SpawnPoint

I have to admit, after playing several of the new and old “monthly-fee” MMO’s on the market in the past few years, I was looking at any free MMO product with a raised eyebrow even before testing it. Last Chaos’ creators, Korean based Aeria Games and Entertainment didn’t ring a bell either so I felt my skepticism was supported.

Once you initiate the free game download and set up the game’s client, Last Chaos will strike you as an average game and the first-impression is not its strongpoint. The graphics in the character setup screen are ok, but you’ll probably be disappointed by the limitations of class choice: only six classes are available and your race will be dependant on the class (for example, someone that chooses the Sorcerer class will always be an Elf, whereas someone that goes for the Titan class will always be a Titan – there’s no way to be a Titan Elf).

The first hour of the game was also a bit dizzying. I know free MMOs look and feel alike, but I really felt that I was lost in Last Chaos. The abrupt start of the game is quite Chaotic (the irony!) and there’s no “Bring this note to the Warchief” quest to get you in the game like most other MMOs have.

The leveling part in Last Chaos stroke me as a Déjà vu…I couldn’t quite place it at first, but after the first few deaths and taking the “death penalty” it had Everquest written all over it. However, unlike Everquest, Last Chaos has fewer quests and more grinding. On the Brightside, especially considering this is a free game download where you’d expect things not to be chiseled down to detail, the grinding part is actually…dare I say; fun to some extent. Maybe it was the fact that I was still fresh in the game, but I definitely had more fun grinding in Last Chaos than I did grinding those silly wolves in World of Warcraft’s early stages.

And I know this isn’t really professional, especially considering that I’ll be comparing a free MMO to one supported by millions of monthly fees, but you can’t refrain from comparing Last Chaos to what has become today’s upper limit: World of Warcraft. The graphics seem just a tad more cartooney than in other MMO’s, which is one of the points that made WoW so popular. Combat is quite close in concept to what Blizzard’s MMO offers, but it’s obviously less chiseled down. For example, combat is based on auto-attacks and it works on the “you hit me once then I’ll hit you” concept. You do have a few special moves that you can use to speed up taking your enemies down and these were, for the most part quite interesting (perhaps not that balanced though, but since we’re talking about a free MMO we’ll let that slide).

I feel like I bashed Last Chaos a bit and it might seem unfair, especially seeing how it was a free game download and no one forced me to play it in the first place. So to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, there’s one point in the game that I was truly glad and excited to see. There’s this so called “Guardian System” implemented in the game, where a high level player can virtually take a newbie under his wing and help him level faster. But unlike doing this simply for the sake of helping others, like you would in other MMOs, Last Chaos provides you with a guardian reward. So if you help a new player reach level 20 in under 10 days after you have become his guardian, you get several rewards including reputation points which are quite valuable. The “guarded” player, not only passes through the grinding chores easier with the help of a high level buddy, but he also gets a class specific sword at the end of his run, so both sides win.

To conclude, Last Chaos is not the bottom of the sack, but doesn’t reach the top of it either when it comes to free game downloads. The problems it comes with are natural for a free MMO coming from a relatively inexperienced game company. The mature and helpful community of the game, the fun pet system, the guardian mode and the addictiveness of leveling (unlike other MMO’s *points at Lord of the Rings*) make it worthy of at least a chance.