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Final Fantasy Tactics Online
...is what I call this game, personally.
I remember when I first heard of Wakfu, I couldn't get excited because I expected it to be done poorly. If you're like me, you've been waiting for something similar to a "Final Fantasy Tactics Online" type game for a long time. Well wait no longer. I'm writing this post after playing open beta (which started recently and is still going on at the moment), because I can tell that this game isn't getting the attention it should be. Below is my "review" of Wakfu.
[1. The Basics]
Wakfu is developed by a French company called Ankama Games, and published by Square-Enix in North America. It is a turn-based strategy MMORPG, and a sequel to "Dofus," from which Wakfu's gameplay and universe is based. Combined with some loony humor and a magnificently flowing artstyle, Ankama has brought us something truly creative - and fresh! Yes, finally, something DIFFERENT for once!
Earlier last year it was announced that Wakfu would be officially released in February 2012. This still seems to be the case.
There will be 14 classes, 11 are currently playable in open beta. I've played most of the available ones and they feel incredibly unique.
There are 8 crafting professions and 6 harvesting professions. Professions feel important in Wakfu, and it seemed that there were no vendor NPCs to sell items or junk to - every item dropped from enemies has a purpose in crafting. This also means that the economy is completely player run, by selling items from your "Haven Bag" (player housing) or from a local city market board. Harvesting is just as important, not only because of acquiring crafting materials, but because players can actually plant trees and vegetation around the world so that they can grow and be re-harvested. And yet, this is still not the only purpose. Each region has a leader who will have certain preferences on what and how many of a certain resource or enemy (enemies can also be grown and harvested!) reside in their region. As an example, a region leader might want between 200-300 tiles of wheat in his region. When the amount of wheat has reached this threshold, citizens of the region's nation will gain statistical bonuses to help them in combat.
There are 4 nations to choose alignment with. Once chosen, you can begin obtaining citizenship points by satisfying region leaders. At a certain rank you can vote for players running for governor, or take matters into your own hands and run yourself! Governors can set tax rates, change nation laws, or even make allies or enemies of other nations - OR, the Governor can choose their own aides to fill these various roles.
[2. UI, Graphics, Sound]
When you load Wakfu, you immediately get the feel that this game is polished. The soundtrack is beautiful with an asian tone, and it just makes you feel right at home. The sound effects are silly and cute and everything fits together perfectly. While I did feel that the UI was lacking some information, for the most part it is fine. I can be very picky when it comes to UI!
The artwork of Wakfu is just simply amazing... I love hand-drawn games. Keep in mind when trying out this game that it is not a graphically detailed game. It's very cartoony/animeish, and while it may not be full of eye candy like some modern MMOs, it still looks great. Wakfu's graphics make the most out of the game's strange humor as well, as enemies and NPCs are either cute or just plain silly looking - along with their odd personalities!
[3. Gameplay]
I'm going to describe what a day of logging in to play some Wakfu consists of, but first I'd like to get character creation and the brief tutorial out of the way...
The UI will give you a brief description and a few example abilities of each class, but of course it doesn't do any justice to actually playing the class yourself. I found it easy to enjoy any class I played, and I was surprised by how different and fun each one was. At character creation you don't have much control over the appearance of your character, but this is moot since you'll be covered in equipment anyhow. You can however choose from 3 different hairstyles and an array of hair and skin colors, and 1 of 5 starting outfits.
You begin the game in Incarnum, a land built in the clouds. From here you'll learn the basic functions of combat and harvesting, and you'll also have the option of choosing to become a recruit of one of the 4 nations. At this point you don't HAVE to choose, you can actually get well passed level 20 without ever stepping foot in one of these nations.
Once you leave Incarnum, you'll be thrown into Astrub, which is the center of the world. Anyone from any nation can roam here and it appears that you cannot be attacked by other players in this area. This is a great place to become part of the community and begin friendships with other players, as you'll also have access to several dungeons in this area (a prime way of leveling and gearing up).
