Wednesday 11 November 2015

Game Review: Dragomon Hunter

Dragomon Hunter is an MMORPG game published by Aeria Games. This game is currently in open beta. Dragomon Hunter has only 2 servers, Aegis and Paradox, with 7 channels and 6 channels respectively. For those who has played games under Aeria Games, Dragomon Hunter has Loyalty Points and Falcon's Fortune the same with Aura Kingdom. I had the opportunity to join the closed beta test, however, I was in China and is unable to try it out. By the time I got back from China, it is already open beta. So, let's get started.

UI
The UI for this game is extremely big. This is to cater the younger kids into playing the game. The game is played in third person with the option of zooming in and out with the scroll button. The UI is almost similar to any other games. Top right is map, underneath the map is quests, bottom centre is your skill bars, health bar, and hotkey bars and bottom left is your chat.

Character Customization
You have very little character customization. There is not much that you can customize other than the hair, face and voice. Both genders are available for all classes.

There is a small rabbit like which is called Hoppalong which will fight for you and the can be customise by the ears, colour, and face only.

Classes
There are currently 4 classes, mercenary, mage, cleric, and rogue. Upon reaching level 20, you can choose to use a different kind of weapon which results to different skills. As you reach level 30, you can choose 2 types of specialization. For example, a mercenary can choose to specialize as a barbarian (high: AoE, burst damage. Low: HP, speed) or a vanguard (high: HP, speed. Low: AoE, burst damage). You can reset the specialization once a day if you are not happy with it.

Gameplay
Currently, my internet is pretty bad so I am able to get a 1 second delay on spells only in the morning. This is due to the North America server part which is unavoidable. I have played all 4 classes and in my opinion, I like the Rogue best. The combat is pretty normal with only 8 skills to spam countless times. During the combat, there are voiceovers that will yell shouts of encouragement which can get pretty annoying at some point. There is an option to mute it, don't worry.
Quests are like the normal kill XX amount of monsters and collect XX items and send to that guy. You can click on the quests to auto run to the area. It is simple and cater for kids.
Hoppalongs, your companion can learn skills from books dropped from Hoppadrome Solo or Party. Each book is only 1 Exp to each classes for your Hoppalong. So imagine farming for 60 books to gain one new class for your companion.
Dragomon Hunter has a system for mounts where you have to kill them countless times till they drop either an egg or a treasure chest which contains the reins, flute, whistle to summon the mount. Only mounts like huge bosses is available in item mall.
Falcon Fortune is a game which requires Fortune Gems. Fortune Gems can be bought using real money or by farming for loyalty points by doing the daily events. Daily, if you are hardworking, you can earn up to 400 Loyalty Points (LP) and 10 Fortune Gems cost you 3450 LP. So, you need 10 complete daily events to buy 10 Fortune Gems which you may or may not get what you want. This is why I have 257 hours in Aura Kingdom (I am not sorry for it).
Dragomon Hunter has a ranch which allows you to breed more dragomons. The highest for a normal dragomon is +40% movement speed. Bosses are +50% movement speed but after breeding, you can use them for attack.
The game has a wonderful system in finding parties for dungeons. There is a special recruitment and all you have to do is click on it and find a suitable group for you. You don't have to talk to them and it is wonderful for players like me who is too shy to ask for parties.
Dragomon Hunter has an archive. Which is to me, a good way to hook on to players. The archive can be used to store the special items such as costumes, mounts, glyph, companions and more. So, for a gamer, we must collect them all or catch them all.
p/s: While auto-running, please look at the screen. Some characters are stuck at certain areas.

Graphics
This game is beautiful. Some may not like the chibi kind of art style but it does have a certain edge for it. I dislike the music, rather repetitive at some point it gets boring.

Currency
Dragomon Hunter has a few currency, Dragomon Point, Coin, Loyalty Points and Aeria Points.
Dragomon Point is received by killing certain rare dragomon, or by completing a certain quests.
Coin is rewards from quests, sale of items and so forth.
Loyalty Point is as explained above.
Aeria Point is by buying with real money.

