Game-A-Week Episode 15: Wakfu

[11:00 PM]

This one is a doozy.

[11:00 PM]

Wakfu is a French 2D tactical turn-based MMO.

[11:01 PM]

What this means is that instead of regular turn based combat, everything is on a grid. There's movement and each attack has a range of a certain amount of spaces.

[11:01 PM]

In layman's terms, its Chess the MMO.

[11:01 PM]

And its HYPE

[11:02 PM]

Each class has some kind of unquie mechanic that completly changes the game. For example, the Eliatrope class can place portals all over the field in order to increase their range.

[11:03 PM]

I think the Iop class doesn't have a special mechanic though. That class is the only one described as "For dummies" so I think it just hits stuff like you would do in any other game.

[11:05 PM]

The game has really interesting lore too

[11:05 PM]

So every class is also a different race in the game.

[11:05 PM]

Except it isn't.

[11:06 PM]

Everyone is human, "race" in this game, is the same thing as it is in real life. My race is half Lebanese, for example.

[11:07 PM]

So how is every class a race, then?

[11:07 PM]

Its actually pretty fly.

[11:08 PM]

They gain their powers from their culture's religion.

[11:09 PM]

Every race/class's full name is the name of their god and a holy object of their religion.

[11:09 PM]

"Sadida's shoe" is one such example.

[11:10 PM]

In return for your worship, your god will bestow their power unto you and in turn, it will also change your appearance to be similar to that of your god.

[11:14 PM]

This is an Osamodas, a follower of the god Osamodas.

[11:16 PM]

It looks the farthest thing from human but it is in fact, a human.

[11:17 PM]

It only looks like a demon because that's what the god Osamodas looks like. The more devout of a follower you are, the closer you will resemble your god and the more power they'll give you.

[11:17 PM]

Make sense?

[11:18 PM]

Its pretty unique. I've never really seen any other lore quite like it.

[11:21 PM]

In fact, just to emphasize it, these are all human too if you can believe it. Yes, even the furry and the robots. Heck, even the old man is actually pretty young. He just looks like that because the god that he follows is an old man.

[11:21 PM]

[11:21 PM]

[11:21 PM]

[11:22 PM]

Pretty cool, right?

[11:26 PM]

Unfortunately, the game is pretty old so there aren't many new players. Most of the playerbase are in endgame so leveling is a lonely process.

[11:27 PM]

Which is unfortunate, because the group content such as dungeons and raids is where this game truly shines.

[11:28 PM]

I've only been able to experience this once and it was so cool to see our entire party's unique class mechanics all working together on the field at once.

[11:28 PM]

You're going to hear me say this a lot today but it was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

[11:30 PM]

Now... I DID run into some technical issue during the week. It's nothing that impacted actual gameplay, but it was an annoyance nonetheless.

[11:31 PM]

When I logged in, it said my characters were "awaiting customization" and I had to go through the character creation screen with each of them. They were exactly as I left them so I just clicked on through and that was that. Here's what it looked like when I logged in: https://imgur.com/a/Blq7EfD But when I logged in the next day, the same thing happened except one of them was reverted to the default and the other had their gender flipped. Here's what it looked like: https://imgur.com/a/kkV3hDs

[11:33 PM]

As it turns out, the overhauled character customization from when I last played AND THEN DID IT AGAIN THE DAY AFTER THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK.

[11:33 PM]

So this was the result.

[11:34 PM]

Pretty annoying but didn't impact the gameplay. I'm just glad I had taken a screenshot of this on day one so I could compare them side by side to soothe my OCD

[11:35 PM]

The game also throws you into a grind after the first quest chain and hits you with a big ol' "Reach level 20 to progress to the next chapter".

[11:36 PM]

I was around level 12 when it gave me this so I wasn't thrilled.

[11:38 PM]

I also didn't like that there were no NPC owned shops. When you've got a piece of gear that you can't use anymore, your options are to either sell it to another player or discard it.

[11:39 PM]

You also automatically pick up all loot so discarding gear and random materials in order to clean out your inventory becomes a major chore that I found myself doing often.

[11:42 PM]

Also, the pet mechanic is really dumb. Your pet will die if not fed every 3 days. This counts when your logged off so logging in to find out you forgot to feed your pet is a total bummer. Or, alternatively, if you just don't have the time to play for thee days, its dead.

[11:42 PM]

Then you have to make a magic elixir to bring it back to life so you can keep getting its stat bonuses. I hate it.

[11:44 PM]

But those are my only negatives. At the end of the day, Wakfu is a unique experience and unlike any MMO I've ever played. Truly, the only one of its kind. (Its prequel game doesn't count, bee tee dubs)

[11:45 PM]

I give Wakfu a 8/10. It's truly something special and unique. This is a game that I would really want to play with my friends. But unfortunately, they're trash so they'd never play this with me.