MapleStory Critique Commentary Part 1 (Warrior Class)
1Greetings one and all to a realm of commentated videos where I essentially critique a wide variety of games that I have enjoyed not just thoroughly, but also enable a high level of creativity in some form to make the experience special for me to talk about!
Certainly this is going to be quite the nostalgic trip down memory lane for some people here who are fans of the big popular MMORPGs back in the old days of internet gaming, god knows I certainly remembered this game fondly back when I first properly touched it in early 2011, with MapleStory being proven to be quite the addictive and cutesy anime-styled 2D platformer kind of RPG (I'd say it's less of an MMO nowadays, unless you're WAY into the end-game where a good portion of the players are, something I was still a good year or two away from here!) that caught many a gamer's attention back in the golden era of gaming online!
Of course, where to even start eh? Suppose I could go on a tirade about Nexon, the publishers of MapleStory, and how they are ever-so-similar in handling this fantastic brand like Jagex is with Runescape, but I'll save that for later on in this series since it would require a good bit of explaining to get the full picture as far as my thoughts go from there.
Anyhow yes, what exactly is the whole idea of MapleStory and what is there to do? Well this is where it gets interesting since, unlike Runescape, one can not 'choose' whatever kind of class or 'skilling' path they want at any time, as the starting class is by default 'Novice', essentially the forced starter class you get when you explore and then leave the tutorial that is Maple Island onto the 'beginner's world' that is Victoria Island, where starting players can then choose one of five styles of combat (Be it the melee-based Warrior, the magic-centered Magician, the range-focused Bowman, the stealth-class Thief or the outright wacky Pirate) to get a start with the game.
From there, each starting class has it's own 'evolution' path as far as where each player wants to go with their chosen combat style. For example, basing my first character shown here Defencelion as he's on the Warrior class, can start to divulge into 3 separate paths from the initial 5 starting classes chosen when you're right out of the tutorial at Level 10 once you've progressed far enough as a character, that being Level 30, where you can then choose to become either a Fighter, Page or Spearman.
To give a little insight into how the three vary from one another, Fighters specialize in landing big combos and providing general buffs to themselves as well as debuffing the enemies at hand, Pages take a little liberty from the Magician class by mixing in normal melee attacks with magical-imbued spells to further enhance their damage output whilst Spearmen are generally specialist supporters that provide powerful buffs to the party as a whole alongside having their own protector summon that can be improved as well over time.
Indeed, it's not just the differences in gameplay that matter, as each sub-class also has specific gear that one must use to fully be efficient in this game, with Fighters specializing in swords and axes, Pages with Mallets, Hammers and Maces and Spearmen with, well, Spears alongside Halberds and Polearms, (noting that each of these weapons will vary in power, speed and range) but also the set of skills that each sub-class and their improved ranks later down the road once one hits Level 60 and Level 100 for the third and fourth 'Jobs' respectively that greatly vary and set a distinctive mark between the three!
And, bearing in mind, this is just the Warrior classes I've spoke about here! Will be sure to touch upon the Magician and Bowman classes too later on as well, but I figured you'll no doubt be keen to hear why I chose Spearman specifically and, well, truth be told the early stages of this path are quite rubbish, doesn't get much better when you hit the third job as a Berserker, however the skills available to a Dark Knight once they reach the fourth tier are VERY good for late-game combat, ironically the shift changes from supporting teams early on into being more DPS-focused by the time you reach that point late in the game!
Suppose it's all that effort paying off, since one can struggle to kill enemies if their character on MapleStory isn't all that well-optimized, as it was for me when I first started grinding in Perion over in Victoria Island and having to take 5-8 hits to kill even the weak enemies over there, but that shift in power to becoming a Dark Knight over time made it so only NOW can I no longer quite kill the current enemies suited to my level in a single hit despite all the buffs, quite the improvement indeed!
But yes, I'll leave the rest of the action here in Heliseum for viewing as I'll go further in-depth with MapleStory next video!
In any case, I hope you enjoyed the video and any constructive comments or criticism is appreciated!
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Lewis Wilkinson currently has 56 views spread across 4 videos for MapleStory. His channel currently has around 1 hour worth of content for MapleStory, less than 0.23% of the total video content that Lewis Wilkinson has uploaded to YouTube.