Special
Dragomon Hunter has a lot of contents. The idea of these contents are rather brilliant, to me. Aeria Games knows just how much they should give to hook onto gamers out there. Falcon's Fortune, Loyalty Point, Archive, Achievements, and Hoppalong's classes are some of those that did. Once I started and I know that this game offers did much of content for me to focus on, I got hooked to it. But doing the same thing over and over again, is not pleasant. I got bored after a while. Not getting mounts drop could be frustrating. Levelling is fun from level 1 to 20 and after that, it is all on you to grind, grind, grind.
A fair warning to players out there, games from Aeria Games tend to have a lot of bots. The popular ones do. Bots will take your kill, make this game laggy and spam a lot.

TL;dR: It is a great game, easily hooked at first. You need to have a stronger will to stay in this game. Not because of bad gamers but the amount of grind that you need is...... wow...
Pros: Good graphics, good but not great gameplay, loads of contents, mount system, Hoppalong.
Cons: Hard to understand ranch system, repetitive music, Aeria Games, grindy.

I give this game a 9/10.

Monday 9 November 2015

Game Review: Echo of Soul

Echo of Soul is an MMORPG game published by Aeria Games. This game is available in North America and Europe regions only for now. Echo of Soul is recently an Open Beta with more contents to come. For those who has played games under Aeria Games such as Aura Kingdom and Dragomon Hunter, Echo of Soul does not have Loyalty Points. So, let's get started.

UI
The UI for this game is fairly clean. I love how the placements of windows does not disturb my character's view. The game is played in third person with the option of zooming in and out with the scroll. The UI is almost similar to any other games. Top right is map, underneath the map is quests, bottom centre is your skill bars, health bar, and hotkey bars and bottom left is your chat. I give 9/10 for the cleanliness.

Character Customization
You have very little character customization. All classes are gender-locked. It does not have much detailed customization to your character like eyes width or thin/thick lips. But u can customize your head's size. body's length and leg's length.

Classes
There are currently 6 classes. Warlock is the newest class. The classes are further divided into 2 sub classes which you can choose at level 10.

Gameplay
I have played this game for a week just to try it out. The movement is fairly smooth. Although I find the girls running to be a little weird. Almost cross-legged like. I am playing somewhere far from the servers so I receive at least 1 second late for my skills but others where great. The combat is a point and click. Which means you point or tab a nearby monster and click on the skill bar to fight. I have played the guardian, which is a fairly tanky and damaging character and I can solo a boss with a small amount of potions used. This means that for solo players out there, you can survive playing this game alone.

You may also find it annoying that you have to go through a few portals just to get to another map as shown above. These portals are linked within a tunnel and you have to go through at least 6 of them to get to the next map. I assume the developers created these tunnels to avoid people hogging a single area to fight mobs. (The areas all have the same mob, play it and you will get it.) You can only ride your mount when you are not moving and it takes 1 second to equip your mount. (Yes, there is a timer on it.) Which makes it a little more unlikable. I don't like to have to stand still just to ride my mount but that is only my opinion. I like it instant, like how I have to run away from mobs and the mount comes in handy that way.

Quests are fairly simple. The usual kill xx amount of monster and pick up the amount of items. They are guided with a small indication on the head which helps a lot. On the side of the quest tracker there is an arrow showing the direction and no, you can't click on the arrow or the quests to auto-run there like some other games.
This game may be a little bit hard to understand because there is a lot to learn. I suggest reading about it first or google along the way to understand more.

Graphics



This game is beautiful. The game is Korean based and the Koreans do make outstanding games. For example: the upcoming Black Desert. I have been playing at the highest graphics and it still runs very smoothly (8gb Ram, GeForce GTX960).

Though I find some areas to be rather dark and gloomy, some players may like this kind of environment. I dislike the music, rather repetitive at some point it gets boring. I rather turn it off and turn on only the ambient and combat sound, plus my own music to play.

Currency
Echo of Soul has 2 types of currency, AP, silver/gold, and Magic Egg. Ap is the Aeria Points that you can buy with real cash in exchange for cash shop items such as mounts, pets and accessories. Gold and silver can be earned through quests and sale of items. The amount of gold and silver that can be obtained is rather low. Some quests only gives 1 silver or 3 silver maximum as reward. I am level 17 now but the amount of silver i have is only 357. Magic Egg is a special obtainable item by logging in with attendance or special events. Magic Egg is used to purchase special boosts.

