Lime Odyssey | Review

Recently I had a chance to check out the alpha-phase build of Aeria Games' latest MMO Lime Odyssey. Featuring a creative dual-class system for character customization and a colorful anime-style look, this latest offering from the guys behind Eden Eternal looks like a promising, yet friendly MMORPG that could set a new standard in the continuous expansion of the "east to west" free-to-play MMO conversion progression.

I say "dual class" because you start the game with both trade and battle specializations that you can choose out of a set of four (for battle classes) or three (for trade classes). So theoretically, you can be a mage that works the smithy's anvil, or a warrior who could take on Wolfgang Puck in the Iron Chef kitchen. But do heed this warning: once you hit trade level 30, you'll have to do a quest that repreresents a turning point in your trade career (and what type of specialist in your field that you're going to be). You can't make any changes once you lock in your choices, of course -- so make sure you know what you're getting into before you decide on what you're going to do in terms of class specialization.

As for battle initiation in Lime Odyssey, that part is generally straightforward: just click on an enemy to set your targeting, then click again to attack. You'll then proceed to swap jabs back and forth until one side is down (hopefully not you, of course). If you take the fall (and not the enemy foe) then it's an automatic certainty that you're going to have to start the fight over from the beginning, since a deselected enemy mob automatically regenerates its health if left idle without taking any more damage. You can increase your odds of success in battle with your special combat skills, though you should make sure that you don't rely on them any more than necessary (more on the reasoning for that later) since they do have a few seconds to cool off before you can use them again. You also get a special burst power mode that builds up as you take out an increasing number of enemy mobs (as indicated by a blue power meter in the upper left of the screen) that should help out a bit, though at this point it's still not balanced out enough to be entirely useful.

Looting your dead foes in Lime Odyssey is done in a much different way than I've yet to see in an Aeria Games' MMO. As opposed to picking up loot bags or whatever separate form of loose articles that would otherwise pop up to claim your monster drops, here you're (literally) over the monster's dead body... at which point you would select it like you did to begin the battle, this time bringing up a selection of items that you can hoard for yourself as needed (or just go with the "take all" option and thereby claim it all at once, which is what you'll probably going to end up doing anyway).

Occasionally you may be asked to collect various kinds of different materials on occasion, and this is generally done through the same point-and-click method, but with a slight twist. Depending on the situation, you'll have to gather, dig or search for whatever has been requested by selecting the applicable material type and selecting the relevant attainment method. I didn't exactly get the search option idea, of course (it's right in front of you, duh!) but the digging, chopping and gathering methods of material collection are very well done.

There were a few issues that I have for the game at this point, however. For starters, even the first monsters that you have to fight take a lot of hits before they go down. This clearly needs to be addressed by the time the game heads into beta, or it will start to look to a degree as if it's horrendously repetitive. Seriously, even though using your special attacks does help with the more difficult foes I still wouldn't be inclined for a minute to have to rely on my power moves every single minute. My second issue is that the NPC quest icons, while unique in respect, are not quite there yet. I can get the arrow indicator for quest acceptance purposes right away, but a circular arrow for turning in quest completion reports? I would much rather have the same arrow symbol for both, maybe with the current quest indicator's color for acceptance, and the use of a green or blue version for reporting in -- though it does already happen after using certain functionality.

Aside from those issues, however, Lime Odyssey is shaping up to be one of the next big MMORPG titles in the free-to-play department. Let's see what happens with the latest from Aeria as we get closer to the beta, and to see if Lime Odyssey can hold itself to the standards that it aims to set in the genre.

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More Screenshots from the Alpha Build...

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