Bright Shadow is an anime styled MMORPG that was developed by the Taiwanese studio Seedo and is a mix of popular concepts. Most players will find it resembling R.O.S.E. Online, but don’t let the descriptions on most websites fool you – Bright Shadow has nothing horror in it and is just plain Asian fantasy that we are used to seeing everywhere. So let’s begin this Bright Shadow review.
Beginning
You will see how basic Bright Shadow is from the moment you start creating your character. The character customization, just like everything else in the game, is pretty minimalistic. You can customize your gender, hairstyle, hair color, face type and skin tone. The problem is that every aspect of the character creation system is limited to 4-5 choices and that’s it. There is just not enough in there to satisfy you. This entirely eliminates the chances of anyone feeling unique and you will meet one clone after another. Once you are finished with your character, you will be taken to the beginner’s village, where you will have to withstand a series of horrible tutorials presented in the form of tests. Those are incredibly boring and horribly written but are recommended just because of the godly amounts of experience they will earn you. You won’t have trouble with the controls – they are very simple and are done entirely through the mouse(but there is an option for WASD controls). The HUD also makes a clean appearance – almost everything important is on the screen and what’s not – is easily accessible through a simple menu.
Combat
The combat system of the game is your classical whack-a-mole. And while the combat of Bright Shadow is bit clunky and lacks variety, it has it’s ups as well. One such is the “soul power” system. You can view the SP bar at any time during gameplay, above your HP bar. Soul power serves a wide array of purposes, but the most important one is – for using and acquiring skills. Every skill in the game takes a certain amount of SP and you’re okay as long as you don’t run out. But that’s practically impossible since SP is acquired by slaying monsters. This makes this vital substance easy to get a hold of. You just kill enough monsters until you get to what I like to call “skill spam mode” where your SP is enough to just keep on skilling. As for the experience rate – it’s low enough to scare away even the most grindy of natures, but the transition between levels are done smoothly so once you get used to it you won’t have much trouble. If you get used to it, that is. Another interesting feature is the so-called Umbra guide which is a bestiary where you collect cards dropped by monsters. You can use those to gain access to different buffs and stat augmentations, which will help you in battles. The controls for the game are nothing to fear – simple and smooth point-and-click system, standard for so much hack ‘n slash. But the real problem of the combat mechanics is the enemy AI and the troublesome pathfinding. During your battles, some enemies will try flee due to low health. The perfect time to strike, you think.. until you realize that almost every fleeing enemy is impossible to hit until it stops, which only increases the length of the battle and makes your enemy a great target for ks-ing players.
Cash Shop
Like almost every free to play MMORPG out there, Bright Shadow earns its money through an item mall where players can spend loads of cash on customizing and empowering their characters, which results in a lack of balance. The item mall offers hairstyles, clothes, mounts and potions that have effects such as removing the death penalty or improving the SP consumption. This is where you will notice that players that actually pay for the game earn get better drops than you, hit harder than you, or have better stats. Which won’t be such a problem due to the lack of any kind of PvP mode, but is still a nuisance.
Role Playing
As you start the game you will have no choice of class whatsoever, at least until you reach level 10. This is where you can make your choice between the Warrior, Shaman, Healer or Machinist(ranged). While the balance between each class is at a decent level, the real problem comes with the lack of second class transfer like in most games built around this role-playing model. The developers have promised to introduce second class transfer with the first major addon to the game, but that will happen later on with the release of Episode one. For now do what you can do best in Bright Shadow – grind.
Graphics and sound
The graphics of Bright Shadow lack detail, but compensate with the great art style. Everything in the game looks cute and lovely, and the character models deserve special admirations. The environment, on the other hand, does not look that and is just too basic. The engine of the game is quite advanced for a free-to-play project: has it’s own weather system, the optimization is good and it handles itself pretty well. The only problem I can see with the visual presentation of the game is for people that dislike the overall anime art style, in which case I would not recommend you even trying out the game as you will most likely be disgusted. As for the music – it’s quite good and very easy to take in by anyone. So the general feel of the game’s presentation is nice, aside from the horribly written text messages.
Conclusion
The final verdict for Bright Shadow: a nice, but a bit too basic free-to-play MMORPG. The lack of detail and variety may frighten hardcore players, but fans of asian-styled MMO’s will find themselves filled with joy over the gameplay mechanics, who are nothing different or innovative, but are nicely done and surprisingly addictive.