Mabinogi is an older MMO that has received a lot of praise from critics; did our revisit to the game find it getting too old, or does it still feel as innovative as it once did?

As a dude who would, eventually, like to have sampled every style of MMORPG in the market, you can imagine there are times where I can get swamped by the sheer number of games that I'd like to try out. More specifically, if you take a peek at this little text file I have on my desktop, suitably titled "MMOs I will play," you'll see that I have about 10 MMO titles in the queue, vying for my attention. Sadly enough, Mabinogi, a sandbox style MMORPG that I dabbled in over the weekend, was not on my MMORPG to-do list and, therefore, I am unable to delete it from 'the queue,' knowing that the burden is alleviating itself. This time, however, I didn't mind forgoing the queue to check out this fun little title from Nexon.

I originally snagged the suggestion to play Mabinogi from Colin Brennan's article on "Five Free to play MMOs that are ahead of the class." In it, Mabinogi ranks third overall, after World of Warcraft clone Runes of Magic and SOE's F2P juggernaut, Free Realms. What made me really interested in this game, however, was just how sand…boxy it was advertised to be, and, to a large extent, I found that this was true! You can do whatever you want in Mabinogi!

Mabinogi is actually a fairly old-ish MMO that's been ported over to North America almost 4 years after its June 22nd release date in Korea. The game is also developed and self-published by MapleStory creators Nexon, which sort of made me wary when approaching the game. I realize that MapleStory boasts a massive following of loyal (and occasionally drooling) players, but I could never really get into it, as I felt the game was covered, head to toe, in endless exp grinding. I hoped Mabinogi would stand up better as a younger MMO.

One of the first things players might notice when they load up Mabinogi is that this game has a learning curve that's pretty much vertical. When you're looking at your character creation, I've heard rumours that this verticality tilts backwards until you're basically looking at some kind of rock climbing challenge. You see, when you start up Mabinogi, the character creation process goes something like this: "I want to make an Elf," you might say, and instantly the game pops up with a 'helpful tip,' suggesting that you should make a Human instead, because you can only create one character per card and if you create a Human, that Human can align himself or herself with the Elves in order to get an Elvish character card.

Does this… make sense? It honestly didn't for me, so I just decided to be stubborn about it, and I continued to make my Elvish avatar, despite knowing what I was losing out on. Next, the game requires that you specify a starting age for your character, ranging from age 10 all the way up to 17. Since most games reward you for starting out younger (maybe more customization?) I quickly looked through the bonuses that are associated with age, but I found that there was no discernible advantage to rolling a young character. Their base stats sucked in comparison to a 17 year old, and it seemed as though their stat growth was also inferior to that of their older counterparts. This baffled the heck out of me until I finally figured out the advantage of starting young - hours after I had actually created my character.

You see, age in Mabinogi is a very interesting thing; it regulates the growth of your character on a weekly basis (one Mabinogi year is one week in our time) and it determines how many 'Ability Points' you receive, based on your current age. Players who roll young characters get 5 AP every year at the cost of having low stats, while players who roll older characters get 2 AP every year, but they start with superior stats. Now, Mabinogi sports a completely freeform style of character development, as players can spend their ability points to bolster any skill they want - so long as they have the AP to train it. Unfortunately, readers, you may have spotted the problem that arises when we have tons of skills that require AP, but we have a character who does not receive Ability Points when he ages past 25, and the 'suggested' starting age is 17.

Do you see it?

What most of you should note by now is that if the game gives you 2 AP ever 'year,' but then significantly slows down your character progression at 25, players have, literally, seven weeks (or 14 ability points) to enjoy the game before they hit the downward slope of middle-agedness. Well, the game actually relies quite heavily on a system they call 'Rebirth,' where a player, literally, is reborn as a younger avatar with his or her levels and stats reset, but they retain their abilities and titles. Now that player can get more ability points after his rebirth.

Initially, Rebirthing would only come at a price for users. So many players were angry that a purported 'free to play game' was actually a money sucking MMO if they wanted to get out of being 25+ for the first time. These days Nexon has realized the folly of their ways, and players can freely Rebirth after level 20.

Aside from having a ridiculously obtuse character creation setup, Mabinogi does manage to boast a fairly robust combat system, despite the fact that it touts itself as a Fantasy Life / Combat hybrid MMO. Fighting in Mabinogi is essentially a glorified game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Players have a number of attack styles to utilize during a fight, where some styles beat others in the fashion of Rock, Paper, Scissors. In this way, if the player is paying attention and is able to read the monster well, he or she can actually win fights against stronger monsters and take no damage if he or she can play the Rock, Paper, Scissors combat game well enough. Overall, this kind of combat system is a lot of fun to play with, although it certainly slows the game down a notch. The other problem is that the game is entirely click based (WHYYYYYY), so targeting monsters can become a chore (holding CTRL can help you auto target, I know, but the AI for auto targeting appears to be to target the further monster, I swear).

In reality, while it may seem that I've written a fair bit on the game, I've (literally) barely touched on all that Mabinogi has to offer. Perhaps the best appeal of the game is that it deviates from the hack 'n slash MMO mindset and, instead, tries to create a living, breathing world. It should be noted that while combat is pretty big in the game, it's definitely not the only thing to do, as players can take up professions, buy housing, build relationships with NPCs (!) and even compose music if they choose.

I suppose the only real problem I have with Mabinogi is just that its ageing system, while a plus to some players, is definitely a huge problem in my eyes. When a premium member is 'reborn,' they can actually change their physical appearance and gender when doing so, which I think is absolutely counter-intuitive when it comes to creating a 'fantasy life' style of MMO where players should become attached to their digital avatars. As well, the point and click 'windows style' UI leaves a lot to be desired. In the end, while I did enjoy all that Mabinogi had to offer, the nagging demands to 'rebirth' my character in seven weeks really put me off in terms of trying to achieve progression. I realize that you do get to save a lot of attributes when reverting back to a kid again, but there's just something that really irks me about games that force you to perpetually live out your adolescent high school years. Thank god I don't have to deal with puberty again.

Christopher "Pwyff" Tom
Editor
ZAM.com