Silkroad Online

THE BAD:
The servers are always full. Most of the time you will need to spend a few minutes just to access your account. When the server you are on is full and you try to Switch Characters you will get disconnected.

SUMMARY:
Silkroad Online grabbed my attention from the first moment I started playing. There are minor grammar errors here and there and conversations don’t sound natural some of the times but I blame this on the crappy translation since the game was originally designed in Korean language. The fact alone that Silkroad is now offered to English-speaking players is great and by the looks of it there is huge interest. You can see that by the number of people that play the game. The servers are almost always full to the limit. Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? All those people wouldn’t waste their time if it wasn’t worth it.

Graphics:

The graphics are amazing, everything looks good and this is by far the best graphics quality I’ve seen in a completely free game. Everything looks nice from the grass on the ground through the various monsters and even the sky. There are also weather effects like rain and thunder storms.

Sound:

The sound is perfect as well; I can’t find any disadvantages to it. Maybe it doesn’t have any or maybe I’m just unable to notice them.


Gameplay:

Silkroad online has a lot to offer and doesn’t get boring fast. I’ve been playing for hours and I still feel the magic . When was testing Hero Online, the other day this didn’t happen. I played for a couple of hours, got annoyed with it and ditched it in the darkest corners of my HDD where I put all the MMORPGs I’ve tested but didn’t quite please me. (If you don’t like this review you might just as well end up there, so beware!)

Mounts
In Silkroad Online you can by transportation animals that will help you travel long distances. You can ride a horse when you reach level ten and there is even a quest associated with it, so you will most likely get your hands on one early in the game. Horses are cheap but there is more to it than you know. When you ride a horse it increases your defense a bit, you won’t be able to fight though, so don’t get your hopes up, there won’t be any battles from the back of a steed. In the event death (for your transport) it will disappear. The transportation “vehicle” like they call it in the game also vanishes if you get off it or log out of the game. There are no permanent mounts at this moment but the lower prices of horses compensate that.

Pets
You can have a pet fight by your side. From what I know so far you can have your pet carry items for you, it has its separate inventory. Pets usually have 3 forms and they grow bigger as they level up. At a certain point you can even mount and travel faster that way.

Weapons and Equipment
There are three types of equipment. Armor, Protector and Garment. The best for a warrior would be Armor. Garments and Protectors are suitable for people going to use magic spells. Every character can use each of these equipments regardless of the way you develop it. The trick is you can mix them. You can only have one type of armor equipped on you. There items for males and females, their characteristics are the same but they are different from each other.

The weapons you can use range from Swords, Glaives, Spears to Bows. It’s all up to you which one to use but for they have their unique differences. For example, swords and spears are suitable for spell-wielding characters while glaives and bows produce better physical damage.

Weapons and armor can be upgraded using the Alchemy skill via various tablets, ruins, etc to increase their effectiveness.


Trade

Players can open their own stalls and place items they would like to sell to other people in there. If you can be patient enough this is an efficient way to gain gold since you can sell items at higher prices than those you would get if you sold them directly to a NPC. Like in any other MMORPG you can also trade with other people in the normal way by using a command.

Story & Quests

Silkroad Online will let you travel back in time when China was the only country in the world producing the precious silk material - a time of war, conflicts and daring adventures.

The quest system is similar to this in many other online games. More quests become available to you as you level up. Keep a note on them because at some point you might loose track of them. Sometimes you may get more than one quest location at once. You heard right, you will only get a small tip as to where the quest giver NPC is, in some of the cases you might be told only a name and it would be up to you to find that Non Player Character if you want to undertake the mission it has to offer.