Twelve Sky 2 The Asian RPG Defined

By Remko Molenaar (Proxzor), OnRPG Journalist Twelve Sky 2 is a free-to-play MMORPG developed by ALT1 and published by several publishers. I decided to check out the version Aeria Games has published and I found myself in Ancient China. Players are thrown in a story where 3 warring clans have been doing battle for longer than any can remember. Players must fight to honor their brothers and clan or turn their backs in their hour of need. The current factions that players can choose from are the Dragon Clan, Tiger Clan and Snake clan.When creating your first character you get the choice between three clans, each of these clans have their own strengths and weaknesses and start off in a different town. There are also different weapons that these clans are specialized in and you can choose between three different weapons. I chose to go for the Tiger Clan because of the weapons; the weapons I could choose from are the Thin Blade, Long spear and Gauntlet. Since the Long spear was looking like a winner I chose the spear. There were also a few minor customization features available to tweak when creating your character but I didn’t spend very long messing with them.When creating your character apparently they show you some high level gear because the long spear I fell in love with got replaced with just a simple looking spear. Disappointed, I set out on some quests to try to find something closer to the spear of my dreams. In most of the MMORPGs it is the golden question mark that shows you that you can complete or find a quest. I got a question mark in the middle of my screen and couldn’t click on it nor could I find its purpose.After a long search of the interface menus I finally found its purpose. It turns out a NPC with an important quest was calling for me. This was a really ridiculous way to alert me and I would have just preferred an auto path option. When I finally accepted the quest, it turned out to be the tutorial because the old man just wanted me to visit some locals that would tell me their story and their purpose in the town. When I got into the game I was a little bit disappointed, the game’s graphics were a bit dated. I also discovered that wasd keys were not available to move my character around. Unfortunately it is a point and click only system. As I went to talk with several NPCs I saw different mounts and pet’s people carried with them. There are several mounts I saw while walking through the city; besides the several unique looking bears I also saw a tiger that looked like it was covered in blood.I also saw a variety of flying pets including wasps, dragons, birds and other demon looking pets. These pets all have different level requirements and there is a wide variety in choices. They all have unique extra abilities that they will give you so there is some strategy in choosing a pet that compliments your weapon style. The pets also seem to be built on an individual leveling system that adds a nice side venture of training various pets for battle.In Twelve Sky 2 it is also possible to craft items, combine items and enchant items. Enchanting item’s can give your weapon a really nice visualization effect that will even make you look more awesome. If you want to enchant an item you can open up the Item Enchanting Calculator on several fan sites to calculate the chances to succeed, break, or fail your enchantment. I highly recommend putting in the research before upgrading valuable gear because you’ll be shedding some tears if you destroy your legendary equipment in this game.Twelve Sky 2 isn’t a bad looking game but it has its own style that I personally don’t like. They try to create the aura of Ancient China but it never felt authentic to me. They also give the sky some weird looking colors to make the feeling grimmer. To play Twelve Sky 2 the game requires you to have at least a Pentium 3 800 Mhz processor along with 512 MB of RAM and a GeForce FX 5200 or Radeon 7600 video card. If you have no idea whatsoever about computers but do know how old your computer is. I would say everyone that has a computer that is made after the year of 2004 is pretty much set to play this Twelve Sky 2.As most Free-to-play MMORPGs, Twelve Sky 2 also has an Item Mall where you can buy items with real money. It is possible to buy several different items such as: skills, potions, enchants, scrolls and mysterious boxes. There is also the possibility to buy Mounts and Pets. I feel the Item Mall does make the game pay to win for the Player versus Player aspect of the game. Some skills in particular seemed pretty unbalanced to have available as cash shop items.Twelve Sky 2 offers a lot of gameplay features such as Player versus Player, crafting, enhancements, pets and mounts. I personally didn’t like the style of Twelve Sky 2 because it screamed an Asian theme to the point that I felt nauseated. Nonetheless this game has a really kick ass combat system along with awesome looking skills. If you are a fan of Asian RPGs with shiny glowing weapons 10 times the size of your character, then I would recommend you to try out Twelve Sky 2 because that’s exactly what you’re getting into.