Sword of the New World offers new frontiers in Echoes of an Empire

I keep reading how glorious this game looks. For graphics and graphics alone I will give SotNW a shot. Maybe it'll grow on me. We'll see.

Eh, the whole concept of having three characters at once is a little weird.

In a standard computer RPG it's not that odd to control multiple characters at once, but it is strange in an MMO. The control scheme does take getting used to, and it does seem more a Massively Single Player Online game than most, but it is beautiful, and very different. I played it for a while before getting distracted by other shiny things, but I enjoyed my time with the game. Pretty grindy though, more than I like in most of my games. But I may have to download it and give it a try again. I mean, it is free after all.

no no, ive played Final Fantasy. Not the online one though. But im more of real time action kinda guy. Not this, ok you did that, now ill do this!

You don't play out combat like that in Sword. You may be controlling three characters, but all combat is real time. In a nutshell, you have three control bars, one for each character, representing the three rows of your keyboard. Character 1 is QWERT, character 2 is ASDFG, character 3 is ZXCVB etc. Movement is handled by mouse, click to move. Click on an enemy to start attacking, then use the buttons to activate your characters abilities. You can also set them to act in different manners, like 'go to where I'm clicking and attack any monsters in the way'.

It's very different than other MMOs, and getting the most of your party can be a bit of a challenge. On the other hand, you can plop your group down in a high traffic area, tell them to attack anything in range and then ignore them, checking back every few minutes to pick up loot left by the monsters killed while you were AFK. It's an odd mix, much like everything in the game.

The obsession with pies and cooking I quite enjoy.

Granado Espada is a great game. At the time I was playing it though, I couldn't get motivated enough to keep playing.

This seemed like a very silly game to me. I could not get past seeing players running around in bizarre trios everywhere I went.

Plus, upon hitting the early zone of dancing flowers and bouncing alligators, I just couldn't take the absurdity any longer.

What amazes me is that the game is still around. It was originally a subscription-based game; but even when it went F2P, there was just no way I would ever go back to it.