Now let’s grab some pop corn and heed my bittersweet story regarding my discontinued search for immortality. I admit as a Wu Xia fan boy I enjoyed the game despite of the “personal reasons” that will surely prevent me in playing this. Upon opening my eyes in the tranquil surroundings of Heyang City a welcoming committee embraced me in the form of duel request. Yes a level 70+ player is asking for a duel to a newly created character of course I declined and it triggers that dueler to call me “weak”. It’s like doh? I’m weak but you’re weaker? Try to duel someone with the same level as you moron! It makes me remember the MMOSITE article “What made a community and the people who destroys them”.

The main purpose of your journey is to follow the story behind the mysteries, rabu rabu and sect betrayal that revolves around Zhang Xiao Fan, Bi Yao and Lu Xueqi. Solely based on the novel. There is even a point in your quest wherein you need to act as a prince charming to awake or resurrect a Cinderella. Too much stuff to read despite of the straight from babel landia translation. I enjoyed it.

I am amazed on how the thing called “Universe Treasury” (Item Mall) greatly affects your character. To the point that you will be forced to buy cash shop items just to survive. Almost everything you need to do greatly depends in your real life *ka ching* pocket. We’ll we can’t blame it, It is a free 2 play game and to be able to maintain the margin of their operation they need income. This is business in the first place. But this game is too extreme (cough *atlantica* cough *online*is*cough*much worst but you can still survive and play even without spending). Wait I forgot Perfect World Entertainment Inc is famous for producing an item mall dominated game. Gamble it baby! You want some cool and shiny flying swords and mount well then? Use your money and luck!

Death probably the factor I hate the most in this game. If you die you will lose a whopping 6% what if your connection becomes a bitch in your grinding time? I noticed that every time I get disconnected for some internal factor I will surely die. If you want to prevent this, Just buy those “white paper man thingamajig” I forget the name from you know where. Want to AFK grind for longer period of hours? Buy some “talisman batteries” dawg!

The game in my opinion is not for casual gamers. yet it still it depends on how you view or play the game. There are lots of repetitive things to do every day. Which in my opinion a good factor such as the daily set of quest namely keepsake, fishing quest, incense offering etcetera and as a casual gamer who have, let’s say at least 3 or 2 hours to play in a day. This might be good for you since it will spare your time from the mindless monster grinding but just expect a slow progress especially in the higher levels. I may say that grinding here is disguised as an activity called quest. Auto-pathing will be the ferry man to your final destination.

Let’s talk about the graphics. I actually love the graphics in this game since it's decent. It looks like a toned down but slightly improved version of Perfect World. It’s not too shiny where perfect world is too shiny for me. Another factor that attracts me the most in this game is the graphical effects of their skill which is too extreme compared to other MMO’s. Even if you just simply do a buffing routine it makes you feel that you’re on a disco or even inside a light and sounds show! I’m using a 1GB Video card so I don’t have anything against that really.

Costumes and Armor design is quite an eye candy. Based on the concept arts and sketches that I saw, the costumes and armors are designed after a modern fashion design fused with an ancient Chinese clothing with a little bit of fantasy elements. Sounds? I guess it doesn’t bother me at all as long as it fits the theme and it did. There is some catchy oriental background music in the game. In the end I managed to reach level 75 in less than a month after that I decided not to continue my journey for personal reasons. It’s actually worth the try. I am actually planning to start over again soon, slowly but maybe in a different publisher to know the difference. I hope that I don’t make “someone” raise their eyebrows again.