Combat follows the traditional turn-based strategy ruleset. The order in which each player and enemy takes their turn is determined by the Initiative stat. When it is your turn, you can spend Action Points to perform abilities, or Wakfu Points for special skills. There are also Movement Points, and all 3 of these point sets are refreshed to full upon the start of each person's turn (unless debuffed otherwise!). Being quick and making decisions with haste will benefit you greatly in Wakfu, thanks to the bonus gauge. The faster you act, the quicker the gauge fills up, until eventually you can choose from a bonus such as increased damage or extra movement points.
As I said before, each class is truly unique and it won't take you long to see this yourself. I recommend doing some grouping for dungeons as this will really open your eyes to how fun the classes are. All of your abilities are acquired very early in the game, and increase in power based on how many times you've used said ability. Special skills are upgraded through points gained by leveling up. When combining certain skills and abilities, you can make a real difference in combat!
Throughout the world you will find a plethora of roaming creatures and resources. From many of these, you can acquire items to spawn both creatures and resources. It really feels like the player has actual control over the ecosystem and environment. You'll need to be careful though, as not only can region leaders have preferences over what resides in their area, but Governors can also set laws that criminalizes the harvesting of certain resources or slaying of certain creatures. Breaking the law will flag you as an Outlaw, and you can then be attacked on sight by anyone. If while flagged as an Outlaw you become engaged and defeated by another player, you will then be sent to jail (or you can turn yourself in). After serving your time and maybe doing a little hard labor, your Outlaw status will be revoked and you will be freed.
Crafting might also be part of your life in Wakfu. Food, furniture, and equipment can all be crafted from items dropped from creatures and resource nodes. In a game where the economy is completely player run, crafting will be very important.
Politics will play a huge and interesting role in the game. I'd like to bring up a moment between 2 players that I witnessed while I was browsing the market board. A player (let's name him Phil) notices another player (Robert) who has been deemed with Guard status by the current Governor. Phil smirkishly points out Robert, which begins the conversation. Phil tells Robert that when the current front-runner (Jacob) is elected to replace the current Governor, Phil will be taking Robert's job as Guard. Robert however, warns Phil that Jacob is a greedy good-for-nothing and that Robert's guild will be killing Jacob on sight. He expresses that if Phil is to defend Jacob, then he will killed as well. Phil rejects the warning, saying he's only using Jacob and that he currently doesn't have plans to defend him, but follows with his own warning - that Phil's guild could give Robert's guild a run for their money! After witnessing this moment, I thought to myself, wow, this is just like classic politics!
As you can see, Wakfu really stands out from other MMOs. I've been looking forward to a game with a bit more freedom for quite some time. I'm thrilled for the game to go live next month so I can take it seriously (can't really do that in beta, can ya?) and begin my life in this incredible game. I will try to answer any questions anyone may have, but I'd also like to recommend visiting www.wakfu.com and wakfu.wikia.com for further details and information. I suggest that if you are at all interested in this genre, that you immediately go to wakfu.com and try the game yourself!
See you there!
Comments
tl;dr A sandbox style, turn based combat game that is well worth trying if You don't mind cartoonish/anime graphics. For FF tasctics fans this is a must try.
I like the game too, because its different. There is a lot of love for details, great animations (only if you like anime style). The classes are very unique, you will find one you like for sure that isnt like some random hunter/knight/cleric style class you have played 20 times before. Some seem weaker than others (when you play alone), but they will shine in group play.
I will play it when its released sometime february, but there are still some worrys (needs more engame content/griefing/not enough laws etc).
Open pvp concerns me about this game. Can anyone give details on how pvp works?
@Saabo: I agree I'd like to see more laws. I haven't experienced end-game and won't until live so I can't comment on that.
@Zeppelin4: I haven't participated in open PVP myself, I've spent the majory of my time leveling and grouping for dungeons (I prefer low-man). From what I can tell though, you can be openly attacked in any area that isn't Astrub or the newbie zone for each nation. I personally have never been attacked by another player. I'm sure this will change once the game gains more higher level players. I wish I had more information on this part of the game because it's one of the main parts I'm interested in. Sorry for the lack of info, you could try posting on the official Wakfu forums.
Wakfu is starting to fall out of favor among many of its fans lately.
