Playing Throne and Liberty for over a month was a fun, exciting, and unique experience filled with a huge amount of players competing with each other in a well-designed world. The weapon combinations, skill and armor upgrading, morphing, and beautiful-looking effects, among the absolute greatness of their main song, are a must-try.
After ditching Aion Classic, we were searching for our next MMORPG game, and Throne and Liberty seemed like a solid alternative. I joined Throne and Liberty the same second they opened their servers for everyone, created a new player, and started with the first quests. I quickly processed through the game and hit full level.
Although pretty buggy with lots of issues, especially in the early days of its launch, at the end of the day, TL wasn’t my ultimate MMORPG game.
The beginning is exciting
At the beginning and as you level up, Throne and Liberty provides an exciting gameplay that’s different from our previous experiences, especially from other NCSoft titles. It has a bit of everything in it: The maps kept reminding me of Aion, and you get to glide like it’s Assassin’s Creed or Dying Light 2, which is pretty neat, and even has a touch of Blade and Swords and Guild Wars 2.
The quests are also fun and easy to complete, although the storytelling is not a will-blow-your-mind type of situation. The environments, mobs, NPCs, and everything that they have included are creating a great overall atmosphere that absolutely kills many alternative MMORPGs.
As you level up, just before you hit level 20, the game will introduce you to Dungeons, which are among the best ways to level up faster, get some rewards, and even complete specific quests. Dungeons are a pretty great way of meeting people, but you’ll mostly play with random people at first in order to progress as fast as possible.
After making a few mistakes, I stopped playing my 21-level character and went and created a new one, and started from the beginning. Replaying the first levels helped me progress even faster, and by making the right choices I was able to level up even faster, which was a great experience. Unfortunately, for new players, the game comes with a huge learning curve, so make sure to take your time and check all of its options.
As you progress you’ll also be asked to take part in various contests, such as the Wolf Hunting Contest, which we already reviewed and showed you how to complete and how often it starts.
You can watch my experience with Throne and Liberties – starting by creating and customizing a character and progressing through the first levels – from the following video:
The problem with new players joining Throne and Liberty
The biggest drawback when it comes to new players joining Throne and Liberty for the first time is that they do not get a proper introduction. You learn a lot about how weapons, armor, and skills are upgraded as you progress through the main quests, but they don’t really say anything important.
The game lacks when it comes to tutorials and walkthroughs. For example, when I have in my inventory two bows, one green and the other blue, why can’t I combine them when it is asking me for a quest? I’ve even fully upgraded the green one, but that didn’t work either.
Throne and Liberty has tons of stuff, and when I say “tons”, I literally mean it. It took me a few days until I was finally able to understand where everything was, all of those options, how I upgraded my skills, weapons, and armor, and how to even choose what to increase in my skill set. In the beginning, it was a nightmare.
Apart from that, you’ll most certainly meet some pretty frustrating quests along the way, including the one where you’ll have to get the Chief Terror bird egg, which was a crazy experience because I had to spend almost 40 minutes trying to find a solution, only to complete it by finding a bug and later learning that I could as easily have jumped and flown to the point. What?
Last but not least, don’t expect to progress alone, as you’ll need other people to enter the Dungeons, and as you have already guessed, it’s a PvP-focused game. Joining and taking part in your Guild’s tasks is also important.
The bugs and technical issues were many
Let’s start from the basics: Nora was unable to review the game because it was simply unable to run properly on her PC. It’s also unknown why because she has a far better graphics card than mine, yet it runs (almost) smoothly on my end. As of now, we haven’t found a solution, but I’ll update if we do.
Then it was the constant disconnects that I was experiencing. I made sure that my internet connection was stable, my operating system fully updated, and all the drivers also in their latest versions, yet the DCs were many, and they’re kept on happening often. That was until a new error came up: unable to log in to my account because their anti-cheap system started displaying errors.
Then there were moments that I couldn’t even teleport to another city or place, and I had to wait for almost two minutes until I was able to teleport each time I opened the map. And if you think that’s all, well, I haven’t even started with everything else, including the unsynchronized audio, the main character missing a voice, the bad scenes when some NCPs talking, and the overall performance.
I’m 30 years old, and I have lots of stuff to do rather than spending most of my time trying to reconnect to a game, find a solution for another error, and die each time I was gliding in some specific places. I’m positive that NCSoft will not leave Throne and Liberty in the same bad situation they did with Aion, a great game with so many lost opportunities.
My opinion after playing for (over) 1 month
Throne and Liberty has something great, but it lacks depth and excitement, two important aspects when it comes to my personal taste. The game was heavily skewed towards PvP content, and since Nora couldn’t join me because of all the technical issues, I leveled up playing with random people. It wasn’t as fun, to say the least.
If you’re a solo player who prefers playing alone, you aren’t going to like how Throne and Liberty has been designed. You’ll constantly have to join Dungeons, which means interacting with other random players who may get you killed. On the other hand, you can join a Guild, but you’ll most probably asked to join their Discord communities and listen to a bunch of dudes that take the game way too seriously.
This is a big drawback and a mega disappointment for me as a solo player who prefers being a lone wolf. Hey, there’s nothing better than joining with a beer at the end of the day and enjoying your favorite game without having to interact or listen to anyone. That’s heaven for me! But Throne and Liberty haven’t been designed for that purpose, so, I eventually stopped playing.
If you’re someone who gets bored easily, needs a more complex gameplay that’s PC-based and not so mobile-like type of game, or prefers to play alone, you may start looking at other alternatives. If you like interacting with other players, you have a Discord account, and you love PvP, you may end up loving it!
Did you have the chance to play Throne and Liberty? And if so, what was your experience with the new MMORPG and what did you like and hate the most? Let me know in the comments down below.
