There are numerous MMO games with an Oriental theme in the market today. Chinese developers have begun competing with Korean and Western developers for a spot in the MMO world. Take Wan Mei (or Perfect World Co. Ltd.) as an example. Their idea of an MMO was to base the story from Chinese mythology, toss in a few used ideas from other MMORPGs, mix it all up and commercialize it. Thus, Wan Mei releases their masterpiece, Perfect World. But is their world really perfect?

To cut the story short, the god Pan Gu wanted to create a Perfect World. To do so, he had to vanquish the forces of evil, create three different races, formed the world he envisioned, and tasked the three races to care for his Perfect World. However, the forces of evil are back, and the three races must do everything in their power to rid the Perfect World of evil. Amazingly, unlike other MMOs, Perfect World’s story is perfectly and seamlessly reflected in the game. Each and every quest giver shares their part of the story related to the game’s official plot. In addition, quests are thankfully abundant over the game, from repeatable ones to dungeon runs, with very generous quest rewards.

The world of Pan Gu is one huge seamless map, although it takes a short time traveling from one end to the other. Mounts and flights of different styles are thankfully available to players for a speedy and safe travel. Your characters can run every possible nook and cranny, or fly as high as possible. Movement is done through WASD or mouse clicks, with jump and swim functions too. Invisible borders open the possibility of a map expansion as well. Dungeons are instanced and amazingly large too, however, most of the paths are tight, requiring players to clear out every single monster and waste too much time inside. Like most MMOs, a lot of monster models are mere repaints or resized variants of low-leveled mobs. The same can be said for NPCs too, just one model per NPC and pasted around every city or location.

Exploring the world means your character has to be strong enough to do so. Perfect World has three races to choose from, with two different jobs per race. As your character gains a level, you gain stat points to distribute in four main stats. Skills are unlocked and leveled through soul points and money from your respective class master NPC. Other than skills and stats, Perfect World’s items will be of great help in your travels too. Weapons and armors are ranked according to rarity and strength, determined by the number or color of the stars. These are also upgradeable to a certain limit, and also socketable with different soulstones. The star rank, upgrade level, and the soulstones offer numerous stat bonuses fit to power up your character.

The game offers your typical party and guild systems to guide you on your path to Nirvana. Guilds can fight over ownership of territories all over Pan Gu. Land owners gain the taxes from the lands they rule over, until the scheduled territorial war. The territorital battle then takes place in an exclusive map. Sadly, these massive battles were meant for the rich and powerful clans alone. It takes millions of gold coins to bid for a chance on the territorial war, a huge risk for a 50/50 winning chance. Small-scale battles can be done in the form of duels and open PvP, though. At level 30, your character has the option of toggling the PK system on/off. Of course, player-killing has its penalties such as item drops or loss of exp. Duels, a more “legal” way of settling matters, can be done as long as the persons involved acknowledge the request. Arenas are also present in major cities, where the PK system is automatically turned on upon setting foot inside.

Perfect World doesn’t crimp on the social aspect either. Your characters can be as attractive (or as ugly) as you want them to be, with their extremely detailed character customization. Instead of selecting pre-made faces, the customize screen is littered with bars and toggles to shape the face and body of your character, plus over 60 hairstyles to choose from. If you’ve got yourself a significant other, perhaps you should try the Intimacy function. This allows males to carry and kiss the female they’re carrying. To kick it up a notch, a marriage system is also available, offering quests and skills exclusive to the couples only.

To complement all these features, the developers made sure that Perfect World looked aesthetically pleasing. Environments are lush and highly detailed. Character looks, from the whole body to armor and fashions. Sounds complement the land of Pan Gu through oriental sounds, both calming and fierce.

Trivial annoyances may come up during gameplay. Lag issues usually come up even in uncrowded places; in the form of unloaded character or monster models, lacking text on names or titles, and freezing issues. Some NPCs have untranslated or mistranslated dialogues that may hinder in completing quests. Dungeon and field problems also arise like collision problems and skill range imbalances from monsters. Another annoyance would be the dominance of the rich in guild wars, and market prices.

To sum it all up, Perfect World isn’t all that perfect. Despite the minor irks, it has a lot of good points that make it a compelling and worthy game to play. It gives players hundreds of hours to fully explore the world it offers, with updates constantly being added. Perfect World is definitely a must-play.

The Good: Territorial wars, flights and mounts, numerous quests

The Bad: Expensive economy, lag issues, mistranslation issues



Review by kenny, Freemmogamer.com - Posted April 13, 2009