1. The grind. You grind character levels. You grind spell levels. You grind profession levels. None of these rely on eachother to determine their levels or ranks. Yes, you can be level 50 but still have several level 1 spells in your posession... which means grinding those up too.
2. Too much vs not enough Sandbox. In some ways Wakfu acts like a sandbox in letting you try anything and learn any profession or let you explore anyplace on the map. In some ways it's acts too linear by forcing you into a specific class and only giving you 2 or 3 viable spells (attacks) to choose from for the next 60 levels.
The sandbox will eventually destroy the economy as well, since anyone, anywhere can pick up any profession and master it if they felt like it. This means no inter-dependence on your fellow players for materials or items - no reason to craft low-level items and no one to sell anything to. Top that off with being able to mine ore and mint your own money with it.
3. No real consequences to anything. Mostly regarding PvP, it's harmelss... and very much useless. You respawn with all of your items and experience with only a small penalty to health for a couple of minutes. There's no real reward given to the victor and no real punishment given to the loser. It makes attacking another player pointless and makes surviving a PvP attack even more pointless.... In fact, death can be synonymous with fast travel in a lot of cases!
4. Cash shop? No one really has a clear picture on this, but in many ways Wakfu gives the impression that it's going to fall into a lot of cash shop or "pay to win" pitfalls when it gets released.
5. Tactics. Take a back seat to looking pretty. Games Like FF Tactics had some real tactics involved in them, like terrain, armor, defense, etc. Wakfu barely has "line of sight" down as a tactic in many of its battles, anything beyond that is a pipe dream. There is no "Z axis" so height and terrain eleveation plays no part in a fight... or positioning; armor does nothing for defense; any class can use very weapon just as efficiently; most stats provide nothing noticeable for the character; only a couple spells are actually worth using for each class throughout most of the game.
It's kind of shameful for a game advertising itself as a strategy game to miss some of these key strategic features.
if there is going to be cash shop... I will not play it, but afaik there wont be one.
I have also seen terrain with elevation, in which you could position yourself in an elevated area and protect yourself from melee attacks in the way that those fighters have to run a long way to reach you while you could use ranged attacks vs them.
@Lerxst: I hope you've also posted this on the official forums to let them know. :P I have a few questions/comments myself:
1. Maybe things are different at higher levels, but for most of what I played, it wasn't necessary to level many of the spells. For example with the class I played I chose to be fire based. I still used some air spells, but there was only 1 earth spell I used. I don't think there was a reason to level any of the other earth spells in that particular situation. Perhaps elemental resistances play a bigger role later on, I'm not sure. Some classes also might be more viable for leveling more spells or sticking to just a few. There is definitely some grinding to the game, though.
2. Something I noticed about professions, are that the books you have to read to answer the test questions to learn the profession state at the beginning something along the lines of "You can't choose a gathering profession if you know a crafting profession." This could be a translation error or just an old feature that was never updated in the books, but in beta I am able to learn every single crafting and harvesting profession. I don't know if this will be the same for live, or if they are all available at once simple for testing. I suppose for me personally, either way is fine, but I imagine only being able to pick 1 profession out of all of them would make a player run economy feel a bit more useful.
3. There is definitely no consequences for losing or winning in PVP at the moment. Citizenship points don't seem to be that important, so theres no real incentive to lose or gain them. Hopefully they'll add more uses for that. I imagine at some point there will be something similar to PVP gear or other rewards redeemable by points gained in PVP or something. We'll see. One thing I'd like to bring up is the heroic/hardcore server from Dofus, where your character gets deleted after dying once. Hopefully we'll see a server like this on Wakfu, I'd probably try it out.
4. There will be a $6 monthly fee for premium content. I believe there will also be a cash shop, but this will hopefully only be for cosmetics (haven bag stuff?).
5. I have to disagree with most of this. Positioning is incredibly important. I also don't know what you mean about lack of line of sight mechanics... There are plenty of abilities that require it, and there are abilities that don't. I'm also absolutely positive there is a Z axis, for the following reasons: for one, you can't move your character to a tile if it is too high.. probably about half your character height is the limit. Second, I remember 1 battle in particular where I could not use an ability because I was too high.
