The detail is huge and the atmosphere is good. The insides of buildings are not rendered so much as carefully designed panormas that pans in the screen while I’m doing my business. When I entered buildings, I discovered the next element of Vindictus’s art direction: cartoonish character portraits and dialogue. This did a good job of not breaking immersion for me even though it felt strange at least it wasn’t a weird featureless model or a regular citizen. After a few moments the game catches up and they get their equipment instead. Instead of a blank faced character, you see a person wearing a drab, brown cowled robe. The game handles its alcohol well also-by this I mean when you have a large group of people and the renderer isn’t done downloading all their clothing and bling. This doesn’t stop after the quest-hub of the town and also extends to the details put on the enemies who are fearsome monstrosities wearing armor and silver-spiked helmets. You can get very close to the textures and models of the buildings and it’s obvious they’re extremely detailed and carefully rendered. The game even has very realistic horses stabled at a building nearby, and pigs oinking, and chickens running about. The first thing I meet the moment I come into town? Tiny little Shinu-iba puppies (okay, so they’re supposed to be some sort of Husky puppy I think) that totter around, yip quietly, turn their heads. Walking around town tells this tale better than anywhere else. It’s nothing short of beautiful and pushes my computer’s video card resources to their limit. From the moment that I finished installing and logged in, I was greeted by a beautiful rendering of a Celtic dragon-boat sailing through a river with a sun glowing in the sky.
This game has high quality and production value written all over it. Graphics and Sound: Like a good movie, this game has excellent polish
The rest of you, however, will probably be calmed in knowing that this game will be difficult for cheaters to prosper in. If you don’t like programs that use root access to monitor system-level activity, then be prepared for its presence. Unlike many other variants, however, it’s much less intrusive than many rivals. You’ll probably enjoy it as well, the writers and art directors really knew where they were going and drew a very extensive map of how they intended to get there.īe warned: Vindictus runs AhnLab Hackshield. The mixture of Irish and English names really amuses me, also there’s a powerful European mixture of culture and affect that rather pulled me in initially. Even if they do have gnolls and mention the Fomori in a strange way, I’m fine with that, this is a video game after all and they get a lot of poetic license. As a result, if I hear Irish names, see Irish monsters, and boats covered with Celtic knotwork, I fume slowly as I walk away.Īctually, Vindictus captured my heart when they accurately pronounced Aodhan with proper Irish. People often use a mishmash of nonsense taken from European cultures in games and do them little justice. So, the presence of obvious elements of Celtic mythology in the game at first gave me pause. Why? Because I’m American Irish, from an Irish community, and I identify fondly with my ethnicity: I have read a lot of our cultural mythology, I speak the language, and I even used to teach Celtoi studies as an expert. When I first heard of Vindictus, I avoided it like typhoid. As very much a themepark game, Vindictus does a good job of giving players an idea of where to go and what to do and does so without too much intrusion into the game’s immersion.Įxpect bias. New players will be blown away by the extremely careful design to the rendering (if their computers can handle it) good storytelling, huge community, well-developed UI, and thoroughly thought out gameplay elements. Vindictus is a free-to-play MMORPG published by Nexon featuring a stunningly gorgeous graphics engine, an instance system, and a narrative that mixes European culture and mythology with a new bent.