Free-to-play massively multiplayer online game MapleStory 2 emerged into closed beta Wednesday to much fanfare from the MapleStory community. As an MMORPG game, it pushes the envelope of its 2D side-scrolling predecessor and jumps into full, vibrant 3D with blocks and an isometric viewpoint.
Publisher Nexon Co. Ltd. has been hyping the upcoming game for some time and now players have gotten a chance to look under the hood and play in the full, living color.
The world of MapleStory 2 tells a story of a realm built by two goddesses, one light and one dark, who fought against one another over the treatment of that world. According to legend, the light goddess defeated the dark goddess in a struggle for control of the world – but not without the introduction of a poisonous darkness that now infects the land.
The beta launched with a very nice choice of different classes, eight in total: Knight, Berserker, Wizard, Priest, Heavy Gunner, Ranger, Assassin and Thief.
Each of the classes is introduced with a bit of personality when it’s selected and gives a good idea of its role and how the class plays.
The Knight is a tanky class that takes to melee with a sword and shield and the Berserker growls about darkness (with a rock-and-roll music theme) and wields a giant two-handed sword. The Wizard cries about the power of magic and slings spells (support and damage) with a two-handed staff and Priest is clearly a support and healing class with a lot of area of effect.
Heavy Gunner extols the power of science and lugs around a giant gun and Ranger wields a bow and attacks from range. The Assassin acts as a fast melee striker who rushes in with short-range weapons and Thief talks about striking quickly from the shadows, while using evasion as a defense.
Character creation is extremely simple but comes with a large number of options. For the most part, MapleStory 2 characters look a lot like LEGO figures – they’re shrunken, toy-like 3D figures with extremely large, round heads and exaggerated features. Faces appear to be painted-on, however, as textures that change in an anime-esque fashion during gameplay.
Our reviewers were able to produce fairly good-looking characters using hair and face options, which include some accessories and plenty of colors. Although simplistic, it’s still possible to come up with something memorable. As for other aesthetics, the game works heavily in cosmetics for armor by providing outfits that override the standard “clown outfit” that levelling gear tends to look like.
Cosmetics also provides another interesting thing that MapleStory 2 is trying to build into: customizable cosmetic effects. Inside the game itself, players can launch a creative mini-app that allows them to choose between model templates for weapons and armor. With this tool, players can produce textures for many of the game’s assets with a painting/drawing tool.
Other ways that players can create their own content include a housing system. Plots littered around the world allow players to purchase an area to build a house on and then a house can be constructed, Minecraft-style, by placing blocks and furniture. Much of that furniture can be made using the in-game crafting system (also furniture and blocks can be customized cosmetically as player created content).
Gameplay feels very similar to MapleStory, except that it’s in 3D isometric. Much of the content from MapleStory also makes it into its sequel – many of the same places and monsters reappear – however, of course, they’ve been affected by the extra dimension.
The world is split up into maps that are connected by portals at the edges. Players can move between them by travelling on foot, by mount (cars and such), and – because now in 3D there’s more of a sense of verticality, “floating” mounts such as balloons and birds.
This can lead to a little bit of a problem, though, since many of the maps are actually floating over other landscapes. In fact, it is entirely possible to fall off the edge of a map and into nothing, or slam into the ground of the rest of the map below itself.
One particular quest takes the players into a skyscraper, another lead to a junkyard that is high above another area. MapleStory 2 may add breadth to the depth and width that was MapleStory, but the designers really took to the idea that this world has a lot of “up” to go with its hither-and-fro.
Semi-periodic mass-player events also pop up during the day. These are activities that bring players together to win strange prizes that includes a race, a king of the hill match, a “the floor becomes lava” at the beach and even PvP matches. Participating in these (and winning) rewards players with in-game coin as well as other items that can come in useful later.
Another thing to be aware of about the closed beta is that it’s doing a lot to show off systems that will appear in the free-to-play release of the game. This means free cosmetic items and weirder things that will most likely show up in the in-game cash shop.
For example, players gain access to a one-time “poop emoji” world broadcast theme… As a result, a lot of players will send messages (that everyone can see) surrounded by poop. Welcome to the Internet age in MMOs, everyone, MapleStory 2 is getting the poop emjoi’s out of the way first thing so that it doesn’t seem strange when worse things show up in your chat.
To conclude, so far, the MapleStory 2 closed beta gives access to pretty much every part of the game. The world is lush, vivid and inviting with full access to all eight classes, the crafting system, the cosmetic player created content system, housing – it’s hard to tell what, if anything is currently not available to try out.
Readers can sign up for the next parts of the closed beta test at MapleStory 2’s website or just sign up in general to get an account ready for the upcoming full free-to-play launch.
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