Land and Sea MMO Florensia Review

Oct. 11, 2010 - PRLog -- Florensia Review

by Ron Keith



Do you like the feel of salt water splashing on your face? The sound of the wind filling your sails? The roar of cannon fire and the grip of a cutlass in your hand? Adventure on the high seas calls, and its name is Florensia.

Florensia is a MMO that attempts to combine land action with naval battles. Does it succeed? If you're looking for some pirate action is this game a good choice?

Overview
Florensia is an free-to-play (F2P) MMO that offers both land and sea combat. The game has an anime look-and-feel, and from its bouncing mushrooms to its extra cute characters, Florensia is decidedly oriented to teens and pre-teens. Unlike a game like Hello Kitty: Online, though, it's solid MMO gameplay makes it appealing to adults, too.

The game is your standard MMO with everything you'd expect from an MMO, but with added bonus of sea battles, and that's a bonus you're likely to enjoy.



Starting out
Florensia allows you to choose one of four starting class: a Noble, an Explorer, a Saint, and a Mercenary. The Mercenary is a warrior-tank class, the Saint a healer, and the Noble is mage. The Explorer, with its guns, is a ranged class, but can also wield a sword for melee.

Character customization is limited. There are just a few different faces, hairstyles, hair colors, and not much else. As a newer MMO, this is disappointing; more character customization would be nice and is expected, these days.



Questing and leveling
Questing is your standard MMO fair. Go kill 6 of this. Go gather 20 of these. Go see this person, then go see that person. Florensia might not have the most inventive quests, but what it lacks in originality it makes up for in variety and quantity. If you get bored with the land quests, you can do some sea quests. If you get bored with those, there are quests for other activities such as fishing.

One problem with questing, though, is Florensia doesn't provide quest indicators. The regions are small enough, though, you can get by without them. Be sure to read the quest information carefully; it usually tells you where to go and what to kill. It's easy to do without the quest indicators, but it would be helpful to have them.



Leveling your character in Florensia is slower than what you're probably used to, and it's particularly slow for a F2P game, which often allow players to zoom through the levels. It's possible the game designers did this intentionally to make players experience all of Florensia's different islands and areas. In other games, you sometimes level so fast there's no reason to go to certain areas of the game because they wouldn't present a challenge. So you just bypass them and don't experience what might be some fun quests or at the least some pretty scenery.

Florensia's level cap is 99. By having a high level cap and a slow leveling curve, most players won't bypass a lot of the game. They'll actually experience most of what Florensia has to offer, giving them time to stop and smell the MMO roses.

Your ship
The thing that is probably going to draw you to Florensia is the sea warfare. The sea warfare is what separates Florensia from the rest of the MMO herd.



If you've ever played an MMO before, you'll be right at home with Florensia's land combat. You'll quickly get the hang of it. It's all standard fare. What isn't standard fare is fighting with your ship.

Florensia's ship combat will probably seem unfamiliar at first. Hey, you're not on dry land, anymore. Steering and firing your ship plus using your seafaring abilities can seem a little daunting at first, but just at first. You'll gradually get the hang of it and might find yourself spending most of your time at sea.

Florensia's ship combat will be a whole new experience to most. Unlike other sea warfare games, steering and controlling your ship is not brain-dead simple. It's actually a little challenging in Florensia, but in a good way. You have to pay attention to the speed and direction of your ship to accurately aim your guns. Don't worry. With a little practice, you'll get used to it.

As you gain experience, you'll have opportunities to upgrade your ship in various ways, plus you'll be able to get new ships. Ship types include:  Armored, Assault, Big Gun, Maintenance, and Torpedo Ships. All have different roles, just like your character. For instance, the Armored Ship is a basically a seafaring tank and the Maintenance Ship is essentially a healer. You can have more than one ship and your ship type isn't limited by your class, so you have the flexibility at sea of fulfilling and experimenting with different roles without having to switch to another character.



Florensia's community
MMOs are social games. With an involved, enthused player community, a bad MMO can be decent, and a decent MMO can be great. Alaplaya, the company that manages Florensia, understands this. They appear to have regular and fun events in the game. For instance, one event was Talk Like A Pirate day. On Talk Like A Pirate Day, all players could get special pirate gear from the vendors, but just for that day.

By regularly, scheduling special events, Alaplaya is building a sense of community in Florensia, and it seems to be working. Judging by the player chat, a strong sense of camaraderie is already developing among Florensia's players. Overall, players of the game were more helpful than usual and seemed to be enjoying the game.

The game also has Game Masters (GM) and they occasionally are present in chat. They tend to act more as hall monitors, though, and not as a source of help. More help would be nice, but it's good to see GMs, since they've become so rare in MMOs. A game like Florensia, with its cartoon look-and-feel, is going to appeal to a lot of kids, so the presence of GMs will provide parents with an extra degree of comfort.



Cons
Character customization is limited. Quests lack goal indicators. Quests are not amazingly inventive. Leveling pace might be a tiny bit slow for some.

Pros
Sea warfare! Large variety of quests. Lots of different player ships. Strong, involved player community. GMs are present and will help protect kids.

Final thoughts
For a free-to-play game, Florensia is a solid game. The quests are predictable, but there's a lot of them. It's a good place for kids and adults to come play, and the GMs are there to insure the game will appeal to players of all ages. The sea warfare and nautical theme is the draw of the game, and that's going to pull a lot of players to the game. If that appeals to you, it's well worth trying. Who knows, maybe you'll become part of the Florensia community, too.

To play Florensia for FREE right now, go to mmogames.com

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