Defense works a bit differently in this game since there is no physical attribute. Everything is based on the 4 elements. You're right about defense statistics and armor not playing a very big role in survivability. A lot of this has to do with the numbers. HP and damage are both low and since defense is percentage based, you don't really notice big differences in reducing the amount of damage you take. I imagine this changes some towards end-game. However there is plenty of gear with statistics on them that make huge differences in combat. For example, I've seen equipment with bonuses to particular spells/abilities, +level bonuses to all spells of certain element, +action points, +movement points, and even +Leadership which raises the amount of pets you can summon during combat. These stats make massive differences in combat gameplay. I also find it unfortunate that you dislike the ability for any character to equip any weapon. I thought this was pretty neat actually.
I'm downloading right now, and I like playing games with little to no, well, clue what's going on. One question I do have, though, is this: The economy - if there are no npcs to trade to, is the game without currency, or does a specific currency drop with the crafting items etc from mobs? Is the economy solely item-based? Either way suits me fine, just curious. Probably won't be able to play til tomorrow, as it's getting late and I think my 18 month old daughter is waking up in the next room over...
i've been playing for 3 weeks and am ejoying myself.
There is a LOT to learn, so ask lots of questions and find out info if you can!
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Someone mentioned open PvP...I understand it somewhat...
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Each kingdom can declared war on each other, during this time you can kill the other without penalty.
If you kill them however when allied, or not at war, I believe you receive "negative points" with will eventually make you an outlaw, which people can kill you for Good points (citizen points, which allow you to vote in elections/run for governor/andstuff).
You can attack people of your own faction, but you suffer penalties and become an outlaw.
There really isn't much PvP, i haven't seen any ganking what so ever.
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If you do start playing..when you get to about 15 or so..or maybe even erlier..pick up some gathering skills!!!! You go to your chosen nations trainers and learn them.
Mining - you mine and can make money, literally. Money does not drop and it only is introduced into the game world by players. (Astrub iron ore doesn't do anything.)
lumberjack- cut trees, plant them, cut logs into wood for crafters...
Trapper - this one is important for trying to gain citizen points...if you press W in your nation areas you will see the balance. When things are out of balance, you will gain citizenship points for helping restore the balance, whether it is thinning the overpopulated mob heard, or planting new "mob seedS" to repopulate the area.
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There is a bit of grind, and someones not a LOT to do, but you got to ask for groups, learn what dungeons are popular and what keys are needed. (Personally I stayed in Astrub running the 3 dungeons until about lvl 20).
It is fun, but needs more tutorial, and could use a little more content.
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Hope you guys enjoy!
I am entitled to my opinions, misspellings, and grammatical errors.
Money is crafted from ore.
Gotcha - the currency thing makes sense. One other thing -
I just got into game, and I can't stop killing the little bunny things while figuring out what I'm doing. I fear this could end up bad for me at work tomorrow... Glad I read the OP. Got me interested. Thanks! Or, more appropriately, damn you!
Heh heh, sorry, I guess. ;P Feel free to ask any other questions ~
So far, I like the game and espeically the social and roleplaying aspect of running for player government. I am always a crafter/harvester in this type of games. I really hope things get evened out. As of now, its no reason to level anything other than to provide myself with gear/food - and I'm not even high in profession enough to do that!
I do have a question. Does all the crafted items start at level 15? If so, that will really suck.
Thanks!
This game is awesome, really loving it. If anyone wants to group up or anything send me a PM on here and i'll find you in game on the NA server.
The game is loads of fun, but calling it FFT online is a huge stretch.
I really love turn based MMOs and am surprised at the huge lack of them. So anytime a new one comes out, gotta try it. The game is fun, but its just missing something. Animations are good, but could be better. The low resolution of the world hurt my enjoyment of the game. It just feels lacking in so many areas.
Now, if a real FFT MMO came out, and stayed true to the world of Ivalice and kept all the classes and added the quest based mssions from FFT-2, it would be a pretty amazing game.
They just announced that the official release date is Feb 29. F2P with $6 monthly fee for premium content (still not sure exactly what this entails), and a cash shop for cosmetics. However they only mention the game having 12 classes, so I'm assuming Masqueraider and Rogue is being held off until later.