ArcheAge Chronicles Could Be the Next New World transcript

Hey everyone, Anders here with another video. Today we are going to go over my impressions of the Archage Chronicles network test. We'll take a look at the four classes and how the weapon system works, how combat actually feels to play, what the progression system looks like, and whether any of this feels like ArchAge. Before we get into it, a quick reminder of where this game stands. Archage Chronicles is developed by Excel Games with Cacao Games Publishing.

Since they announced the delay of this game, they told shareholders at the time that the game itself was on schedule, but they wanted more time to work on the combat. And in their developer update, executive producer Hamyong Jin was very clear about what this is and what it isn't. This is not Archage 2. It's not a traditional MMO RPG. What they said they were building was a discoverydriven online action RPG set 50 years after the original with combat built from scratch around combo mechanics and dodges and a world designed for smaller groups instead of zergs.

Keep that in mind as we go because most of what I played lines up with that description, just not always in the way you'd hope. So, let's start with classes. There are four of them in this build. Warrior, ranger, berserker, and mage. All four are gender locked. Warrior and berserker are male. You can customize your character if you want. Ranger and mage are female. Each class has three weapons available to it. And this is the part that actually matters.

You can equip two at any one time and swap between them freely. So your class isn't really your build. Your weapon pairing is. Warrior can equip the long sword, the great sword, or the gladius, which is your more sword and shield archetype. The long sword is the versatile option built around parries and counters and its traits either drain enemy HP to keep you topped up or push you toward empowered parries. The great sword is the slow one built on charged attacks that hit hard and counters that hit harder and its traits either weaken and neutralize enemies or cut down your charge times so you swing faster.

The Gladius is the fast comboing option. The game describes this as a sort of cycle of offense and defense that built into a finishing strike with shield throws to open enemies up and poison and burn to keep the pressure on. Ranger can equip the hatchet, the crossbow, or the long bow. The hatchet is close range and acrobatic, and it still gets reached by throwing the weapon at enemies. Its traits lean into combo skills that apply shock or straight damage on your ranged attacks.

The crossbow is the slow arbolist and it's the one that can turn a fight with a single AoE shot. Grenade bolts that apply poison and shock or scatter shots that trigger additional attacks. The long bow is your sharpshooter. Very typical rapid shots that apply burn and long ranged attacks that can freeze. Berserker can equip the axe, the warhammer, and the great shield. The axe is actually an axe and shield. You charge in, you shield your allies with war cries, and you counter.

Its traits either bolster ally survival or turn you into something more aggressive with follow-up strikes. The Warhammer is slow and wide, crushing area attacks with traits that either maximize your charged attack damage or hand you burn and shock. And the great shield is the bull work. It turns defense into power and grows stronger with every block, branching into either pure block mastery or skills that create glacier zones and explode.

Mage can equip the elemental staff, the wave sword, and the vitality staff. The elemental staff is your ranged fire and lightning cer. You charge skills for more damage and cover yourself with magic barriers. And the traits either retain previously cast skills so you can chain combos or channel into shooting stars. The wave sword is basically a spell sword, frost magic, and sword play. Blooming ice crystals to chain skills, leaving behind after images.

The vitality staff is the healer. It sustains allies and holds the front line. It pays for its magic with your own HP, so it leans on evasion to stay alive. If you played New World, this is basically Chronicles version of the life staff. Now, the trade system. Each class weapon has a trait tree you can spec into, and you can gain trade points by defeating bosses in each zone. The traits for each weapon branch out depending on what kind of play style you want with that weapon.

Some branches focus on adding lightning augments to your attacks. Others give you fire. There are a total of six elements from what I can tell. Wind, fog, fire, tidal, lightning, and steel. And some weapons utilize a combination of them rather than just one. What this means in practice is that a warrior running greatsword and gladius is generally a different character from a warrior running long sword and greatsword.

