The Chronicles of Spellborn
Read on if you like free stuff...
Overview
TCoS has had a very interesting existence. It first caught my interest when they announced that Within Temptation, who happen to be one of my favourite bands, would be singing the theme song for the game - The Howling.
The song/game trailer (good music with some awesome in-game shots!):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgPXH...ext=1&index=27
Anyway, I subsequently signed up for the closed beta, got in, and managed to log around 15 hours or so of playtime.
The game is pretty solid on the whole, but stupidly the developers opted for two different publishers for the American and European regions, and those publishers further opened a fairly large number of servers in their respective territories. That, coupled with an IP-block barring Americans and European players playing together, or foreign players from joining in, means that the game didn't get off the ground at all.
Around August last year it was announced that the game would be redeveloped and released as a free-to-play title under Acclaim. That redevelopment is currently occurring, but interesting the European publishers - Acclaim - have kept their Spellborn servers running, lifted the IP block and waived the monthly fee. So, in essence, it's a completely free-to-play title (for now) frozen in time. It's running, but it's technically not officially supported by the developers, meaning support is still provided, but it is minimal, and that no new content/bug fixes are being released. It is, however, well worth checking out (it is free after all) as on the whole it's polished and has a good amount of content to play through.
The game world itself is very interesting. Long story short, the world shattered into a number of pieces - dubbed "shards" - which people still inhabit. It results in a very interesting game world. You'll find the usual forests, mountains etc, but there's no sky. Instead you'll notice holes in the rock "ceiling" through which light shines. Not only does it look awesome, but combined with the game's general art style and architecture, it's pretty breathtaking.
The sound, however, is what I find the best. The general atmospheric noises such as wind blowing, birds chirping, squirrels running about etc. are very realistic. If you close your eyes and you don't have crappy speakers it really does feel like you're in the world yourself. The soundtrack, too, is excellently done. It's hard to explain sound, but hell I wish more developers put as much effort into sound as the Spellborn guys have done!
It also has a twitch combat system, which many will find interesting. There's no target locking...you have to aim yourself. At the same time, it makes use of an interesting skill system they call the "rotating deck." Each time you use a skill, your skill bar rotates to the next set of skills, then to the next set and eventually back to the first. You customize the sets yourself, so you can set up some pretty interesting combos, but at the same time you can't just use any skill or any ability at any given time.
Gear also doesn't play a huge role in the game. At character creation you have access to a number of awesome-looking weapons and armour/clothing items, which doesn't have stats. You can upgrade your armour through what is known as sigils, but these upgrades are minor. It's quite refreshing not seeing stats attached to every piece of armour.
How to get it
So anyway, if you'd like to check it out you'll first have to make an account on www.acclaim.com. Following that, you'll have to go to spellborn.acclaim.com, log in with your Acclaim account details, and then click on the "Register" button to activate Spellborn on your account.
Following that comes the hardest part - downloading installation. The servers may be running, but the official downloader is busted, so you'll have to get the client and patches through other means.
Firstly, be warned - if you're on a cap you may feel you'll be wasting a few hundred megabytes through obtaining Spellborn. The reason why is explain in the paragraph below. To those whom this isn't an issue for - you can get the full client at this link.
Secondly, patching through the official patcher is rather slow, so you can either let it run and take an age, or you can get all the required patches here (the included read me explains how to patch the client). Be warned, however, that the first patch you'll need in the archive (by Murphy's Law it's far larger than the combined size of the other included patches) is corrupted, so you'll have to get it from here instead (make sure to remove the _ from the end of the file extension in order to run it).
Lastly, if you're running Windows 7 you may have some issues with GameGuard, but the read me I previously mentioned explains how to overcome this. I struggled a bit but then I eventually realised I was being stupid, so if you're struggling don't feel shy to ask for help - I won't judge! :D
So yes, hopefully I'll see some of ya'll in-game! As I said, it's completely free, so score. You've got nothing to lose apart from bandwidth (if you're still one of those with a cap).
