“Where’s the screaming? There’s supposed to be screaming!”
I don’t usually like to start a review off on a bad note, it sets the wrong mood and promotes negative thinking. When I write a review I want you to read it and be neutral, I want you to get exited about the good aspects, and annoyed about the bad, but I don’t want you to carry a negative beginning throughout the entire read just because that’s the vibe you had when you started. With Requiem, I’m going to be making an exception. I’m going to start on a negative note because this particular note, changes the entire game: This is not a Survival Horror MMO. It’s not even a Horror MMO, or any variation at all. Yes, there are some gory animations, the Havok engine provides some nice Floppy Doll animations and blood splatter, there’s even a few mildly scary locations and features, but none of them come even close to making this game Horror.
Let me explain this a little better, the key to unlocking a good Horror game comes down to one thing: scaring your audience silly, and from my experience the best way to accomplish this is through good storytelling. You need to set the mood before you throw in the scary locations and gore effects. Requiem appears to have no intention of scaring you whatsoever, as they seem to have forgotten the story element entirely. You start the game in the middle of a desert, with a very standard movement keys tutorial on your screen. There’s no reason why you’re there, no background story or CG movie to fill you in, nothing at all. So as it is, I begin this review of Requiem: Bloodymare with the same emotion as I received when I first began playing the game myself - disappointment.
Putting aside my immediate dissatisfied hunger for Horror, I ventured forth into Requiem to find that it was actually a pretty solid MMO. It looks and sounds great, it has some fresh new ideas to bring to the table which I will cover in more detail shortly, and it plays a lot like Lineage 2, which is never a bad thing. Now, let us put my feelings and views aside for a while, and find out a little more about the game itself.
Race and Class System:In Requiem you’ll be given the choice of three different Races to choose from, the Turan - A Human looking Race that offers a mix between Tanking and Support Casting class options. The Bartuk - Orc like creatures that offer Barbarian and Shaman options, and the Kruxena - That offer your Ranger and Rouge class types, as well as some spell casting options. The Race you choose will decide which class options you have available to you later in the game, and I’ve pulled a very nice Class Tree from the official Requiem website to give you a better idea of what options you will have.
Upon reaching level 10 you will be able to select your first job, and at a higher level you can change again. Naturally the class you choose will determine the skills you receive, and overall the type of character you will be playing.
Gameplay and Unique Features:As you’ve probably gathered by now, Requiem plays like most other Fantasy MMO’s and as such, you’ll soon find yourself completing an array of
‘collect 5 random items’ quests, and grinding your way through the levels. They haven’t really tried to re-invent the wheel with Requiem, but instead stuck with a tried and true method of making MMO’s. This can both be a blessing and a curse, but it will be up to you to decide which. That being said Requiem has added a few unique features to the game that help to give it some originality:
Beast Possession: At level 23 you will be able to undergo a quest that will allow you to change your form from into a nightmarish creature. By killing large enemies you are able to collect new pieces of monster, and evolve your nightmare spirit. At later levels you are able to obtain new Beast Possessions by killing high level enemies and combining their parts together. The system seems to be a lot of fun, for the higher level players anyway.
Nightmare Monsters: For me, this is about the only really scary element of the game. At certain points throughout the night, different creates have a chance of appearing at certain areas. These creatures are indeed scary looking, and they are usually very high level too. Whilst I was playing I remember the screen going darker and a player near me yelling “Be careful! The Nightmare Creatures are upon us!” We grouped together with a few other players to ensure our survival and had a blast killing demon babies for a while. At higher levels these Nightmare Monsters become a lot tougher, and drop many useful items.
DNA System: Probably the most exiting feature of Requiem for me was the ability to re-arrange your DNA Structure to enhance your abilities. Using this system you can increase the strength or duration of your skills, your ability o use certain weapons and even minimise some of your class drawbacks. Even more exiting is are the hidden skills and abilities that you can unlock from trying different DNA combinations.
Dungeons: Like all Fantasy Style MMO’s Requiem also has it’s monster filled dungeons waiting to be explored. This is another part of the game that I was admittedly disappointed with. I was expecting a lot out of the Dungeons because of the Horror theme, massive scary bosses and team strategy. All I found was a bunch of tunnels filled with random monsters. WoW set the bar with Instance Dungeons, they need to be pre-organised , boss filled, and drop rare items. The dungeons in Requiem had nothing at all, except a few stupidly hard monsters that appeared to be my level, yet whipped my arse like something 10 levels higher. Hopefully this area of the game is updated as soon as possible, because there isn’t enough here to keep me playing.
PvP: All of my efforts to experience the PvP in Requiem were unsuccessful to the end. I chose to play on a PvP server but couldn’t find a way to attack other players, and the ‘battleground style’ system, allowing large scale games of up 192 players at once, didn’t seem to exist. I waited in the queue to join for well over 3 hours and to no avail. There may be some very nice PvP aspects to Requiem, but I wasn’t able to experience any of them.
So as you can see there is definitely enough here to keep you playing the game for quite a while, and considering that for the most part it’s free to play, there really isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t be. Yes, I said for the most part, meaning that there are premium options available, and although this style has never really been my favourite it does allow people with no income to play and fully enjoy the game. I’ve grabbed a table from the official website and stuck it below, to give you a better understanding of how the premium system works.
Graphics and Performance:For the most part, Requiem ran really well. There were some graphical lag spikes and a few bad texture spikes, and occasionally the game would hang for a few seconds but it was nothing to write home about. The graphics themselves were very nice, especially the death and skill animations. The skills always gave a wow impression with the gore and guts, and killing a monster and watching it rip apart has a certain satisfaction that can’t be beat. Many times I would laugh to my self maliciously as the head of a creature I just dismembered rolled off down the hill. Back to performance, I’ve included a System Requirements box below as they are pretty high, once again courtesy of the official game website.