Special
This game has a soul system where any mobs that you kill, you will get a chaos soul. The soul can be purified to create special souls that can be used to enhance your character for a period of time. The game does have mounts and pets. You will get a llama mount at the beginning and other mounts and pets are available at the cash shop.

TL;dR: It is a good game but I find myself getting bored of the usual type of quests.
Pros: Good graphics, good but not great gameplay, clean UI, great for solo players.
Cons: Low amount of players atm, hard to understand system, tonnes of portal, repetitive music, Aeria Games.

I give this game a 8/10.

Saturday 3 October 2015

"Imagination" by PermaGrinFilms in 4K



Hey guys! It's been so long since I blogged. Anyway, this is for you guys. See Ya!

Wednesday 17 June 2015

On the night of 17th of June 2015

I got scolded for being a little messy and not doing so well at work but no worries, I stayed positive, my work is done and I came home happy. Logged on to my wonderful baby PC and waited for it to load everything. As I waited patiently, my tummy was churning with excitement and I couldn't stand to play my game again. I love the feeling of coming home to the world I love. 
Somehow, today I felt.. useless... I am playing with a friend of mine (initially) which he invited a few of his guy friends to play. Guys being a more common gender to play games compared to girls. I didnt mind it, the more the merrier, yada yada yada. But after a while, being the only girl there, and a working one too while the others are not working, having their semester break, I got left behind. I was by far, not well aware of anything happening, not knowing what to do so I just stood on a cliff (the homebase is on a beautiful cliff which overlooks the lake below) and stared. Because I really have no idea what to do. They are off talking about hunting for materials (we chatted on Mumble) and hunting for food and well, I am the only one with no transportation (a trike killed my raptor because I am an ass for bringing out hunting). 
I don't want to sound sensitive and all but no matter what I do, I am sensitive, I tend to over think stuff. Some of them said I can always join them, I can always do anything I like but what I did may not be something that they like so I avoid doing anything unless told (just my character). And I don't want to be treated as a girl, being treated like I needed help every single time which thankfully they did not. I am a big girl, I can take care of my own. 
I know all this sounds far-fetched like OMG it's just a game. but behind that other computer is a human being. They still can feel emotions and annoyance is the last thing I want them to think about.
So, tomorrow onwards, I will have to rely on my own, they had build one beautiful case with fences, i will have to run around and try to hunt back for the same colour raptor that died (it was black with gray spots with a bluish purple spine, I didn't get to take a picture with it). Anyway, it is time for me to sleep. I have work tomorrow. It's a THURSDAY tomorrow, which means 1 more day to the weekend since Friday night to me is considered the weekends. 

And as always, thank you for reading. Goodnight.

Saturday 13 June 2015

On the 12th of June 2015.

Today is one of those memorable days where I will lose my head and completely rely on nothing and just go with the flow of things. I can't believe that for one game, to be specific, Ark: Survival Evolved, I would drive all the way, almost got into an accident, just to find a desktop microphone to communicate. (I got one at Harvey Norman)

Ark:Survival Evolved is a FPS (First Person Shooter), survival, prehistorical game where you are stranded naked, with nothing on, and you have to survive. The game itself is very breathtaking and almost life like situations such as too hot, freezing cold, injuries, hunger and oxygen deprivation. The key point of this game is that you can build houses, tame dinosaurs, ride them to battle and if you go further in game, you can actually craft guns. The game is still in early access and I would give a big KUDOS to the developers. In my opinion, it is a solid game, not so easy as it looks game. I died a few times before succeeding in understanding the game.
I would suggest watching this before getting to know or buy the game. 

