Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent is a steampunk MMO. It takes place on a continent called Chrysalis, in which magic and science worked together, in harmony. Eventually, a powerful substance called "Neo Steam" is found by a subset of the Pom race known as the Maestros. Join either the Republic of Rogwel or the Elerd Kingdom and explore the world of Chrysalis. While each faction is made up of the same seven races and four base classes, they wage constant war with one another for control of the precious neosteam resources.
Publisher: Atlus Online
Playerbase: Medium
Graphics: Medium Quality
Type: MMORPG
EXP Rate: High
PvP: Faction based
Filesize: 900 MB
Neo Steam was first introduced to the West in early 2008 through the GamenGame open beta, but the publisher that picked it up, Game Network, never got around to releasing it. Months went by with little news, and fans of the steampunk MMORPG were left frustrated. When all hope seemed lost, Atlus announced that it had acquired the license.
Steampunk Rocks
Steampunk is a small niche genre inspired by Victorian era machines that were powered by heated water vapor (better known as steam). Clunky land vehicles and airplanes that look as though they are about fall apart give the world of Chrysalis a unique style that can’t be found in any other MMORPG to date. The trouble is that the steampunk elements are not emphasized enough. Besides the mechanist class, all races and classes are generic fantasy stock. Before selecting a race or class, players have to choose between two warring factions – the Republic of Rogwel or the Elerd Kingdom. The difference between the two is mostly cosmetic; Rogwel is more industrial and beginners start in an open plain area, while Elerd is more mystical, with an emphasis on magic and nature. Elerd starting locations are more generally more forested. While each nation has the same set of beginner classes, they provide slightly different bonuses – for example, Elerd Mystics have more intelligence than their Rogwel rivals. Players looking to craft the best possible character should read more about these bonuses in the wiki, but for most players, the only important factor is making sure all your friends are on the same side. While there are multiple servers, your faction pick applies to all servers and characters on the account.
Victorian View
Appearance customization in Neo Steam is rather limited, mainly due to the fact that most races are restricted to one gender. Elves can only be female while humans are all male. The one multi gender race are the Pom, a furry midget race that excel as machinists. There are a few face and hair styles to pick from, but no more than you would find in an old 2D game, which is a shame. The game supports a large range of hardware, which means the game can look either passable or impressive depending on the strength of your machine. While it is only now being officially released, Neo Steam is not a cutting edge game; it was first made available a year ago in the West and was available in Korea even before that. The graphics are not as impressive as other recent Asian free-to-play games like Perfect World or Atlantica Online. Like Knight Online, Neo Steam pulls the classic trick of showing off the classes in high level gear during character creation, so don’t be fooled by the machinist’s cool black/green suit.
A Romp Through the Fields
Neo Steam lacks a formal tutorial, but this is for the best, as the control scheme and interface should be familiar to anyone with prior gaming history. Movement can be done through the classic point-and-click method or with the keyboard, but even players who prefer the keyboard will likely end up using the mouse since keyboard movement feels buggy and unresponsive – turning side to side or going backwards causes more delay than it should. I found myself ’stuck’ on trees and other obstacles more than once and since the same bug was present during last year’s open beta, I don’t have much hope of it ever being corrected. The interface has a sci-fi feel to it, with sleek silver bars, composed of your standard character, inventory, and skills menus. New characters don’t start with much in terms of gear, but they’re placed next to an NPC that has a short series of quests that stock the player with necessary equipment. The first of these quests simply involve equipping a weapon, while the next two are kill quests. Combat in Neo Steam is generally fast-paced but relies heavily on spells and skills. The starting skills have fast cooldowns and low mana/stamina costs but do nearly ten times as much as regular hits.
Skills that Kill
Spell-casters have an early game advantage since they can one-shot monsters from a distance and move right to the next target. Gold is automatically looted, which is helpful, but items must be looted manually. All classes will be able to take on monsters several levels higher than themselves during the early stages which, along with the fast experience rate, keeps progression brisk. The trouble with this is that things are just too easy for the first dozen levels. After completing the first kill quest, players receive a gift box that contains equipment and accessories, and another gift box which can be opened when a certain level is reached. This is a common feature in MMORPGs and helps all players stay well-equipped, but discourages early level trade and teamwork. As players hunt and complete quests, they receive both experience and TP (training points.) Each level, an SP (stat point) is awarded. TP and SP are required to learn new skills and raise the rank of existing skills, but they cannot be used just anywhere. Trainers are located near cities that place players into odd machines from which the skill menu can be accessed and skills can be trained.
Earning Your Station
At level 10 players can pick their primary class. Each character will have two options depending on their faction and base class. This leads to a total of sixteen classes, though the classes of the two nations are very similar. Each nation is on a separate continent but access to the third, contested continent (Traxn) is made available fairly early on. While on the continent of continent of Traxn, players can be attacked by all members of the opposite faction, regardless of level. This area has monsters of all levels and is actually the starting area of the Traxn Human race. The two factions at war model may be overused, but it works well in Neo Steam. The only times I felt the need to work together with my fellow players was when a higher level Rogwel warrior killed me while I was hunting. PvP may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those looking for a World of Warcraft style RvR (realm vs. realm) experience, Neo Steam is well worth checking out.
Final Verdict: Good
Neo Steam is a solid MMORPG with a unique theme, large game world and enough PvP elements to keep players coming back for more. The occasional bug and balance issue do not prevent Neo Steam from being an enjoyable experience.
Things to Love About Neo Steam:
Fun gameplay
Incentives to entice new players
Steampunk themed weapons, armors, towns, and transportation are awesome, and hook you.
Leveling that is easy in the beginning, good for catching up newbies, but toughens up after level 10
Level 15 required to talk in world chat - THANK YOU ATLUS. JUST THANK YOU.
TP training areas - A great idea to help people who don't have time to play the game, but that doesn't level them, so they have to play.
Hilarious and odd things
Cool fighting animations
Transportation from country to country, from city to city, including subways, zepplins, and steam balloons.
Awesomely fun skills
2 powerful starting buffs
Things to Hate about Neo Steam:
WASD movement problems.
Clipping errors causing players to get stuck in objects (Guilty).
Talk Teleporting - When you talk to an NPC, you teleport to a fixed location in front of them so you are in the fixed camera shot. It's quite annoying.
Jumping animations - What the hell Atlus. My character can do a flying backflip without running? Wow.
Coding errors causing garbled text.
Crafting system - Honestly Atlus, this is just ANNOYING. The fact that Machinists are about the only ones who can do anything really bothers me, even if this IS steampunk and that's what machinists do.
Skins - Atlus, PLEASE allow these. The current skin is terrible and if I had the the ability to skin it over I would.
Entire chat system - The symbols showing what kind of post it is, while each of them are COLOR CODED, is unnecessary. It's also unnecessary to have a permenant chat box that you have to press enter to type in, when it is so obvious it was set up to just click and type.
Ridiculous censoring system. You can say words such as "cl--o-is," but you can not say "pop open."
Credits: MMO Hut and MMO site
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