Like any great RPG, Atlantica Online has a deep and enjoyable story for players to discover as they journey through the world. You play as a descendant of the once great Atlantians – a proud and greedy race that met their end and disappeared forever some thousand years ago. Your task – to find the lost city of Atlantis, and fight your way across an ancient Earth as you do.
Of course, before embarking on such a journey, one must first decide on the finer things in life – such as which weapon they prefer to use, and how they like to style their hair. Weapons range everywhere from Swords and Axes to Pole arms, Cannons, Bows, Staffs and Guns – hair and face styles however give much less of a choice. To get it out of the way nice and early, this is the single one thing that annoys in Atlantica Online – as with the limited armor styles later in the game, it truly is hard to stand out from the pack. It’s not a big issue – just one that saddens me a little.
Having created your character and chosen your Atlantica Gold of preference, you’ll soon be thrust head-first into your first – and last – quest chain. This begins with a short tutorial, and then quickly turns into the long and perilous journey that is Atlantica Online. During the tutorial you will discover a lot about Atlantica, and there’s a good chance that most of it will be very new. The main ones include the turn-based battle system, and the mercenary system – both of which are fantastic.
The turn-based battles are pretty straight forward – you take your turn, and then the enemy theirs – but it’s the mercenaries that make things really interesting. You see, turn-based battles are no fun when you only have one character, thus, in Atlantica you take control of up to nine. These characters take the form of mercenaries, and each have their own individual styles and skills. They also level up just like your main character, and using Ashen Crystals can ‘evolve’ into different fighters later in the game.
