We’ve played what we can, but our quest isn’t finished yet in part 2 of our Throne & Liberty review.
After leaping into a beautiful new world, Amazon’s latest MMORPG continued to drag us towards a fated destiny. Getting there, however, is a winding road. After an extended time to play through the top and bottom of Solisium, We’ve seen enough to set a score and work out what lies at the heart of Solisium in the final half of our Throne & Liberty Review.
Leveling
Across fields, desserts, and dungeons a gorgeous world presents a ton of opportunity to explore and experience. Still, you’ll need to level up before you leap in. Leveling, like much of Throne & Liberty, is a mixed bag and falls victim to some legacy design choices. While content feels engaging and varied, pacing can become a problem. The core questline manages to hasten players along at an adequate rate and tends to push potential heroes into open-world events and instanced content at just about the right time, until it doesn’t.
Navigation, UI, and quest-tracking systems all feel mature and robust. Players are put in the right spot without any confusion, but not all the time. Every so often Throne & Liberty will just desert you, seemingly without any plan. A hunt ensues for mobs to grind out intermediate levels or content to fill a void. This frustrating break in a generally smooth vertical flow is mainly caused by a decision to level-lock parts of the core story quest. Logging in to find any viable open-world events, no obvious sign of what direction you’re going in, and randomly pinging around the map to find the best leveling area just shouldn’t happen. Instead, you’d expect dynamic-style events or dungeon runs would fill this gap, yet even these come with their own issues.
Open World and Instances
Open-world events, are a large part of the natural progression path of any modern MMO, and NCSoft’s latest has plenty of these. Open-world content is generally varied and fulfilling. Log in at the right moment you might stumble across a dungeon that’s changed during daylight hours, a myriad of collection events, or a sprawling guild battle where you can needle somebody on your hit list. That design doesn’t always work to keep the land alive, with various points where I’ve popped in and been forced to find a corner to grind out mobs thanks to that same wave of overpowered PvP gameplay scuttling across the map.
If you get to dip into open-world events without being cut down mercilessly, There’s a lot of kill and collect. Thankfully, these are presented in such a fun fashion that I didn’t even mind. I don’t think I’ll forget the first time I had to cull some aggressive birds, fill up a bunch of giant purple balloons, then watch them take off and explode in a shower of confetti. That mass gathering of bird bashing then kicked off a boss spawn that swiftly turned into a dance competition. None of it was anything more than killing ten rats, but the presentation and second phase twist was an example of how NCSoft took the familiar and executed it in brilliantly
Instanced encounters, like dungeons, are also a definitive step up from the old subterranean encounters of Lineage 2. A solid variety of open-world dungeons and a range of different instanced encounters provide plenty of different dark backdrops and loot. A range of skeletal soldiers, spirits, and ghoulish monsters all provide adequately balanced resistance to you and your party while being mixed among a series of environmental puzzles that at least keep the runs interesting.
Between the levers, chains, locks, and mazes, the centrepiece of most encounters is the mini-bosses and final big bads. These are, again, good enough most of the time. From incarnations of death to unsettled spirits wanting vengeance, there’s none of the dark fantasy content that’s quite as inventive as FFXIV. That said, Throne & Liberty dungeon runs remain engaging. There’s an impressive range of mechanics and plenty of varied presentations during battles that never outstay their welcome. It’s a sign that NCSoft really knows what they are doing with this MMO lark.
this MMO manages to make boss battles distinct but never overly challenging. Well-placed visual clues, audio telegraphs, and a sensible resurrection policy mean that boss battles will undoubtedly wreck unprepared groups but never be more than a reason to pay attention to experienced raiders. With so much content, it seems odd that the party tools and party matching systems feel incomplete. While you’ll be able to about get by, this is another area of the game that doesn’t exactly feel feature-rich and dragged back in time.
Getting set for these big dungeon encounters is its own adventure. Instead of a well-crafted hero’s tale to draw players through the deserts and clifftops of Solisium, class progression, and gear grinding is a lot more ‘choose your own adventure’. I already touched on the simplicity of basic stat distribution, and crafting new gear is so accessible it’s kind of unnerving. This straightforward setup can be quickly undermined if you don’t make some crucial choices early on. A mix of class-focused quest choices, weapon selection, passive skill choices, upgrade options, skill leveling, and traits all mean you’ll need to pick a lane to be effective.
Pick A Lane
Playing as a tank, my own journey meant pairing a staff with a sword didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Primary and secondary weapons come together with a range of active and passive benefits, and you’ll need to pick carefully when selecting your preferred pairing. Aside from the base stats benefit that comes with these weapons, the access to skills that they offer tends to synergize towards a particular playstyle, making the increased damage and health buff from a great sword incredibly powerful for a character trying to build and sustain aggro without quickly ending up dead. Once locked into a set of weapons, the progression I touched on previously begins to lock in this decision. Skills books upgrade skills and weapon enhancement has its own currency. This further leans into class specialization with traits and other perks that look like they provide lots of class diversity, but ultimately cement the grind. Amazon and NCSoft have done some work to soften the blow for things like failed upgrades and instituted some degree of power transfer between new gear, yet it can’t get away from the fact that Throne & Liberty uses progression systems that just feel old.
As you might be able to tell, there’s plenty in this adventure that leaves me with mixed feelings but the actual process of getting from zero to hero is still fun. Combat is engaging if somewhat clunky feeling, there’s a wild diversity of content, puzzles, dungeons, and weird collection events. All of this comes constructed and presented with the utmost care. There are tons of ways to play, even when content pacing feels sporadic, getting a group is a chore, and all of Solisium seems out to PK you. Amazon’s influence on this reworked adventure is clear. While a multitude of levels, challenges, and other players lie between you and the Autumn Updates, the current journey is generally an enjoyable one.
The problem, for Throne & Liberty, is that the real endgame isn’t here yet. NCSoft and Amazon chose to build a game that will eventually lean even further into PvP as the Autumn updates begin. Guild brawls, castle sieges, and more mean the biggest and best guilds are something of a threat to the harmony of a server. There’s no flagging off for PvP that I’ve seen, and PvPvE areas of the game are already becoming no go zones for smaller guilds and solo levelers. While the race to max level is enjoyable and the world is gorgeous, don’t be surprised if a war rages through Solisium as the year progresses. For now, I’d play Throne & Liberty for free and enjoy the wonderfully presented content, the gorgeous landscapes landscapes, and the mostly accessible content. Just watch out what side of town you step through and don’t be surprised if some of the community are busy sharpening their swords already.
Play Throne & Liberty for free across PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PlayStation 5 now.
