The year is 2012. Cultists claim that the end of the world is nigh, conspiracy theorists spread rumours that the President is the Antichrist, and I'm not even talking about the game yet. Yes, it was a simpler time. People were still playing Farmville on Facebook, Blizzard hadn't turned World of Warcraft into Kung Fu Panda yet, and Konami was just putting the finishing touches on their attempt to turn their most popular survival horror franchise into a modern cover-based military shooter. All the while, FunCom was creating this interesting little MMO that was going to revolutionize the way we thought about MMORPG's.
It didn't. But it *was* a great ride.
I don't expect you're reading this to learn about the game as an abstract concept, however, so let's talk about why this is one Free-to-Play that you shouldn't pass up
The Basics: If you didn't know already, FunCom's
The Secret World started off as a pay-once-play-forever MMO, and it is that original game that is now being released in-full as the free-to-play
Secret World Legends, with the cosmetic player options being the now-monetized feature of the game. So, apart from that one difference, what you're getting is a game that was developed and released as a $45 complete game, and this lack of a need to continue drawing endless subscription fees allowed FunCom to forego a lot of the sinister Skinner-box style gameplay mechanics that keep
WoW players shelling out $120 a year just to do their dailies. Whether or not this contributed to their drop-off in player base I'll leave up to you, but the impact on gameplay design was unmistakable. Your basic "Go to X and kill Y amount of Z monster" style quest was still present, but instead of making up the bulk of the game, they remain safely in their designated place where they are useful. Such quests are intentionally simple, designed, in this case, to familiarize you with the layout of the local questing area and the kinds of basic monsters you should expect to encounter. They served as a good gauge of whether you were ready to tackle a local questing area, or if you needed to shore up your gear and your current build before pushing forward. In that sense, it was more of a mini orientation, to get the basics out of the way before throwing interesting quests and puzzles at you. But I'll get to that in a minute.
The actual gameplay mechanics were quite simple, not at all foreign to MMO vets: You had a taskbar full of abilities, and you cycled through each of them accordingly during encounters. So, on its surface, the gameplay was your standard MMO fare. Underneath, however, was a complex strategy game. What sets The Secret World apart from the pack is that there was no player level. All of your numerical stats were determined almost exclusively by your gear, and your abilities were determined specifically by what you chose to have. Experience gained translated into advancement points that you could then spend however you like, picking and choosing abilities along any skill tree (each skill tree was based on its corresponding weapon type) that you fancied. As long as you carried the right gear and unlocked the right abilities, you could conceivably play any role you wanted, and switch builds between encounters. However, with slots for only five activated abilities (including your basic attack ability) and five passive abilities, the strategy in The Secret World was more about what abilities you
chose. You could equip any two weapons at once, and select your favorite abilities from each of their skill trees, building your character's strategies around your preferred playstyle. The game included its own suggestions, and special unlockable outfits that stood as rewards for unlocking all the right abilities to match the suggested builds, but with nine weapon types, each brimming with their own collection of abilities, it's far more likely you're going to come up with your own clever approach to the game as you hone your skills.
The Quests: As I mentioned before, by freeing up their design to include less grind-ey quests and more immersive scenarios,
The Secret World's collection of quests actually felt like they had real motivation for doing them, and enough variation to keep you engaged in the story instead of just trying to fill an XP bar. Given the game's universal approach to the supernatural, you would find yourself fighting beasties from all over your local bookstore's fiction section, from run-of-the-mill zombies to ancient Egyptian demigods. Instanced quests made smaller, more horror-oriented segments more personal and visceral, and side quests scattered throughout the zones presented inventive, dare-I-say fun little adventures instead of your run-of-the-mill fetch quest.
But if you're not here for the basic gameplay and to simply follow the story's quests, then you're here for one of two things: the Investigation Quests, or the Raids.
Raids are your standard 5-player fare, so you can't pull in an army from your local clan to come stomp the baddies, though you can get a higher-tiered player to come help you make it through the tough encounters. Still, if you're the kind of person who enjoys raids, overcompensating for the challenge level seems pointless. Besides, what you're going to find in the raids are tough bosses with brutal attack patterns and clever abilities, each of which will require teamwork and coordination to overcome. Losing at a fight only sets you back outside the area, encouraging retries, and adapting your strategies (and builds) to defeat a particularly tough enemy. Tense and exciting, you never quite feel safe, and finishing a raid is always a satisfying feeling, especially if you luck out and get the gear you really need.
In my opinion, however, it's the Investigation Quests where the behind the scenes work really shines. Each Investigation quest is a multi-layered puzzle that the game will
not spoon-feed to you. If you're into mysteries, ARG's, and critical thinking puzzles, my advice to you is get yourself a dedicated notebook and strap in: Over the course of this game, you're going to learn a frankly suspicious amount of cyphering, encryption, world history, mythology, chemistry, even medicine. The difficulty level is bordering on the
absurd, from time to time, but finally solving one of these quests will make the maddening frustration all worth it. I'll tell you straight away- walkthroughs exist for every last one of these, but you'd be ruining what I would argue are the game's
best features. This game
taught me Morse Code. When was the last time you learned a practical skill from a videogame?
The PVP: Skip it. I'm dead serious. The PVP in this game could have been great, with its whole "We are all clandestine agents of secret societies" angle, had it just been given the level of thought paid to the rest of the game, but it just wasn't. Personally, you stand to gain next to nothing from participating, and the whole enterprise is such a boring affair that I simply can't overstate its uselessness. The three clans battle it out in boilerplate PVP battle arenas, mostly just running around in huge packs that smash into each other, and after all the chaos, one side is dead. There are too many players to be able to coordinate, and certain builds (*ahem assault rifles ahem*) are so ridiculously overpowered at range that how well one does in any particular encounter feels completely random at best. Winning battles may net your team a passive XP boost while you still have control, but there are a few random weirdos who do nothing but play the PVP (at least when I was playing) who will mostly control all of that action. Best to stick to what brought you to this game, and let the PvP exist in its own bizarre world.
Conclusion: Secret World Legends is a free-to-play game that was designed as a well-thought-out, full-price MMORPG for the (ironically enough) underserved
Role-Play fans of this
Role-Playing genre. The game is simple to learn, but deep in content, rich in its environment and writing, and has the uncanny ability to pull you deeper into its various stories as you unravel the mysteries of its world. The gameplay is tightly designed, the quests are creative and varied, and the PVP...exists. Of all of the MMORPG's I've seen go Free-to-play too soon,
The Secret World feels like the only one that wasn't the fault of an ill-advised game overhaul that killed the community. Instead, it's the game's refusal to be a cheap addiction machine that brought its transition, in one Pooka's opinion. At the low price of literally nothing, this one is worth a try.
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