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Author Topic: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online  (Read 61096 times)

Logical2u

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Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« on: April 05, 2011, 12:30:13 am »

http://www.spiralknights.com/ is a new free-to-play MMO that was just launched today, April 4th.
The game's a dungeon crawler set on an alien world. You play as a member of the spiral knights, some sort of space chivalric order that has crash landed on this bizarre place. Their ultimate goal now is to leave, and they intend to do so by stealing the planet's core to power their ship.

The game plays like a mix of Phantasy Star Online (Episodes 1 and 2) and Zelda - Four Swords, both for the gamecube - with controls reminiscent of Magicka. As mentioned it's a dungeon crawler - you join with up to three buddies and crawl through dungeons looking for items, cash, crystals - items used to power the dungeon elevators. The game itself has no stats, instead each item you have equipped can gain levels, although not necessarily 'grow' - they gain stats but not new abilities, at least as far as I can tell (kind of like 'grind'ing weapons in PSO - and no, it does not mean killing a bunch of dudes for one). Instead there's an alchemy system of sorts to craft rare items with special effects, and you can buy a bunch of lower-level ones with statuses too. For example I have a pistol that, when charged, stuns enemies. However to perform alchemy you need to acquire recipes.

Like PSO there are normal and 'heavy' attacks that require charging time. The heavy attacks seem to do more damage and inflict status effects very frequently. There are three weapon types and no classes - you can switch between weapons on the fly by tapping space. There are melee weapons (powerful, but you need to get up close and personal), guns (not as strong, and you move slower when reloading - you can fire a limited amount of times in rapid succession), and bombs (you charge them up and toss them).

Like Zelda - Four Swords, there are somewhat convoluted puzzles (at least for an MMO) - you can hit switches with your weapon or with thrown pots and statues to activate doors, locate keys, and that manner of thing. I spent a long time trying to hit a switch from offscreen before realizing that you could throw pots over ledges, for example. The combat is also much quicker and there is no lock on like in PSO - so you'd better be aiming that gun appropriately! And you can manually block if necessary.

As I mentioned before, there are crystals. The levels that are accessible at any given time are determined by the crystals people have 'fed' the elevators and I believe they reset every 24 hours. You have an unlimited inventory space, but you can only carry one crystal at a time.

When dungeon delving you can go it alone, only allow friends, or let the game 'matchmake' you with another party. For example my first dungeon run I ended up being party leader with 3 other people. Party management is fairly easy and allowed me to weed out a deadbeat quickly, once I realized I was the party leader.

The game is free-to-play, as mentioned, but the game attempts to make money through microtransactions, but thankfully it's not too game unbalancing (well, as far as I've noticed yet). To activate elevators you need to give them some 'power'. The dungeon I just ran solo required 10 power to descend each floor, for example. You have 100 power on you, it replenishes slowly over time and I believe whenever you log out and back in. However you can purchase power using in game cash or out of game cash. Power can be converted back to in-game cash if required.  You can also purchase 'perks' like additional hot-swappable weapon slots and 'trinket' slots, but you can, again, purchase them with in-game cash.

I know at least one other person from B12 is playing this game right now - anyone else?
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debvon

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #1 on: April 05, 2011, 01:33:04 am »

Looks interesting, I think I'll try it out right now.
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Rex_Nex

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #2 on: April 05, 2011, 01:46:27 am »

Im downloading it as we speak. Sounds pretty fun. I take it this is in Java? Is there something I can do actually get an .exe file to run this off of? Or is the installer Java, or what. I'm confused. Anyways, here's hoping for fun :)

-Edit-

Cutest. Game. Ever.

