NosTale Review

NosTale is a 2D MMORPG video game developed by a Korean studio called Entwell. It was originally only available in Korea when it was released over there back in 2006. It has now since been available around the world thanks to a UK server hosted by GameForge. It is free to play so anyone will be able to play it. The PC requirements aren’t large, but you do have to download over 1GB of game data first in order to play it. This does not include the many patches that you need to download and install as well. Once all of these boring formalities are finally out of the way, you can then proceed to the character selection menu of the game.

At the start of the game, you are only greeted with a very basic character creation screen. You don’t get the chance to choose a “class type” for your character yet. This is not done until you reach level 15 and are first introduced to the game’s basics. For now, you can somewhat create the appearance for your character choosing between being a young boy or girl. There’s not much you can change besides having the option of two hairstyles and choosing the color for their hair. Sadly you cannot alter the skin color or the clothes that your character will wear. In any case, once you have decided on the name and appearance of your character, you are then ready to enter the world of NosTale. When you start “Act 1”, you are greeted with a brief introduction cutscene that tells you about NosTale’s story. A strike has occurred at a place called Kovolt Town. The situation at Kovolt Town gets worse as it has escalated into a war. A lot of enemies will stop you along the way and something called the “Fernon Tree” can turn the world into chaos. The cutscene ends telling the player if they’re up for the challenge.

NosTale is the name given to the village that you are transported in and this is where you will be starting on your adventure. Much like with every other video game, you will be going through the game’s tutorial as it will teach you everything you need to know in order to play the game smoothly without any problems. The controls of the game are very simple to understand. It plays a lot like most other MMORPG video games where you just use the mouse to point and click to where you want your character to go and move. You can also press and hold down the right click button on the mouse to somewhat manoeuvre the camera around to see from a different perspective. This system works okay when you are walking around the village, but the point and click system is kind of clunky when used during combat in this game. When you go over and want to kill an enemy, you have to make sure a small sword icon is highlighted above the enemy. If you are clicking on top of an enemy and the sword icon did not appear, your character will just stand there mindlessly taking all sorts of abuse without fighting back. Sometimes it’s hard to press attack on an enemy since they keep moving around all over the place. In other times, they will crowd around and you will attack and aggravate more than one enemy and they will overwhelm you in this type of situation.

You can press hotkeys on the keyboard that will make you use any skills that you have accumulated. One of the first skills you will be using is to capture your own pet. Pets are companions that will aid you in battle. The first pet that you will be capturing is a chicken. In order to capture the chicken, you will have to cut its health bar by at least 50% before its weak enough for you to capture it. Much like killing enemies, you’ll have to see a “net” icon on an animal. The net icon tells you of that specific animal is available or not for you to capture as a pet. In most MMORPG video games, pets are just controlled by the A.I. and you cannot control any of their movements or combat moves. This is not the case with NosTale as you get the chance to actually individually control your pet in this game. Whether this is during combat or just walking around the village, you can swap to being the human and become your pet if you want to at anytime. Much like the main character in the game, pets can also level up and you can even give them armor to wear too. As you progress further into the game, you’ll have the chance to capture stronger and more menacing pets for you to control too.

Other than going around killing a bunch of enemies and collecting pets, you can enter inside special areas in the game called “Time Stone” missions. These missions are where you are transported into a room where you have to defeat all of the enemies inside a dark circular room. Once you have cleared the room of enemies, you will be transported into another room where you will have to kill another batch of enemies. These missions are timed so you will have to be quick. There are usually up to five rooms you have to clear in these missions. You will be rewarded for your efforts when completing these types of missions. NosTale has some amazing graphics, despite the character models all looking very clichéd. The characters are all modelled in 2D, but the environment they roam in is rendered in 3D. Needless to say the trees and greenery looks lovely throughout. The game might take a bit of time to load at the start, but the visuals are great to look at once everything has been rendered. The other production values are commendable too. This includes the infectious music that plays in the background plus the impressive character artwork illustrations that are shown during dialogue scenes.

As much as I liked playing Nostale, the game isn’t without its faults. For one thing, navigating through the game can be a pain because the mini map in the corner of the screen does not tell you where you have to go. Instead, a red arrow pops up on top of your character pointing to the general direction for where you need to go. This arrow isn’t helpful either, because it does not tell you if you need to go around a certain building or path to get to your destination. Other than the aforementioned navigation issues I had with this game, NosTale plays much like any other MMORPG video games. It’s still an enjoyable game to play thanks to its unique pets that you control and collect. Also the lovely bright graphics and high quality presentation is good enough to win over any MMORPG gaming fan.