The Martial Arts MMO Swordsman (also known as Swordsman Online), which was announced at E3 2010, has made it to open beta. We introduce you to the game.
If you are like us, then after a day in MMOs, you can’t sleep, lying in bed at night and zapping around until you land on channel 28 with an Eastern from Shaw Film Studios or as it was said before: “with a Kung-Fu movie.” Tele 5 has been repeating them constantly lately. If you play your cards right, instead of watching TV, you could walk the path of the warrior yourself.
Swordsman is based on a novel that was published in a daily newspaper in the 60s and then made headlines with its film adaptations. The novel is about a manuscript that teaches an ancient and secret fighting technique. The legendary Shaw Brothers (known for epic Kung-Fu fight scenes and crazy weapons) made a film adaptation in 1978. Later, there was a sequel with Jet Li and seven different TV series. Anyway.
The 10 Classes at a Glance
In Swordsman, instead of choosing a class, you can decide from the start on one of ten schools. (Please note that we are only presenting very rough guidelines, without taking any responsibility).
- Those trained in Shaolin will be adept with the staff and will deal out some serious blows – Shaolin students are considered “tanky”.
- The Sun and Moon School focuses on mid-range DPS and equips its disciples with chain blades, similar to those known from the reaper in Tera.
- A member of the Wu-Tang Clan (I know what you’re thinking) is a mid-range tank, primarily focusing on AOE effects. He is a friend of the two-handed sword.
- The Five Venoms train finesse fighters who specialize in AOE crowd control and are feared enemies. Their favorite strategy involves a nasty stunlock. Weapons of choice: poisons and whips.
- The Zephyr School sends out all-rounders with relatively easy-to-use skill combos. This can be useful, as the combat system revolves around dynamic action. They are masters of fan combat.
- The Tong prefers firearms, fire in general, and fire-affine disciples. Here, the focus is on “fire” power and on harassing the opponent from afar.
- In the Infinity house, one fights with the infamous dual sword technique and emphasizes a fluid and harmonious fighting style, chaining combinations together. Players choosing this path can expect a high skill ceiling (translated: those who get it right will soar like a cat).
- The Harmony house is focused on assassins. Many players consider their students to be the best class currently available. But as everyone knows, this can change quickly. They act as glass cannons with long and short swords.
- In the Splendor house, the nerf bat seems to have circulated, previously their students were considered hard-to-play killers with high burst damage.
- And from the Emei house comes a healer class that everyone would love to have by their side.
Dynamic with Lots of Action and “Flash”
The MMO Swordsman relies on a classical Asia Martial Arts story, which has a certain pathos, fully focusing on skill-based and action-packed gameplay with an emphasis on graphics and PvP. Starting at level 30, you enter the wonderful world of player killing, guild and alliance battles. Especially much emphasis is placed on movement. As seen in the gameplay trailer, you can move through the air in unfamiliar ways – just like in the movies. Between quests, Swordsman Online is considered a fairly simple MMO, focusing on auto-path quests and a “flashy” appearance, often referring to the somewhat exaggerated Asian stunts.
In Germany, the game is distributed by Perfect World, who also already have Neverwinter and Star Trek Online in their repertoire. At the moment, the game is, admittedly, still relatively obscure in the European market, but the trailers look quite promising.
We have prepared a trailer for you and a link to register for the open beta. In the sources, there is a forum post that introduces the different classes in more detail.
