Karos Online Review

Karos Online is a free-to-play MMORPG, set in a fantasy world of Asmara. The game was developed by the Korean studio Galaxy Gate and is ported by NHN, the people behind the popular game portal ijji. While Karos may not be very innovative, the game offers a very clean and addicting gameplay that most players can enjoy in peace. If you are asking whether you should try to game or not, this Karos Online review should answer your questions.

Asmara

The world of Karos Online is stunning, to say the least. And not just graphic wise – the design is also breath taking and makes up for a unique experience in Asmara. Karos offers three playable races in total – Humans, Seroines and Shadows. The race of the humans doesn’t need any introductions. The second race, the seroines, is just a renamed version of the classical light elfs – pointy ears, unique hair color, love for nature.. As for the shadows – they are the game’s equivalent to dark elfs. But while this whole thing sounds promising, the character creation is a bit of a let down. Your options for customization are very limited and so is your choice for race/class/gender. Bladers and Rogues are male only classes while Mystic, Bowmistress, Paladin and Sorceress are female exclusives. That’s it, you can’t have a female Blader or a male Mystic.

First steps

Karos Online has serious problems with its basic guide. Its way too minimalistic and seems to have a mind of its own – it pops up whenever it wants. So my advice would be not to waste nerves on it and just turn it off, using the one on the website instead. But even considering the clunky guide, Karos makes a very smooth appearance and getting the hang of its mechanics is simple and requires little effort. The controls are standard – you can use both your keyboard and the mouse. But there is a catch here as well – the keyboard control is way too awkward and not handy enough. The interface is very clean and intuitive – you won’t have much trouble finding anything. It’s the lack of direction that may cause troubles for newbie players.

Combat

If there is one negative thing about the combat system of the game, it’s how slow it is. Half of the blame goes to the lack of HP/MP regeneration while in battle, but even if that gets a fix the battle pace is still slow. If you can get over that, you’ll find the classical combat mechanics known to most gamers. The battles are pretty tight, so any mistake could be your last. But the best advice I could give anyone who seeks to approach this game is – take any quest you can. This will help you level much faster than if you just keep on grinding and a large portion of the quests can be completed more than once, meaning you will always have at least one task to take care of.

Game Mechanics

Karos Online adds a few extras to the classical formula. The first one is the Fletta system. Fletta are permanent buffs, one for each element. Every time your Fletta point progress bar reaches 100% you will receive a Fletta point to invest. The game has a pretty solid crafting system, a fishing system and a mining system. Each one is pretty simple, but manages to deliver a much needed break from the grinding. And speaking of grinding – Karos has lots of it. Some may even call it a grindfest, which is partly true. All and all, Karos Online’s gameplay mechanics are pretty standard and solid.

PvP

PvP is the other key component of the game and it deals pretty well on that paragraph. PvP is not the right word actually, PK is more like it. Once you reach level 10 you can enable player kill mode, which will allow you to kill other players. But don’t think you can just kill whoever you want – player killing is punished by the moral system of the game. By killing others your moral value drops to a point where you will no longer have access to towns and you will be attacked by guards. But you can raise the moral bar again by just killing monsters. Karos also offers two other ways of PvP, which are not so direct – guild wars and mine takeovers. The first one we’ve all seen – you fight other player guilds. But the second one was obviously inspired by RF Online – you fight another player guild for domination over a mine and all its resources.

Technical details

I already mentioned how beautiful and well designed the world of Karos is, but you just have to see it. The character models look great, animations are well done, particle effects are simple but pleasant. The engine of the game isn’t very advanced but does its job perfectly. Now is the time to mention that every bit of the graphics are showered in bloom effects, which for some may be a plus but others may not approve it. As for the music – the background tracks are a joy and are really adequately placed. The only negative about the whole soundtrack of the game are the terrible character voices.

The end

Even with all its flaws and bugs, Karos Online is a great hardcore MMORPG. Fans of PvP-oriented grindfests like Lineage 2 should consider downloading the game, though casual players may find it being way too masochistic. The balance could use a bit of tweaking, controls need fixing, duels should be implemented, but thankfully none of the problems of the game are big enough to turn away anyone determined to join Asmara.