100 Years' War

100 Years' War is a historic MMORPG inspired by the legendary war between Britain and France in the middle ages. It is played directly from Facebook. Developed by IGG using the famed Unreal 3D engine, 100 Years' War takes players back in time with vivid graphics, cinematic narrations and detailed storylines.

Well, at least that's what was stated in the game's official website, so how bad could it be?

Although I can't say much about the graphics that I'm greeted with (looks a bit grainy on the edges), but it does seem refreshing to be "guided" through character creation.

There's four character classes to choose from and it is good to know that they're not gender-locked, so you are free to choose whichever class and gender combination that you want.

Perhaps I have too high an expectation, but the view of the game isn't as vivid as it is claimed. What's more, it is creepily silent throughout the game apart from the soft music that's played in the city of Orleans (due to some bug).

In my opinion, this seriously places the game in a bad spotlight and people might think that its a poorly made game. (Come to think of it, where's the "cinematic narration"?)

The combat animations and effects isn't exactly top-notch in this game either, but I guess they're bearable for a browser game that doesn't take long to load.

In 100 Years' War, your character doesn't automatically level up once you've acquired the necessary amount of experience points. You will have to manually click on the "Lv Up" button in order to increase your character's level. (But that's only after you've reached level 20 as the system automatically levels your character before then.)

If you look at the bottom of the hotkeys, you will see an empty bar (0/20). As you kill monsters, it will gradually fill up with a light green colour. Once it is filled, you can choose to keep the experience points gathered or use it to level up.

Usually, you will want to spend the points immediately to level up your character, but sometimes, you may want to keep it in order to level up your skills instead. For example, Blitz Strike Level 1 requires a character of level 20, 240 experience points and 230 silvers to learn.

And talking about silvers, you should know that in 100 Years' War, silver and gold are the two primary currencies used in most transactions. Silvers can be used for learning skills, buying stuff from NPCs and also for repairing your equipments. Gold on the other hand, is primarily used for trading between players because we can't trade silver.

Gold can be exchanged to silver via the Gold Dealer at Orleans, but silver cannot be exchanged into gold. So the only way to obtain gold is through doing quests or selling stuff to other players.

Besides gold and silver, there are some NPCs which sells stuff that cannot be bought with gold and silver. To buy these items, be sure to check the "currency" that they require.

As I explore 100 Years' War in depth, I've started to notice the good points of the game. Firstly, I kind of like how the quests "progresses" from where we first started to the sewers and then into the city of Orleans. It gives the player a sense of being lead around in the game like in those offline RPGs that we loved to play (rather than senseless wandering).

Secondly, I also like the "Newbie's Guide" which comes up as I entered the sewers (I think the trigger for this is due to me reaching level 15). Apparently, its a guide that introduces us to the tons of features that is available in 100 Years' War as and when we've fulfilled the requirements. I highly recommend that you read and do them.

If you take a look at the map of Orleans, you can get a slight idea of these features from the NPCs that are available. For example, there's an NPC for Adventure Quests, one for Demon Hunting Quests, another for Stardust Missions, Escort Missions, Suppression Quests and Instance Quests.

Adventure quests work just like regular NPC quests. You are asked to kill X number of a particular monster and will be rewarded with experience points and some gold coins. (You are limited to doing 50 of these quests a day.)

Instance quests are simply dungeon runs with three difficulty levels, normal, elite and hero (not available yet). Upon completion of the quest, you will be rewarded with power gems, artisan stones and/or drilling gems. (You are limited to doing 1 (for normal level) and 3 (for elite level with corresponding elite card) of these a day.)

The rest of the missions and quests features require a level of 30 or above so I am still not sure how they work.

In addition, you can also find NPCs for drilling sockets into your equipment, upgrading, disassembly, gems, transferring upgrades between equipments and crafting.

You can also own mounts (helps you move around the maps faster) and even your own spirit pets (helps you in combats). The mounts can be upgraded so that they give more movement bonuses while spirit pets can be merged and upgraded.

That's a heck of a lot of features if you ask me. However, I can't help but feel that behind all these features, there's too much of a motive of tempting you into spending money on the game. But if you take a step back and think, aren't all games designed to make you spend money on them?

If you like exploring a complex game which offers a plethora of features to keep you occupied, then 100 Years' War isn't a bad choice for you.

100 Years' War Video Clips

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