Each class also has inherent stat spreads as you would imagine, but you're also assigning points yourself. So you have six core abilities: strength, agility, constitution, intelligence, talent, and endurance. You get points when you level up. You apply them manually, and there's a free reset if you want to move things around. The class identity shows up pretty much immediately. My berserker was sitting at 46 attack and 106 defense for the biggest health pool of anything I made.

Lower damage, very high survivability. My warrior was almost exactly the inverse, 125 attack, 76 defense. My mage was 40 intelligence by level seven with 59 magic attack and a physical attack of six. So very high magic damage, no physical damage happening whatsoever. and rangers seem to be in the middle of the stat spreads with the highest crit and magic amplification numbers of the four classes. Now, let's talk about how it actually plays.

The intro very reminiscent of New World's tutorial. It walks you through the basics and then it gives you a tutorial boss that teaches you the general combat you're going to be experiencing. Combat is surprisingly comboheavy. It reminds me more of a slowed down version of the Black Desert combat simplified for console. And the controls do feel like they were made for console players more than PC players. Though I cleared all of the content available on mouse and keyboard just fine.

Combat animations are actually decent in my opinion. Some of these skills look incredible. What holds it back is the delay between chaining different movements and the sound design. Skill sounds in New World incredible. Chronicles instead has flat or unimpactful sounds that make your attacks feel flat and boring after a while. Good animation gets you halfway there. Sound is what sells a hit, and right now it's not there.

Movement felt fine, a little stiff, but I didn't enjoy New World's movement feel either. So, take that how you want. And as for the rest of it, the game is an openw world style MMO with some instance areas for bosses or dungeons that you can either do solo or in a party. Questing is both the usual follow the path style and dynamic in a way that you automatically get assigned quests when you're near points of interest.

Each map zone also has collectibles and bosses you can complete for additional stat boosts and achievements. Achievements seem to give trophies, but I don't know what those do yet. Crafting and gathering are available. It's a much more simplified version of the new world gathering and crafting system, but it works fine. It has a leveling system as well with each rank offering bonuses to the specific processing or gathering life skill.

Equipment can be enhanced with materials you get from quests and bosses. And there's no skin system in this game, so you actually need outfits to look like anything. Just equipping your gear doesn't change what your character looks like. They do give you a basic outfit when you start the game, and you gain new ones from defeating bosses around the different areas. Unfortunately, the early access build ended as soon as I defeated the pirate boss and traveled to the next region, so I couldn't explore any further.

I had to actually make new characters to keep playing. So, I decided to check out the other classes and see what they played like. I enjoyed ranger and mage the most, though I can see how the tank archetypes in warrior and berserker are going to be very useful in raids. Great shield, in particular, where blocking is the damage engine instead of a defensive button you press when you're in trouble, seems pretty good. Now, the question a lot of you are going to have is this actually Archage at all?

Well, you can glide and it is the iconic Archage Glider, but not much else screams Archage to me in this one. If you are an Archage purist or you are looking for a sequel to the original for now, Archage private servers will still be a better option. I think this Chronicles game seems more to want to cater to the New World players who are looking for a new home. And to be fair to Excel Games, that's roughly what they told us.

They said this is an Archage 2 and they're not lying. We do know another Archage game is coming next year, Archage SS, but rumors are that's not like the original Archage either. On the technical side, Chronicles graphically looks good with some technical issues. Performance was all right, maxed out on a network test version of the game, but it needs some optimization before launch. So, that's where we are. Four gender locked classes with three weapons each and two equipped at a time. trait trees per weapon fed by zone bosses, combo heavy combat that looks good but sounds pretty hollow, simplified crafting and gathering that does the job, and a game that carries the Archage name and the Archage Glider, but [music] not much else.

Despite this, Chronicles really surprised me. It needs a lot of work still, and I'll give it a chance once it releases. [music] We know nothing about the monetization still or how old the build we were given was, but the game has potential to be great. That's all I have for you today. Let me know what you think about Archage Chronicles down in the comments and which of the four classes you'd roll first. Stay tuned on the channel as I continue to cover more upcoming MMOs.

And as always, thanks for watching, thanks for listening. I'll see you all in the next one. [music] Take care.