Really lagged to hell, and now I have to "Download the rest of the game".  But, it started at 10% - does that mean its downloading the game as I play the tutorial, and I can blame that for the insane laggy/warpy gameplay? As for other players out there, dont worry about my lag, my internet isnt the best. This game is either a bandwidth-hog or it was downloading during my playtime.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2011, 02:10:45 am by Rex_Nex »
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debvon

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #3 on: April 05, 2011, 03:13:43 am »

This game is really awesome. I love the animation style, it all feels very solid. My question: is this a freemium game? I haven't played enough to find out.
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Rex_Nex

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2011, 03:21:40 am »

Nope, according to OP, its microtransaction-based.
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debvon

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2011, 03:31:05 am »

Ahh ok, I didn't see that part. I also just found the in-game purchase screen. I'm not too sure how fast energy is restored while logged out, but hopefully it's not too slow or anything like that (edit: Ok so I think you get 100 mist energy per 24 hours). Playing with a party is a blast, this would be so fun with a group of friends on teamspeak. Ok.. now I need to convince everyone I know to try this out.
« Last Edit: April 05, 2011, 03:50:32 am by debvon »
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Moogie

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2011, 05:21:38 am »

Yay, it's the game Three Rings abandoned Whirled for. I have a slight grudge against it, but I suppose it's not a bad game. I played in one of the alpha tests and got bored of it pretty quick, though. I hate the limited Energy mechanic; I hate any mechanic that artificially limits playtime.
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Bluerobin

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #7 on: April 05, 2011, 09:08:52 am »

Waaaaiiit... are you this Moogie? I've been trying to figure out why your name was familiar.

I've been playing Spiral Knights a bit (got in to the last preview event and played some yesterday) and I like it. I was just playing alone, though, and I think it'd be more fun with other people. Oh, and here's the wiki page for how energy works: http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Energy . I played for about an hour and a half or two hours and only went through about half of the 100 energy yesterday I think, so it's not terribly limiting. You can buy more energy with either real money or in-game currency if you want more, too.
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Tilla

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #8 on: April 05, 2011, 12:06:48 pm »

You can also get free mist tanks for some things (not sure what entirely).

As long as you're not making this your primary MMO I can see it being successful as something to just play once a day when you need a break. The gameplay I find quite charming.

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Ochita

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #9 on: April 05, 2011, 12:16:22 pm »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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Hugehead

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #10 on: April 05, 2011, 12:19:15 pm »

I think you can make enough money doing runs of dungeons to buy energy when you need it, assuming the prices don't skyrocket.
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DeKaFu

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #11 on: April 05, 2011, 12:22:29 pm »

Wait, so...
The maximum amount of energy you can store without the real-money items is 100 energy. And the energy cost for higher-level crafting is 200-300 energy?
Haha. I get it.
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Hugehead

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #12 on: April 05, 2011, 12:31:21 pm »

Buy energy with ingame money, it's like the dubloon servers for Puzzle Pirates.
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Jay

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #13 on: April 05, 2011, 03:25:40 pm »

I was playing this almost non-stop over the preview weekend.
I bought up around 1600 energy with my crowns.
I'd have to guess the prices are skyrocketing now, so I'm really trying to conserve.
But yes, it's not really meant for you to play non-stop, unless you can earn enough crowns (which I could, at that time) or pay for that playtime.
(I would be the one other person he mentioned in the OP, by the way)

Also, trade trade trade!  I sold some of my tokens (rare drops from treasure chests) to an NPC for an extremely rare crafting material, which net me about 250 EU from a player looking for it, and that's before I applied the crowns from those trips.
You get a mist tank for joining and a mist tank for tier 2 clearance (talk to the guy at Moorcroft Manor [D 8] with 2-star armor, helm, and sword, and at least 15 tokens [which you're sure to get while getting the former anyway]) and presumably T3, although I'm not that far yet.
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Logical2u

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Re: Spiral Knights - Phantasy Star Four Swords Online
« Reply #14 on: April 05, 2011, 05:10:45 pm »

Wow, I'm glad so many people are liking it!

Yeah it really does seem like you need to pay to get energy, but the current best offer on energy is ~2k crowns for 100 energy.

My current in-game name is Logical. Maybe together we can scavenge up enough in-game cash to start a B12 Guild without having to check the pocketbooks?
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