Project Gorgon and Other Things

New year and new folder for my blog posts and me wondering how I can be so wretched in updating this thing.  I suppose I can be a rather scatterbrain about any project.

Speaking of Projects I was trying to scrounge up an interesting RPG to play on steam.  I wanted something where you could evolve your character over time into a wide variety of roles, flexible.  I was starting to get rather particular on steam searches digging several pages into results, looking for things that don't get thrown on the front page, things between the cushions of the sofa.  That's when I ran into Project Gorgon.

When I read indie MMO on Steam I wasn't too enthused.  I had seen a lot of dead MMO projects on the platform to know it's hard to start one.  But then I saw two things.  1) The reviews were very solidly positive 2) The makers were the minds behind Asheron's Call and Everquest 2.  I loved Asheron's call so I decided to give it a Jab.

I was concerned initially that character creation was going to be tricky.  Asheron's Call had some prebuilt templates for characters but if you decided to freehand things you would likely make a gimped creation that wasn't good for the end-game.  And you wouldn't know this until you dumped hours into this character.  I know this from learning the hard way. I've joked that you need a graphing calculator to make an optimized Asheron's Call character.  Don't get me wrong, I liked the game, but it was in spite of those complications.  I rather loved the look of the stat assignment GUI though.  That vat of fluid and stoppers setting how much it filled various cylinders representing your stats.  Character creation in Project Gorgon is simplicity in itself.  You select your appearance, gender, species and give that character a name and you are now done with creation.  You are dumped on an island.  All your character performance characteristics are based on skills that raise from doing actions.  There's no limited reserve of points to allocate to things.  Instead the resource you allocate to getting stronger is your time.  The skills are varied and have numerous synergies and bonuses tied to raising them up.  I'd encourage any player getting into the game to keep the wiki open.

It took me a while to even figure out what my level was.  Some of your skills are flagged combat skills.  You can change your current combat skills by either equipping different gear or opening one up in the skill panel and flagging it your primary or alternate skill.  Your active combat skill sets your HP and MP (well they call it power, but it's MP).  This sets your power level.  THis is your "level".  Changing your weapon will quietly swap your active combat skill to match.  In a way it reminds me of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0 with how you could be upping level in sword and shield at the same time or Mabinogi's leveling system.  The Mabinogi comparison is particularly apt since a number of non-combat skills convey passive persistent bonuses for having them leveled.

It's really hard to build yourself into a corner.  Though in some cases you can get cursed into an animal form.  The animal becomes your combat skill, such as cow, or rabbit, or spirit fox.  And the animal "classes" are surprisingly good.  I have seen a number of cows girt for battle since I played this MMO.  Being an animal does have drawbacks.  Human NPCs generally don't want to deal with you though there are animal npcs who will train you.  You also can't use tools as humans do.  Lycanthropy is a skill and having a non-zero amount of ranks in it will force you to become a wolf every full moon.  You do get warned before you get into these situations and have ways to avoid it.  So for most of the time you really can't easily back yourself into a corner with building.

The game is like Asheron's Call with far more forgiving mechanics.  There's no Vitae, death is a slap on the wrist, unless you are facing a boss who will place their curse on you.  Movement is clean and responsive, the combat system is simple yet with enough tactical depth to make you think about how you combine your abilities and what order you use them.  All and all I feels good.

The MMO can be a bit silly in places, I found a ring of Ass Kicking.  NPCs dialog can get very silly, but it isn't always absurdity, it has its more serious and mysterious moments.  In ways a lot of the game feels like it was made by people having fun and putting in what they liked rather then a finely refined player experience with highly balanced classes.

The tutorial is interesting insomuch that compared to a lot of recent games of this sort I was expecting far more hand holding.  The game told me how to get a sword out of a sack and stab a skeleton to death with it and loot it.  It gave me no further input on what to do next.  After a moment of uncertainty I pressed onward into the island.  As I interacted with things and discovered new mechanics the game would step in cleanly to explain what it is and how it works.

Never once was it leading me by the hand through the tutorial.  But it also wasn't treating it like some sort of difficult for diffcult's sake sink-or-swim trial.  Instead it more wanted me to discover the game and mechanics at my own pace, standing back and ready to explain things to me as I found them at the speed I was gaming at.  Once I realized that was happening it became comfortable to ease into.

If you are fence sitting, give the game a shot, if you're an old hand at MMOs you'll find it cozy in the right ways.  They stuck with the good and cut off the bad in such a way that I think even those who are not experienced in the old ways will find this an entertaining time.