Online role-playing games have a reputation for launching with significant problems. Last year's best online RPG, Dark Age of Camelot, was praised for being well designed and entertaining but earned equal praise for being playable from day one. Mimesis Online, from Polish developer Tannhauser Gate, has more in common with last year's messy Anarchy Online than with Dark Age of Camelot, and unfortunately, the comparisons don't stop at the science-fiction theme. Mimesis Online isn't so much a game as an engine, featuring very little variety, not much to do, and huge portions of the game missing from the current version.
The manual features a lengthy expository story that attempts to explain the somewhat incomprehensible history of the world. This history manages to include almost every science-fiction trope imaginable: There was a great plague, some mysterious transporter things, and some sort of tentative alliance between humans and some alien races after several realities were somehow combined. The nameless world on which they all coexist is a mysterious, hostile place, and its origins are unknown. It's now the year 5692, and your job is to go out and explore that world. Tannhauser Gate has promised that the story will be a major part of Mimesis Online, but this is not at all evident in the game's current state. Mimesis Online includes only a few missions and no nonplayer characters, but it does include guides that explain the basic rules when you start out.
You have a choice of three character types: human male, human female, or the unisexual hirudon. The latter is an interesting-looking alien species, built like a skinny, hairless ape with the skin of a snake and John Merrick's head. Humans are your standard fighter types, with good strength and dexterity, while hirudons have high perception and intelligence, making them more adept at psionics.
Psionics powers are the equivalent of a magic system in Mimesis Online. Or at least they might be. The generally uninformative manual makes many references to psionics and specifically mentions a psionic power called "paralyze." None of this means much, because there are no psionics in the game. Playing a hirudon is akin to playing a camel with fins. They look neat, but they serve no purpose. Hirudons are inferior in combat, and that's all there is to the game.
The only thing that you can do in Mimesis Online is buy equipment, run around, and fight. The combat system is interesting. There are a good variety of melee weapons, and ranged weapons are slowly being introduced to the world. As you use a certain class of weapon, you gain experience with that class and gain access to new attacks. As a fledgling fighter, you'll have access only to rudimentary armor and crude weapons, like axes that look like TV antennas assembled from scrap metal. As you gain experience and cards, the currency of the world, your options will open considerably, allowing you to wield impressive-looking swords, shields, and axes.
Though the combat system is interesting, combat itself is not. To attack a creature, you target it and then right-click on the attack you want to perform. If you keep right-clicking on the attack, your character keeps chasing the monster around and whacking on it. There aren't many creature types in the world, and many of the "different" creatures, like the many variations of things called inim, are identical except for their strength and names. You'll likely grow tired of fighting the same creatures over and over before you even gain your first level.
And gaining your first level will take a long time. Actually, you'll be gaining your 11th level, as characters in Mimesis Online inexplicably begin at level 10. Leveling is remarkably slow and combat so repetitive that advancement in Mimesis Online isn't very interesting. There's no grace period for low-level characters, so you'll lose experience when you die, straight from the start. At least gaining a level makes some significant changes to your character. When creating a character, you choose what percentage of your experience will go toward advancing different statistics, which is an interesting means of making your character's progression somewhat unique.
While the combat system seems somewhat solid, most of Mimesis Online seems unfinished. The manual makes reference to stealing and other character skills, none of which are actually available. The interface seems like a placeholder, with unlabeled buttons and strange icons. Character control is sluggish, and turning while running feels like a fairly accurate representation of steering a Lincoln Continental underwater. Mimesis Online does have some interesting ideas, like the fame rating, which causes your reputation to decrease as you kill other players or increase when you kill players with bad reputations. Player killing is reportedly a problem, but it wasn't an issue during the course of this review.
Mimesis Online may be a good game someday. It looks good, and the alien architecture and monsters are both unique and well designed. But there's not much to do, and it takes a long time to do it. There are very few players, which is not surprising considering that the game would seem barren for a beta, let alone a game that is supposedly ready for the public. Even though downloading it is free and the monthly charge is relatively low, Mimesis Online has a long way to go before it is worth your bandwidth, your time, or your money.