Anyway, I went to have my favourite Chilli Pan Mee with my boyfriend. In my head, i am already contemplating, should I buy my headphones. I have been looking at this headphone for more than 2 years. It is the Steelseries Siberia V2 Frost Blue Illumination Edition. My boyfriend, being cheeky, keep poking me into buying them. So, i finally decided to get. after counting my budget, of course. 
 Here it is! Finally you are in my hands.
 This is the inside. I didnt know there is a flap where you can open to view it. 
 This is the headphones. The top bars are metal, supporting two 50mm plastic ear cups which held metal strings connected to a flat soft piece of cloth for comfort.
 It comes with a USB extension and a quick start book. The earphones comes with a download of the software where you can customize the equalizer and the lights.
And this is it in its glorious blue light. 

With this headphones, my PC setup is almost finished. I left only an SSD, a keyboard and another monitor and I am completely done with the upgrades. Yes, I am aiming a little too high but a girl has to dream.

Edit: I am currently wearing the headphones to test how long does it take for me to feel uncomfortable. It has been an hour and I can feel a little pressure on the side of my cheeks but nothing major. Still alive and kicking.

Thanks for reading!

On the 6th of June 2015.

On this day, I am walking with my boyfriend looking at some of the sales in Jusco. They seem to be on sales on the toy sections and both of us adore toys. He loves Legos while I prefer the Sylvanian Family collection. I vow to collect every single house and stalls and playgrounds and treehouses and boathouses and place it on a huge IKEA table with sand and grass and such. It would be beautiful.

Anyway, while browsing, I saw this.
 Me being a huge fan of One Piece, I was literally squealing with glee at this. I quickly grabbed one and head to the counter to pay this. 
 The card inside is like this. Chopper being the main character for being oh-so-cute-always. 
There is 2 new cards in the deck, like any other featured decks. I just have to get this properly translated so I can play Uno Piece. Get it, get it??

That is all for today. It is just a short one.
Thanks for reading!

On the 24th of May 2015.

On that day, it marks the best day of my life. I finally, finally, FINALLY got to upgrade my 2 year old PC to a whole complete brand new set (except for the harddisks)

New set consist of:
CM Storm Scout II Ghost White Chassis
Asrock Z97 Anniversary
i5-4460
MSI GeForce GTX960 4GB
S12G Seasonic 650W
2x4GB Avexir 1600MHz
extra, extra fans! (I hope i didnt forget anything on this list)

And here are the pictures to follow up my journey to heaven.
This are the items. The GPU, Corsair Cooler is my boyfriend's. 
The layout of my new chassis.
It is bigger than it looks. No banana for scale sorry. 
Proof that I did put everything in myself. My boyfriend helped out a lot too.
The highlight of my PC. Probably the most expensive part of the whole setup.
I don't think anyone can see the whole setup, it is completely black. That makes me extremely happy
Light that baby up! As you can see, my room is very bright but the LED and the front panel fans are bright too.
Front look.
Light off look.
Top look. 3 buttons, front LED on and off switch, power switch and reset switch. They are surprisingly easy to press and i sometimes accidentally lean on it to reach to the back and it started the computer straight away.

Anyway, the performance right now is pretty good. I am on high graphics on Ark: Survival Evolved. It is a little bit laggy but so far, the graphics is very beautiful. Assassin creed's game too boast its splendid city view with the help of the graphic card. 
That is my heaven, this is my baby. I am enjoying myself, immersing in the world of dinosaurs. 

Hope you enjoy reading my blog. 
Thanks!

Thursday 28 May 2015

On the weird, yet wonderful day.

Yesterday was the 27th of August 2015. I started the day badly.

I dropped my toothbrush into the toilet bowl.

I did not stare in disbelief nor do I acted quickly. I nonchalantly grabbed the toothbrush, scrubbed the handle and the brush furiously and proceeded into using it. I have no time to grab another one. It is already 6.30 a.m and I need to hurry off to work. My every day life starts with the 6.00 a.m ring of the alarm which proceeds to a snooze button and another alarm at 6.15 a.m. Took a short close eye and force myself up at 6.20 a.m. I need to get out of the house by at least 6.35 a.m or else the road will be packed with impatient drivers stuck in a horrendous jam.

