama though and is in fact extremely terrifying, but that's another story for another day because this game’s interpretation of what a llama should be is entirely wrong.
Echo of Soul stands out with its Soul System, pretty much the same way Bigfoot would stand out in a crowd of wookies – It's there, but you won't really notice it. Every encounter with a creature will give you a chaos soul. You receive chaos souls in a corrupted state, to which you'll have to purify one of two ways: the first way is to use a soul sanctum. Soul Sanctums are located in most towns, in order to use one you just have to be within its proximity and go to the soul satchel where you can purify your chaos souls. You can also do co-op purification which works similarly to soul sanctums, but you purify with another player instead.
So you're probably wondering what the souls are for? Souls fuel your soul skills, which are activated abilities used to provide your character with a powerful buff. There are four buff skills which grant specific effects, so make sure you activate the one that best suits your characters class. Other than that, I really don't think they do anything.
If you're looking for something new and inventive, Echo of Soul is definitely NOT the game you're looking for. There's absolutely nothing new about the game, it's another generic MMORPG to add to the big bad list of generic MMORPGs. You might be able to kill a bit of time inside it though, so that's a plus.
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