Put about an hour into Wild Frontier last night. Impressions, ho!
It's basically a mish-mash of 2D, sprite-based, top-down Korean action RPG and Monster Hunter, of all things. Complete with crummy localization! It's crisp, well animated, and smooth-playing, more akin to Queen's Crown than Zenonia or Chronicles of Inotia.
It's definitely got that solid RPG foundation that MH mostly lacks, so grinding and leveling will get you somewhere. Level ups come quickly so far, and each will net you 3 distributable stat points to perm-boost Str, Dex, Con, and Int; as well as 1 skill point to spend on learning a new skill or leveling an existing skill. The skills appear to be spread across chain (combo) attacks, chain finishers, temp buffs, and perm passives.
The game purporsts to take place in the real world, according to the opening narration, but once actual gameplay sets in, you'd never know it. Legendary continent (not the Americas) filled with fantastical creatures and races. Oh, and there be dragons.
You start off by naming your character (male only, fixed general appearance) and selecting from one of four classes. One is basically a weapons expert, another a sword and shield type, another a dual-wielding and agile type, and I forget the last. Ranged attacker, perhaps?
Tons of slots for equipment and gear, and lot dumps for nicely organized categories of inventory which run the gamut of consumables, creature parts, recipes, and harvested/foraged/mined resources.
I'm still on the starting dagger weapon, so I'm unsure if different weapons control or chain uniquely, but combat appears to play out with chained combos of 3 attacks; the first two being regular chain strikes and the third being a finisher. You can map up to 5 skills (IIRC) to a nearby palette, and swap in upgradeable chain and/or finisher skills as needed. Doing do will decrease your mana, of course.
Buffs and passives largely speak for themselves, but do note that some buffs and AoE skills can aggro near by (or all on-screen!) creatures! All skills are arranged in sime trees and many have character level and/or minimum skill level requirements for preceding skills in the relevant tree(s). Nothing's hidden, so feel free to plan ahead for the long-term.
The game plays out more or less like you'd expect given the fusion of Korean ARPG and Monster Hunter approaches. Creature corpses are ripe for carving and looting, the environments and filled with resources to harvest, forage, and mine for. Equipment has durability to maintain with the proper consumables. You've got a cookbook to utilize while camping in order to convert your drops and resources into status and health/mana boosting goodies. Additional recipes can be procured for crafting new equipment and gear. NPCs and a message board are available to dole out quests which you can pursue, complete, and cash in.
There's a surprisingly rapidly shifting day/night cycle fhat, in a Castlevania 2 twist, sees you facing tougher enemies at night. Some decisions have Nice little consequencies. Example: maintaining equipment in the wild can see permanent drops in max durability. Doing the same back at a nearby village will never result in similarly damaged gear. There also appears to be a pet system that sees you taming wild creatures to use as hunting companions!
Finally, everything is tied together by a not totally terribad (so far) narrative. At $0.99 and 50MBs, it's tough not to recommend, honestly. There are optional IAPs, but none of them appear to be even remotely crucial to progression, and seem to be there just for the occasional bit of convenience and/or extra help. No special dollar-based in-game currencies or content lock-outs in sight!
Everything's tied together by a so far not terrible narrative and story.
.gif)
