Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Neosteam Gallery

This my first NeoSteam Screenshot Gallery Slideshow, only has 50 screenshots, the limit they put on me, but probaly will add other 50 new more next time.
Have fun!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

NeoSteam

Hi reader.
On this first post i will just talk and give a quick review about NeoSteam (www.neosteam.com), an online mmorpg based on steam punk/fantasy scenario (like final fantasy 6, my favourite), a world where you have spell and steam engines mixed together.



Overview
NeoSteam is pretty similar to any other unreal2 engine mmos you see around, like World of Warcraft, Lineage2, and many others, the game is on very initial stages yet (at least on international brand) and has little features to keep the player busy, except for grinding, doing quests and pvp (player vs player). But it has a very unique feature that made me love it on first sight and more as i play it, the scenario.

Scenario
The scenario of maps on NeoSteam are awesome, the more you walk around, the more you are amazed and curious to explore more, you see Zepellins, Trains, Subways, Air Balloons, Steam Walker (a sort of individual transport machine that walks on 2 legs), Mining Machines, Siege Engines that look like Star War's ATAT or a Giant Fire Golem Machine mixed together, or my favourite, a big blob of water/gelly that has a cannon at the top.

The "NeoSteam" mentioned so many times is a form of blue liquid used as fuel for about everything on this world, even people can use this fuel to improve their fighting abilities (Steam Powered Weapons?). Having this NeoSteam is about as important as your own health, mana or money, because you will use it a lot during gameplay.

The game, obviously, still lacks features, has many bugs, many skills missing better descriptions, typos, wrong grammar, and all kind of glitches one would expect from an asian game conversion. I wish i could help them more regarding this really, its one downsite of the gameplay so far.
The world is still small, you can walk from a point to another of your faction in about 20 minutes (of course you wont have explored everything), but there is space left to add a lot of new areas.

Controls
The game controls are pretty simple and smooth, you can either control your character using the keyboard (WASD keys) or the cursor (click and move). The mouse right button can be used to change the view, zoom in and out with scroller.
Skills and items can be binded on hotkey for easier access, and you have 5 different hotkey bars, 2 being accessible at same time, others accessible if you scroll the mouse holding shift.
You can quickly select yourself or other party members using Function keys (F1, F2, F3, etc). And monsters using TAB key, aswell as auto-attack using ' key (the one just before 1 key).

Classes
The classes are numerous, you start as one of 4 basic classes (fighter, mage, rogue, crafter) and at lv10 you can specialize on 2 different class advancements, one pending to attack, other pending to defensive/supportive. And one good feature, nearly half the classes have a way or another to obtain summons to help them in battle, this is pretty cool for people that enjoy creature management, its a gameplay that other games only offer to a class or another.

Skills
The skill system is very simple, you get 1 Skill Point every level to learn new skills or upgrade the existing ones, but upgrading also costs Traning Points, which are obtain by using skills (or using special training npcs, that gives TPs after a few minutes, a slow method of training).
Most classes have up to 4 skill trees, one for each class characteristic, such as attack, defense, supportive skills, summonings, healing skills, crafting skills, etc. Some have skills in common, others have skills that behave different, and all have unique skills for their class.

Factions
The 2 Factions are:
Republic of Rogwell, crafters mainly and also refered as Technique faction. They seem to rely more on technology than others.
Elerd Kingdom, land of elves and spellcasters, also refered as Mystery faction. Every character of this faction has certain spell abilities to increase their stats, but they also develop technology based on NeoSteam.

The world is divided into 3 main continents, one for each faction and a kind of neutral land for 2 sub-races (i heard a rumor there is a third faction coming in the future, Nature).

The races arent limited to any faction, each faction has all races available, thought they are slighly different (body and haircolors, some are VERY different). But despite apparences, the race has very little effect on your class, allowing you to use any combination you wish. Each race has their own passive abilities that help the player too, such as faster walk, better health regeneration, increased chance of crafting, etc.

Races
The races are:
Luife/Taroon, werebeasts, this is exactly how it sounds, werewolves and werecats, they look big and strong. Elerd werebeasts are Taroon, they look like cats, while Rogwel are called Luife, they look like wolves.
Elves, the classic pointed ear race, they are present here and are good spellcasters.
Humans, dont need to mention much, the average human you see on about every game.
Poms, these are dwarves, they are small, haired and excelent crafters, they are the main engineers behind all the neosteam technology.

A downsite i noticed here, elves have only the female gender available, while humans can only be male (same for werebeast). There are 2 sub-races to counter this a little. Lyell, a kind of female werebeast, and Taxzn Human, a female human with blue skin-tone. Both races have 3 similar racial skills to their counterparts, and 2 unique skills. Poms have male and female available with same stats and skills though.

Except the already expected downsites, the game is pretty good, still new and has a small community, but enough to keep you entertained for hours. The GMs are active and host events to help newbies. The game has a lot to grown and if they dont let it down, could turn out very good.

But thats it, hope you enjoyed the read. Until next time.

Will leave you with some images:
Photobucket
Steam Rider or Steam Walker

Photobucket
Mine Rider

Photobucket
Werebeast howling to the Moonlight

Photobucket
Siege Engines on Battle!

Photobucket
A Pom.

On the website you will find much more (and better, sorry for quality).