Highlights
- The combat is just about serviceable in Throne And Liberty, but I think it might put some players off.
- Compared to other games, like Lost Ark, BDO, even New World, the combat experience is lacklustre so far – its stiff, can be choppy, unresponsive.
- We might see more improvements to Throne And Liberty’s combat with new updates and into the endgame.
As many of us expected, Throne And Liberty is a shiny new MMO with excellent graphics. It’s visually polished, has a range of PvE and PvP content, and will be released for cross-platform play between consoles and PC. Amazon has even started toning down its pay-to-win tendencies for the global release in September. This all sounds very promising, but after the few hours I’ve spent in the open beta there’s one crushing disappointment: combat just isn’t good enough. In fact, it’s nowhere near good enough.
You’ll spend a lot of time ‘doing combat’ in Throne And Liberty. It’s an MMO. You grind mobs. You level up. You grind more mobs. That’s the cycle of life—love it, or hate it, that’s what you get. Throne And Liberty originally featured autoplay combat, which was eventually removed in a patch on the Korean servers at the end of last year. However, there are still remnants of autoplay in the game today, with the combat often feeling clunky, unresponsive, or stiff as a result. It’s still a tab-targeting system, so it’s not as action-heavy as New World, but even compared to World of Warcraft the combat is cumbersome.
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Glimpses of NCSoft developer livestreams do suggest the studio haven’t given up on combat upgrades, and we might even see some pushed out before the global release. New combat animations, combinations, and even a talent tree might go some way towards improving the moment-to-moment combat in Throne And Liberty, but I think the problems run much deeper.
The Problem With Autoplay
A game designed to have autoplay can only mean one thing: combat was never meant to be interesting. If you’re given the option to outright ignore combat entirely, grinding mobs for hours without even touching your keyboard, that suggests to me that grinding mobs probably isn’t going to be very fun. After several hours in the open beta, I can confirm that combat is at its very best serviceable. At its worst, when my character just sort of gets locked into place and stutters around, it’s not enjoyable at all.
I’ve just spent a few dozen hours with The First Descendant, which, for all its flaws, has great combat. It’s fluid and punchy and most importantly, fun. You can forgive flaws if the game is fun to play. On the other hand, if the minutiae of playing the game are tedious and slow, then even the best parts will end up ignored. Seeing as combat provides the staple content for any MMO, it’s important to get it right.
Lost Ark? Excellent combat that kept me playing for over 400 hours. New World? Slightly worse than Lost Ark but starting out with a huge lumbering great axe and swinging into groups during early-level PvP is still one of my modern MMO highlights. Black Desert? Glitzy combat with impressive animations, but a repetitive gameplay loop ultimately spoils it. Throne And Liberty has worse combat than all of these.
What It Means For Throne And Liberty
That being said, it’s obvious that the focus of Throne And Liberty is its large-scale endgame content. PvP sieges with hundreds of players can’t compare to killing some haunted scarecrows with a level two wand. But right now, I’m unable to judge how the combat will feel in 100+ hours of playing the game. It could be amazing, but if I have to wade through the sludge to get to that point the game is really going to have to do other amazing things to keep me hooked.
There’ll be some players who find the combat in Throne And Liberty perfectly fine. It’s slow and clunky, but it’s a tab-targeting MMO, not an action RPG. Throne And Liberty is free, so the best way to judge the combat is to play it yourself. I’ve enjoyed my time with the open beta but mostly because of the world design and the first few dungeons I’ve experienced. I’ll also play again at launch because of the proposed upcoming life skill introductions, although we’re not sure yet if that’ll be available on day one.
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