K2 Network's Sword of the New World Granado Espada is possibly the most beautiful and elegant looking game I have ever seen. From the very moment I laid eyes on it I was in love with the way it looked. The rich environments, the variety of items, the lush landscapes, the amazing interiors and the ornate costumes for your characters are all wonders to behold. But a game is more than amazing and vivid eye-candy, isn't it.

In the game you play as the head of a family of pioneers. You can control up to three members of the family essentially creating an adventuring party. They claim this to be the diverging point of this game from all the others. But any good RPG generally gives you the ability to bring others along as the game gets more difficult. Take, for example, any of the Final Fantasy games. This just generally isn't a feature of MMOGs.

The game itself was recently changed to a free-to-play game for reasons that were not explained. Maybe part of the reason is the client download of about 3.6 gigabytes. The system requirements state you need 6GB of open disk space but it is currently only taking 3.75GB on mine.

The game truly feels massive and has a great back-story and even some plot-lines that are happening as you progress. However, you generally feel more like Rosencratnz and Guildenstern in that you are not really involved in all of it but more like a tangentially related person to it all. You and its paths cross on occasion but you are never the lead role in the show it seems. My characters are now 26th level so I should have been involved in something big by now. But it just doesn't feel like I have been, or will be.

  Graphics: 90%

This game looks like an amazing, visually-stimulating anime series that I never knew existed and since I discovered it I cannot stop watching. The character models are fantastic with a wide variety of ornate clothing designs that you can utilize right from character creation time. The game is smooth, crisp and clean looking. Everything from the landscapes to the creatures to the ambient lighting is pleasant on the eyes. The lighting effects are even realistic. Torches have realistic lighting ranges and effects. Essentially this game contains some of the best graphics I have ever seen in an MMO, RPG or otherwise. Rooms are lavishly decorated, buildings are architecturally interesting. Everything visual about the game fits a time period of exploration where the fortunes of the empire are flying high and the fortunes of every family involved are growing. Several of the settings lay bare the ancient history of the world as well and do so with an exquisite eye for detail. Simply put this game one of the best MMOGs I have seen, ever. Of course the downside to that is that it requires a good deal of PC to get it moving and looking proper. But there are plenty of video configuration options to make sure you can see it reasonably well.

Sound: 75%

The sound effects in the game are not exactly limited in range and variety, but they are not exactly amazing either. Hitting something makes one sound, shooting a gun makes another sound, casting magic has its own sound. During battle there are so many sound effects going on that they override each other and become a jumbled  audio mess where very little is able to be pulled out. This may very well be what true battle is like, but considering I have only 3 characters and am battling one or two opponents I think it is too much. The ambient sounds of the world are good in comparison. Birds are chirping, the wind is rustling leaves, there are sounds of people working and it sounds like a world that is alive. And then the music begins.

 The soundtrack of this game sounds like the Tomb Raider film soundtrack on some performance-enhancing drug. Much of it is electronic or techno music, occasionally with some monk chanting and that is interspersed with some atmospheric ambient music which is still very electronic sounding. Now this world uses magic and doesn't even have steam power yet people, but they have techno music. When I play a game like this I want music appropriate to the setting. I want an operatic or classical soundtrack, not an electronic dance party even though I do like an electro-dance party on occasion. Once you leave the primary city of Reboldoeux the music does get more interesting and more suitable but there is still a lot of techno tunes. There are also some jazz tunes that don't fit. The soundtrack sounds like they went over to eMusic or iTunes and just chose several songs from every genre. There is even an aria which I heard in Port of Coimbra, one of the locations in the game. Eventually I took to opening the jukebox window in the game, turning off the music and listening to MP3s in the background for better atmosphere.

Gameplay: 60%

This game is touted as an MMORPG, but somewhere between 1990 and now (right around when I beta-tested WoW I think) the gaming industry lost sight of what RPG means. That stands for Role-Playing Game, where you the player take on the role of a character and have to interact with other characters and non-player characters in social situations. This game does not really require you to think in any social setting. It is simply an MMOHNS , that's Massive Multiplayer Online Hack aNd Slash.

