My Adventures in Mabinogi: part 2

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part 1</sub>

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In part one of, “My Adventures in Mabinogi” I discussed character creation, rebirthing, combat and life professions, and more. Today I want to share with you about the story and more of my impressions of the game.

To start, Mabinogi is turning out to be a rather fun game. I have to admit that I wasn’t so sure when I first started to play. The user interface was daunting and uneasy to manipulate which for the better part of my time so far has left a sick feeling in my stomach. Despite this major flaw, the game seems to be growing on me.

My story started in the little human town called Tir where Duncan, your mentor for the early stages sets up the story. Fomors are attacking the world and it’s up to you to figure out what the heck is going on! Seems like a typical MMO story right? Well I thought so too at first until I really started to get further into it. Turns out the whole world is full of lore and stories from which you can spend many hours just reading. In fact I really feel that is a bit of an understatement considering there are actual books you can acquire through your travels are or by purchasing from various book vendors throughout the world. Personally I haven’t read any yet, but I’m looking forward to spending time on that as well.

Mabinogi, in my opinion is breathtaking visually if you allow it to be. Sure the graphics are not great by any modern standard, but the lighting in the game is okay, paired with some really awesome and unique soundtracks. “Yes the background music is actually good!” The game does well enough of a job at making each zone a unique experience despite the lack of objects and things to interact with. I’ve been finding that every time I go to a new zone there’s always a different theme song to go along with it. Some of them are really nice and honestly I didn’t expect them to be as good as they are.

I previously talked in part one about how I’ve met many players. In fact almost every player I have encountered so far as added me to their friends list. I figured I’d mention that since it isn’t typical of many games for people to be open and friendly. Perhaps that is another reason why this game feels special. It’s always nice being able to enter into a new game experience, greeted by friendly people who’re willing to help. It shoes that they care about their game and everything it has to offer. “But how does the game play hold up?” I wondered.

Well . . . So far its meh, and I’m not so sure just yet how I feel. Questing is pretty standard. It’s mostly talk to this npc, go do this thing for me, so-on-and-so-forth. The main story however is really shaping to be something different. There are many quests where you get to learn the back stories of characters and actually play as them. Most of these experiences so far have taken place in solo instances where you run around as the main characters within the story, watch cut scenes as you progress, and fight monsters as throughout dungeons.

There seems to be a lot of things I’ve yet to experience though and I’m quite anxious to get into it all. Through my travels I’ve talked to other plays who have explained that the story is comprised of chapters. I’m not sure exactly what that means in regards to hours of playtime that is ahead of me. I’ll have to keep you guys updated on that.

I have to admit I was slightly tempted to just go ahead and screenshot almost all story cut scene I came across, however I figured I’d save you guys from as many spoilers as possible. If you guys want to play Mabinogi just for the story alone, it might just be worth a try!

Another frustration that has come up was the fact that most of the world you travel around is almost always instant. For instance, early on you receive a moon gate book which allows you to travel along a network of portals. Each zone in the game has one of these portals which you can travel to via your book. This was disappointing as it eliminates the need for walking around with your character or getting on a mount to travel. I have yet to run into a situation where I couldn’t get to my destination via my moon gate book and as much as I would love to not use it, so far there really isn’t any purpose for exploration that I can tell yet.

It’s disappointing though if you think about it. The world is big, three continents big and I’m sure there are plenty of places to explore and see. I think I’ll just have to take a day or two running around the world looking at everything and possibly getting myself killed every now and then.

Mabinogi world tour?

Again I’m surprised by the effort that went into dialogue immersion. This is one of the few cases where I actually want to quest in the game. The pictures below are some snip it’s of the main story line where you get to play as the character Tarlach.

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Some more screenshots of other in-game scenes . . .

This concludes part two. If any of you have played Mabinogi or have thought you want to share don't forget to leave a comment in the comments section below, but until next time, I'll see you guys soon!

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_{Stay tuned for more.}