More than just worth playing.
Battle of the Immortals is a free-to-play MMORPG which incorporates European and Asian mythology into its story of a group of heroes on a quest for power to save the world of Motenia from destruction by Halle, the lord of the Underworld, who is gaining power.
The story takes place in the fantasy world of Motenia. The game starts 300 years after the event known as Ragnarok has taken place. The gods have been sealed in their prisons, but Halle's prison has weakened and he has released many of his undead minions into the world. As heroes defending Motenia, players must join forces to fight off Halle's minions while searching for legendary artifacts that can be used to defend the world from Halle after his inevitable escape from his prison. The main story is simple and clear cut, but gains more intrigue as the game progresses due to the presence of smaller events taking place while paying through it, making the game more intriguing as you play on.
Although the game utilizes a 2.5D graphics engine, the games visuals are clear cut and well polished. While smaller details in the world design, such as cracks in old walls, or bubbles underwater, aren't present, the overall world has been beautifully designed and portrays the feeling of the respective environments. Deserts are full of bright light, grounds covered in sand, teeming with insects and mythological creatures. Crypts have torches casting gloomy, dampened light on whatever is under them, and are filled with sarcophagi and tombs. Ruins consist of maze-like corridors, through which dangerous creatures stalk, and deadly traps that can kill unwitting heroes. Forests have thick foliage filled with different creatures, while abysses are dark and dank, light being prevented from entering, populated grotesque sea monsters and devilish looking fish.
While the environment is just well designed, the true beauty comes out from the creature design. Stone golems are covered with cracks and have glowing eyes, which have sunk into their heads. Naga have long reptilian bodies, their top halves vaguely humanoid, while their legless bottom half slithers along the floor. Clay soldiers look like guardians of the tomb of an ancient Chinese emperor, and piranha have grotesquely misshapen bodies, with teeth jutting out of their ever open mouths. Even mermaids look innocent, with their long flowing hair and big eyes, but still maintain an air of menace while carrying swords in hand. These elements combined with the air of surreality of the world's design gives you the feeling that you are in a fantastical world filled with amazing creatures and many new places to be explored.
But although the design of the world and the characters is amazing, gameplay leaves something to be desired. Battle of the Immortals consists of 3 types of quests; scenario/branch quests, which are quests a player must finish in order to continue his story; instances, which require a player to join a party and complete a certain objective in an alternate area within the time period that the area is open for; and events, which are quests that have special requirements in order to be fulfilled. As with quests, certain objectives must be achieved in order to complete them and the conditions for these achievements differs from quest type to quest type. However, while instances and event quests either remain fresh or provide incentives to complete them, scenario quests eventually become extremely mind numbing, with only the promise of gear that the player may already have. Most scenario and branch quests involve killing a certain number of certain types monsters found in the heroes current area. During the earlier stages of the game, when heroes level up for every 10-20 monsters they kill, quests like these are mildly amusing and actually serve some purpose. At later stages, when the amount of experience required to level up exceeds 200k, they become vexing and monotonous.
However, in (hopefully) an effort to make sure that the events and instances are constantly playable, the game has a system that invites heroes for new instances and events after a hero levels up by a certain amount. Although slightly unorthodox, it provides a quick way to get used to the newer instances and events almost immediately after leveling up past the optimum level for certain rewards received during events and instances.
But while the quest and reward system has a few redeeming points, the character creation and customization system of the game leaves a lot to be desired. In BOI, players create their heroes by selecting 1 of 5 different classes, which will define your role in parties and groups for the rest of your game. This causes almost every hero to be extremely shallow, with almost no difference except in respect to gear or other visual add-ons. And while having almost equal stats and abilities will allow for a more even PvP possibility, unless player go in the completely opposite direction of optimal stat build up, the only defining factor will either be who uses their skills in a better order, or who has more healing items, or who's gear is better.
If character customization is lacking in several aspects, BOI makes up for it at least partially with its specialized visual appearance system as well as with its specialized gear types and gear level ups. This unique system allows a hero's gear to level up with the hero, allowing it to give more power to the hero. And the hero's visual appearance can also be altered by applying fashion to the hero. Although the fashion provides a purely cosmetic visual change, certain rare fashions are present which can make your character more unique.
Another new innovation introduced in this game is the salary system. Depending on what a player does while logged on, he gets a certain salary, which can be collected before logging off. Using this salary, players can buy event essential and quest essential items from the special salary shop, making it worthwhile to stock up salary in case of emergencies.
Like all games, Battle of the Immortals has its pros and cons. Unlike a lot of other games though, it also provides new innovations and concepts, some of which improve the game experience, while others bring it down. But whatever the case, the undeniable fact is that unlike most other free-to-play MMOs, this game has gotten more things right, than it has gotten things wrong. All in all, BOI is a game that will draw you in with its beautiful character and environmental design, and could very possibly keep you there, if not through its gameplay, then through its intriguing story and innovations. All these factors make Battle of the Immortals a game more than just worth playing.