Review: Saga of Ryzom
by GunGoddess

When my Saga of Ryzom arrived, I tore it open to install it right away. I hurriedly put in CD1, but no auto run. That’s okay, maybe it is disabled on my computer. I go in and hit setup. Still…nothing. I try again…nothing. Well, maybe if I reboot. Now with a fresh start, I click setup, and…Nothing! Argh! Then I realize that my antivirus is enabled. After disabling it, Woot! The setup starts. Now, it asks for CD2, but somehow along the way my computer has forgotten that it even has a CDRom. After some more disabling of anything possibly antivirus related, the installer worked flawlessly. Good old user error.

The first part of the game you will get to, after logging in, is the character creation/choice screen. The details of your character are quite important. However, if your choice is not to your liking, you can delete it to start over, or you can create a new one in an empty slot. You get numerous slots for character creation, and there are only four races to choose from. So, there is room for change and modification.

All four races look fairly different from each other, but all have the main four abilities. When starting you can select up to three abilities, but as you progress you will have the opportunity to add the remaining abilities. Your choices at first are fighter, magic, harvest and craft. Although you start with three, you do not have to add three different abilities. By choosing two of a single ability, you get more goodies to start with. For example, choosing Craft will give you the ability to craft boots. Choosing Craft a second time will also give you the ability to craft gloves initially as well.

My initial character was going to be a fighter, magic user and harvester. When I created it, this did not work well. Magic had only given a heal ability that only worked if you were part of a team. This just sat on the sidelines most of the time. Fighter and harvest worked well for me though and my main concentration was melee fighting, which is essentially whacking your prey with a sword, mace, or whatever implement you are carrying. Harvesting gave me the ability to gather raw materials to sell early on. However, by looting a corpse, or quartering, you can sell most items as well. Avoid picking up the meat and hairs, though, because these are mostly used for missions and cannot be sold. The harder the beast is to kill, the better the payout. Especially if you take out some Kipee.

While you can always play the game by yourself, joining a team allows all members to gain more experience and advance quicker. There is also the added benefit of growing a group of friends who have skills complementary to your own. Going into a fight with someone equipped with magic and healing spells can keep members alive longer. There is also the ability to share raw materials and craft items for each other. However, since the game is meant to be enjoyable, do not horde your crafted items, raw materials, and money. Help others to benefit and enjoy the game more. You can join bigger battles when you are part of a team. As opposed to soloing, where you really have to choose your battles carefully, or you will be wiped out before you know it.

Graphics

The visuals are very impressive. I found myself exploring a great deal, just to see the sights. Every race has their own specific habitat. The initial training area has low level creatures, natural resources, and approximately 6 towns. When you make your way into a new town, you are given the town as an additional spawn point. Every habitat consists of the basic elements and each looks dramatically different from the others. For example, the Tryker live in the lakelands, which are very tropical with beaches and lakes and huts that are built on these lakes. The Matis live in the forests and have lush tress, bushes and grass everywhere. Then there is also the desert, which is home to the Fyros. The desert has vegetation, but it is sparse. The trees are thin to the point of being transparent. This makes them look as if they could collect water from the air, and are so thin to make less surface area to keep hydrated.

The weather for each land is also quite different. The lakelands are very calm with some fog, or the very occasional rain shower, but for the most part it is sunny around there. The jungle has very violent weather. There is a great deal of thunder and massive storm systems. The forest area will switch seasons during the game. You will notice nice summer like weather, winter weather, and those beautiful in between seasons. The desert weather is just as you would imagine. It is dry, with rain fall being incredibly scarce. There are sand storms, and the temperatures during the day are very hot and very cold at night. The differing of the weather adds yet another uniqueness to each of the lands. There was a great deal of thought put into everything.

The look of the mainland is very similar to the training areas. However, because of the nature of the mainland to be bigger and give more exploration room, there is the ability to add more features. The towns are bigger and more elaborate. An example being buildings built out of trees, that are grander on the mainland and allow for such fantastic construction. A big difference between the two areas is that the mainland has higher level creatures and higher level resources, this aides in your advancement and in the crafting abilities of your character.

Sounds

Ambient sounds add a depth to the game. As you progress to the edge of the habitat, there are sounds of creatures off in the distance. It feels like there is so much more to explore. Unfortunately, with so much effort put into everything else, the sounds for characters and animals are severely lacking. I have only heard two different sounds come from characters during a melee fight. Also, animals have either an odd whimpering noise or a growling noise, that sounds more like a complete evacuation of bodily gases. It really is not very pleasant sounding.

The animation of the animals is pretty basic. You have some that are very passive, and unless you attack them, they will not attack you. However, once you attack, you are stuck until either you or the creature is dead. It can be very difficult to run away, unless you are very close to a town. The passive creatures will fight alone and even though the animals are grouped into packs, the other members of the pack do not come in to assist in most cases. They will walk over, look at you, and just sort of continue on their way to await their turn. The aggressive creatures, such as the gingo, make exploration more difficult because as soon as you are within sight, they will come for you. The gingo are usually grouped with about one or two others, but if you are close to another pack, they will not hesitate to come over and get a piece of you as well. It is not uncommon to stumble across a gingo, he attacks, and before you know it, you are being swarmed by five of them.

The attack style for the most part is well done. The gingo are an aggressive wolf-like species. That would seem to be the appropriate choice. However, when dealing with the Kipee, they are programmed to be passive. That counters story line of Ryzom, in which the Kipee, or Kitin, were the species that almost decimated the population of the planet. You would expect them to be more aggressive.

Into the future of Atys..

In the recent changes that have been in process with Ryzom, Chapter One saw the uprising of the Kipee once again to an aggressive state. There were attacks on colonies and outposts. Animals became more vicious, and are significantly more powerful. It had been that you could leave the training area for the mainland at about level 30 and due fairly well before, now, it is a good idea to hang around the training area for a while longer. The changes introduced with Chapter One are not limited to the aggression and power - some of the animals have been changed, and look to be a terrifying morph of its former self.

In addition to the change to the animals, there were also changes to the actions and stanzas that are learned from the trainers and each character had their skills reset to take advantage of the new changes. You receive 10 skill points for each level achieved, so when they reset them, you received those all back in your inventory to use. Also, magic is more effective when starting now. You are given a fight skill instead of a healing spell, which turns out to be much more helpful when you plan to focus on magic and go about the game alone for a while.

Since you do have numerous character spots, and lots of time to try things out, be sure to hang around the training as long as possible. Your level can go up as high as 200, so do not be rushed to go the mainland at level 10. I waited until level 28, and I was still way over my head. Now, with the recent changes to the animals, it will be even tougher. Take your time to explore all of the sights, and smell the proverbial roses. You will be impressed with the level of detail and all of the effort put in by the developers. Help others, meet people and join teams. You will find it to be a much different experience when dealing with living players as opposed to just running around solo, which is the essence of massive multiplayer games in the end.

Most of all, enjoy the experience that has been given to us by Nevrax.