I continued my way to the train station after parking my car at my usual spot. Bought myself a nice packet of nasi lemak for breakfast and headed to the train. By the time, I was there, the train is due to arrive in 3 mins at 6.55 a.m. Nice timing, I told myself. From the first train, I traveled 30 minutes to the main station in the heart of the city and quick-walk to my next train. As I arrived at the platform, a 4-coach train slowly halted to a stop. Another nice timing. Arrived at work at 7.40 a.m. Slowly walked to my workplace, open the door and have my breakfast. This particular nasi lemak has the tendency to spill the sambal sauce everywhere because it is packed in a cone shape but somehow, I was lucky to have it nicely open, with no sauce on the side.

The day continues with work and I was given only one work on that day and I managed to finish as much as possible. Before I know it, 5.30 p.m has arrived and it is time to go home. Off I ran to my station and yadda train, yadda pack people, yadda station. I met this friendly train conductor on my way home. I was leaning on the wall when he started talking about the weather (it is still a very efficient ice-breaker). He asked questions I asked questions. I got to know that he finished his STPM last 2 years and he never got to continue studies because of reasons unknown (I don't pry when he doesn't talk about it, life is hard). He said another conductor is studying his Diploma at the age of 30 now with a CGPA of 3.5. So, it is never too late for him to continue his studies. He is the same age as I do and I can see that sad face he makes when he said his fellow STPM classmates are going to graduate this year and all he has to do his sit on a train, going to and fro, on the same track, same destination almost every day. And the only reason he gave me when I asked him if he wants to continue studies is, he has to work. He tried to apply for scholarship but he kept getting rejected.

It made me realised that I am born with a silver spoon in my mouth. It is true, I am spoon fed, I am dependent on my parents. And there he stand, doing a job with the highest suicide rate in the world, wanting to continue his studies (he said studies gives you extra salary) but has to work because of unknown reasons. I regretted not being able to follow this study course due to extension and now I feel like I am a burden to my parents. I must make up for this.

Well, that is all I have for that day. It started off with a pretty bad situation but ended with a lucky strike of acquaintanceship. I hope more days like this would come. Or maybe I could bump into him and talk more about his work next time.

Thank you for reading!

First post!

Before I start posting any posts, let me introduce a little bit about myself.

Hello, Konbanwa, Hallo, Bonjour, Hej, Annyeonghaseyo, Ni hao, Ape khabar, Hola, Ciao.

My name is Amelia Tan. Do not try to search me, I have searched myself and there is thousands of Amelia Tans out there. I am a undergraduate student currently studying accountancy. I am having my internship/practical training now, going to 3 months this coming 31st of May. The stress from internship and work is my motivation to start this blog. Hopefully it will lighten this heavy shoulders of mine.

I am an avid lover of games, either online or offline but no first-person-shooter (FPS) for me, but I have the weakspots for MMORPGs (Multiplayer Massive Online Role Playing Games) and sandbox games. Sandbox games are open world games where you can go wherever you want to go. Literally. Games that has beautiful graphics or wonderful controls and smooth storylines are one of my favourites. So, hang on because I will be reviewing some of the games that is currently in beta or some new games that I have. Oh, I do buy games that I like and well, please do support the developers!

I also have a huge passion for anime and manga. I am a sucker for the culture in Japan. Let's just say I am a nerd and a geek. I love animes that are funny, romantic, action, adventure, anything that attracts me from the cover to the synopsis. Some of my favourites are Skip Beat, One Piece, Naruto, Fairy Tail, Shokugeki no Soma and many many more. My dream is to buy the whole set of One Piece english manga that cost almost RM45 for one book! One day.. One day..

Lastly, I love, I adore, I worship food. Food is my life. Food is my first choice, second choice and third choice of my life. I can repetitively eat the same favourite food almost everyday. FYI, I don't cook, at all. I just love trying food from here and there, comparing restaurants. I would take a staple food, for example, roti canai from a mamak stall and compare it with another mamak stall. It is pretty simple. I am more enthusiastic towards how the food would taste like compare to how the restaurant looks like. Yes, environment is important but if the food is shitty, everything is shitty.

That's all from me today. I will blog more soon. Will do. Hopefully. 

Thank you, Arigato, Obrigado, Xie Xie, Dankjewel, Danke. Merci, Grazie, Gracias, Gamsahamida.