Role-playing games are usually set in medieval environments and feature knights, trolls and all sorts of mythological creatures. But some other RPG titles stand out of the crowd and offer an original setting along with some unique features.
This is the case of Wonderland Online, a role-playing adventure with an extensive social component, Japanese-style characters and environments and a turn-based combats that reminded us of pure RPG games. The first steps involve, as in any other RPG game, choosing a server and creating your character. You'll spawn in a ship that's unfortunately bound to sink, after which you're rescued by a nice castaway and the real adventure begins.
Wonderland Online features a bit of everything: doing quests to obtain rewards, killing enemies to gain experience points and progress through levels, learning skills, developing professions and, of course, meeting other players from around the globe. All these elements make of Wonderland Online a really attractive melting pot for all sorts of players, whether they like to wander around chatting with people or they prefer to focus on the development of their character.
I liked the game's visual style a lot. Characters - and even more, objects – are designed with great detail, with a nice isometric perspective. An important drawback to this design, however, is the fact that the text in the chat window is ridiculously difficult to read and doesn't get better even if you change the font color.
Other than that, I found Wonderland Online quite entertaining and addictive. In fact, I had to make an effort to stop playing and start writing this review. One final tip: don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of information you're presented with during the first few minutes of gameplay: the game is really easy to control and besides, you can always ask other players for help.
Wonderland Online includes traditional RPG elements (skills, professions, turn-based combats, resource management) together with social networking characteristics and a very original design. All these features make of Wonderland Online an MMORGP that's definitely worth a try.
STORY OF SEASONS: Friends of Mineral Town for windows from Marvelous Inc.
