Florensia: a Free MMORPG with a Nautical Side

There are a slew of so-called "free-to-play" online role-playing games out there. Doing a query for "free to play mmorpg" will bring up sites listing hundreds of these games. There are steampunk, medieval, science fiction, western, and fantasy-themed mmorpgs available for download at sites like mmohut.com and gameogre.com. It can become quite dizzying trying to find a good game amongst all the available options.

Florensia is one of the fantasy mmorpg offerings that follows the free-to-play model, namely allowing you to download and play the game at no cost but making you pay for the premium items and costumes. You might think nobody would be able to make a dime using this system, but free-to-play games have now become an extremely profitable market. Gamers can't seem to resist spending real money to upgrade their character's weapons, give them special clothing, or just help them avoid walking long distances with warp items.

Florensia offers players four initial classes to choose from. These are: Explorer(rogue), mercenary(warrior), noble(magic-user), and saint(healer). Each of these characters has its own set of skills available to learn, and each can progress to more advanced classes at higher experience levels.

The classes offered and skills available are pretty standard for these types of games, but Florensia offers players the extra option of outfitting a ship and battling pirates and sea monsters. Like the weapons and armor that players can upgrade as their experience increases, the ships, their weaponry, and their crews can be upgraded as "sea experience" increases. The at-sea portion of the game could almost be an entire game on its own. There are sea-specific quests, abilities, weapons, etc.

Now that you have an overview of Florensia, let's take a look at some of the specifics. First of all, the graphics of the game are polished yet average. This is not a knock on the game, because all free-to-play games have relatively simplistic graphics so that they can attract as wide an audience as possible. The game developers want anybody to be able to play(and eventually purchase premium items) even if their computer is old and slow. Florensia is presented in 3D, and its world is relatively large if you count the ocean areas.

The quests for the game are also pretty standard. These include killing a certain number of enemies, collecting certain items dropped from enemies, and running from NPC(non-player character) to NPC to deliver messages or items. The sea quests are basically defeating specific enemies. You'll find you have all the quests you could possibly want until you reach level 30 experience. After level 30, you will have to resort to what is commonly known in RPGs as "grinding", that is, battling enemies without any particular quest to complete simply to increase experience.

All free-to-play games force you grind at some point. Their hope is the early experience of the game has been exciting enough to make you want to continue. If you keep playing the game and keep grinding, the premium items become more and more tempting. Items that help you gain experience faster and allow a player to cut his grinding time in half grow in importance with every hour spent fighting the same predictable enemies.

Unfortunately for Florensia, the game fails to excite even in early levels. The quests, weapons, armor, and enemies are simply too generic. The NPCs have stock personalities and are extremely forgettable. The locations are neither beautiful nor imaginative.

The combat in the land sections of the game is handled fairly well, utilizing a point-and-click targeting system that allows you to left click on an enemy to see its level, right click to lock on and attack, and hotkeys for special attacks or quick item usage. Many games employ a similar system for good reason. It is intuitive and works well.

As to the sea sections of the game, they are stunningly disappointing. Again, the graphics and enemies are boring, but what really kills the fun here is the control of the ships themselves. Gone is the intuitive point-and-click targeting system used in the land combat. Instead, you must struggle with using the W, S, A, and D keys to steer your craft, while using the space bar to alternate between different weapon types, and the directional keys to fire your cannons in the appropriate directions. While it is possible to pull this off using both hands, doing so prevents you from using the mouse to keep your enemies in your field of vision. The result of this is that once you begin combat, you will have to remove your hand from the directional keys to adjust your view using the mouse. While doing this, your enemy will bomb you relentlessly. Even when you get the enemy back into view, it will continuously circle you, forcing you to keep taking your hand off the directional keys to readjust your field of vision.

Not only is the learning curve for this counterintuitive control setup very high, the ships simply do not handle well. While the handling improves as you advance in experience and are able to purchase better ships, it is still an exercise in frustration at any level.

To summarize, what you have with Florensia is a standard free-to-play mmorpg that is quite average in its land-based gameplay and absolutely horrible in its sea-based gameplay. If you are stressing over a free mmorpg to download, you can rest a tad easier when cross Florensia off your list. The only thing you'll miss is mediocrity and an ill-devised control system.