Little thought and attention are required to play this game. While 'playing' the game I have written this review, gone to the bakery (thrice), done the dishes (daily), swept and mopped my kitchen and even taken showers and shaved and more. The game happily goes on its merry way whether or not you are paying attention. If it were not so processor intensive I would have found a great camping spot where a lot of mobs spawn and shut off the monitor and speakers and let it level me up all night long while I slept. That is how exciting and interactive this game is at times. The only time you need to do something is when you want to collect the massive piles of junk that the monsters drop. Generally this consists of some exotic fruit (coconut, mango) to regain health, some minerals or pieces of metal used in manufacturing (though I haven't managed to actually manufacture anything yet), useless pieces of equipment and armor and the occasional useful piece which might even be magically enchanted for an added bonus.  

Their idea of 'missions' are go and kill 100, 200 or 300 of X monster for the good of the empire. The quests are things like 'take this paper to the guy standing outside this building. Then bring back some papers that he will hand you.' Other quests say go kill X number of this thing and harvest something from it, which is all automatic when you kill it. The thing that made me realize I was done playing the game was when one quest asks you to go into the third area of a dungeon, but when you get to the door it says "The door is closed. ask Domingo for hints how to open it." What the hell is that?! I was JUST standing near Domingo before I took the 20-25 minute journey here. Now I need to go all the way back there and then return here and waste a further 40 minutes. No, instead I simply turned it off and began to write. Sure I might have been able to find and use a warp scroll or something but I was just so annoyed with the setup on that quest that I decided I had had enough. The 30+ hours I have put in to the game are more than enough for me to know what the game is all about and I can sum it up in three words, Kill, kill, kill. I did return to the game to do some further inspection of it though.

On top of all that there are a limited number of servers and that makes for a lot of people in every area of every world. So if you do find a prime respawning spot where you can kill, kill, kill, you can bet you will be sharing it with a dozen other 'families' or more. Every room and every big area I saw were loaded down with so many people that the game became extremely choppy and I had to stop playing altogether and wait until everything caught up before I could even move again. The game manual says to change channels when this happens, but there was never more than one channel available to me when I checked. This is because sometime in August they did away with separate channels which I think really impedes the gameplay. In fact at times I would call the game unplayable because of this.

They definitely need to open more non-PVP servers as at present there appears to be only one as if they really want PVP and nothing else. I am not all that competitive to begin with, so PVP doesn't always appeal to me. This is generally done by dueling with another family in a ladder ranking system. I am not all that interested in something like that when I play and RPG. I want social interaction, interesting storylines and some sense or reason why I should continue. This game has none of those things. In fact to even interact with other players you must purchase items from merchants in the game, items like microphones or megaphones to speak to one person or all people. There is no generally available chat that I was able to see. I know, crazy right? 

Controls/Interface: 85% 

The controls on this game are great. There are shortcuts for everything that are generally Ctrl or Alt and a key. Almost everything you need to do in the game has some sort of key or key/mouse combination and it was very ergonomic, when I needed to actually use them. The interface itself takes up a lot of real estate on the game screen, but they must have known that because almost everything in it can be moved, minimized or turned off making it very nice.

The camera control is great. You can zoom, rotate and raise or lower the camera with the right mouse button so that you never have an obstructed view of the action and this was one of the best features of the game. Though some structures like pillars will not become transparent, actually a nice touch I thought. You can even spread out your three characters and then zoom out far enough to keep an eye on all the action. The action is mostly controlled by the mouse. left-click to move, left-click to attack, shift-Ctrl left-click to move and collect things on the ground as you go, Ctrl and left-click to move and attack anything that is en route to your new location, etc.

  The one major issue I have with the control scheme is that there is no place to quick load items. You have healing potions and things that are consumable and it would be nice to use them at the touch of a button like in many other games, but that is not an option in this game. To use an item you must choose the character you want to use it on, open the inventory and then double-click on the item in question.

Another thing lacking is the ability to zoom in and out of the map when you open it. You can do so on the mini-map in the upper right corner but the window is so small you can't see anything. Zooming would really help when you are trying to find a specific NPC in an otherwise crowded area of a town.

Summary: 78% - Good, if you like this sort of thing.

As I said, the game world is one of the most beautiful places I have ever visited in my gaming life. But not much else impressed and the gameplay is simply repetitive. If you are one of those people who loves hours of grinding through hordes of respawning monsters, and there must be many of you from the popularity of this type of game, then you will love this game both for its visual imagery and its gameplay. Personally I want a game that requires me to actually do something while playing it and if the game is going to be an RPG, or call itself one, then I want some role-playing as a major factor in the gameplay. 

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