Peria Chronicles MMORPG Features Preview | Hype Meter

Hype Meter is a FreeMMOStation show where we give you an overview of the most anticipated free MMO games. This time we take a look at Peria Chronicles, the incredibly beautiful anime MMORPG that mixes user created content with Pokémon inspired combat.

Introduction

First revealed as Project NT, Thingsoft’s upcoming Peria Chronicles is a beautiful cartoonish affair, an MMORPG that seems capable of mixing the sandbox and building aspect of EverQuest Next with a Pokémon inspired combat system. But let’s not call them Pokémon, in Peria Chronicles the creatures are called Kirana. This game looks truly unique, it’s like the MMORPG of your dreams; hopefully it will play like a dream too. Let’s see in detail what it has going for it.

Selling points

There’s no way around it, the first contact with Peria Chronicles is all about the amazing graphics. We don’t get to see this kind of quality on cel-shaded anime visuals, especially in MMORPGs. It just looks right; the characters are cute, diverse, apparently bursting with personality. But when we see them moving, hair flowing, plenty of clothing detail reacting to character movement, it completely captures you. It also looks sexy, perhaps a tad too sexy when all is said and done – hentai fans will surely take a good look at this game and try to create adult content, something that the developers are a little bit concerned about.

Peria Chronicles includes a very smart feature to make sure that the game world is populated in a consistent way: the town system. When a specific town has many players it will grow bigger to properly accommodate them, and the opposite is also true – if a town is seeing players disappear it will shrink, becoming smaller and smaller until it eventually disappears for good! This will not only make sure that there are no ghost towns in the game, but also provide for some hilarious “wasn’t there a town here a few weeks ago?” moments! A large town requires between 300 and 500 players in one area, something that doesn’t sound too difficult. You can also hire NPCs to turn a building into a shop, among other interactions.

And then we have the user created content. It’s not all about buildings and bridges and stuff like that, in Peria Chronicles you can create your own missions, not unlike Neverwinter. There’s a nice reward incentive for players to make and participate in user created quests – let’s say that a player is tasked with rescuing a character: if he succeeds he gets a specific amount of gold; if he fails, the maker of the quest will earn gold from the player that failed. This is a good way to skip the usual grind for a bit, and while we could be concerned about the possibility of high difficulty on these quests, there’s a system in place to prevent unfair use – players are able to vote to remove some rules from the quest, making it easier or harder. So the rules are made by the community in that town.

Besides storyline quests, players can create things like cutscenes, emotes, dance moves, recipes and so on, there seems to be no limit for the creation system.

Finally, the combat system is unique and mixes semi-action combat with card game. We can attack the enemies ourselves, since there are no specific classes to confine us, but the combat focus is to use our Pokémon… I mean, our Kirana, to attack. Kirana can be captured after defeating them or you can buy them, and each one has its own stats. We can even combine some creatures to create a better, evolved one, so the possibilities are extremely exciting. Also take note: since Kirana are living creatures, if you don’t log in for a long time they will starve!

Recently there’s a craze of mobile apps and the plan is for Peria Chronicles to have some kind of pet application too. Tamagotchi, anyone?

Possible shortcomings

Apparently, Peria Chronicles won’t have any proper endgame content, something that initially seemed odd to us. But eventually we came to understand this decision, seeing that the idea is that players create their own content and there should be plenty to do. It’s still a choice that will divide players, for sure.

While Thingsoft seems to be taking measures against in-game trolls – you know, the kind that just lives to aggravate others – we’re yet to see how effective those measures are. Will we be able to build something without fear of seeing a group of spiteful players voting to destroy it? And will the user created quests be properly balanced, well integrated with the original content and is there a way to rate those quests?

Nothing too upsetting on its own, but it could be very important in a game with a focus on user created content.

Anticipation

Nexon has a winner in its hands – it just has to be a winner. Even those who aren’t too keen on anime visuals have to admit that this one is a looker. But it’s what’s under the hood that is making us extremely excited about this game – it’s a world that we really want to build, to create, to be a part of. We’re hoping for a community that will surprise us every day with new buildings, items and quests. And then there’s the Kirana collecting bit, which should round things up perfectly.

Sadly, recent reports point to a late 2014 beta test and a 2015 release in Korea, which means that if – and that’s a big IF – the West is getting Peria Chronicles, it should take a couple of years at least. Moving to South Korea is becoming more and more appealing by the day, don’t you guys agree?