No Tricks Here

Imagine yourself dressed in some sort of animal costume, flourishing and stepping into a world full of unknown creatures waiting to catch a glimpse of what’s coming to you. You may start knowing nothing, meeting new people on the way, getting new magical powers, passing by some pink octopodes, mermaids, goblins and malevolent pirate ghosts are all parts of your adventure in this land of what we may see as “imagination” in the real world.

“Trickster Online,” a Korean mmorpg developed by Ntreev in North America during 2006. “Trickster” is fully packed with all sorts of activities from socializing, p2p fights, grinding, item hunting, boss hunting and quests. Despite the game’s narrow and vague storyline, it is filled with hours of fun which requires no understanding of the story whatsoever.

When starting the game, one will notice the graphics are  anime-like and don’t compare to console games and other mmorpgs with advanced developed graphics, such as “World of Warcraft.” However, “Trickster Online’s” graphics are decent and common amongst many mmorpgs such as “MapleStory” and “Ragnarok Online” that appeal to children and younger teenagers. Noticing this, the game throughout is quite smooth. It gives the player a 2D isometric perspective, and is controlled by the click of a mouse to navigate maps. Other actions including healing, attacking and casting skills, requires keyboard usage and/or the use of a mouse; whatever suits the player.

“Trickster Online’s” broad world map gives a player various places to explore, although many are limited to certain levels, and some may also have stronger monsters wandering around. Nevertheless, with its fully colorful gaming environment, players could enter yellow sanded beaches to exquisite rose gardens, to dark muddy swamp dungeons and heated boiling lands bursting with lakes of lava. Each area provides matching background whether it’s dark and mysterious, sunny and playful, or peaceful and calm.

The music is relaxing, but being that they are in a loop, they could easily be disabled in the game settings if a player finds it annoying. Regardless, sound quality in “Trickster” is clear and any sounds can be adjusted or disabled.

Every different area is joined by a single map with a “gate” and “town” to allow players to relax from the game, restock on items and talk to NPCs.

Many new players may find difficulties in choosing a character, since each class and gender has a specific build and it must be followed correctly to ensure the character’s full potential of power. Each class also starts out as a beginner, later progressing into first job, second and finally third job. The higher the level of a player is, the more difficult the quests and monsters become.

“Trickster” is known for its unique skill for all classes, which is the ability to drill, widely depicted in the game’s images and advertisements. Drilling is one of the most used skills given by default to all classes to find quest items, equipment, gain small amounts of experience and widely used for events such as Christmas, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.

The mmorpg’s gaming community is friendly and helpful. The game provides an “angel” system where newbies can ask questions and advanced players would answer. While there’s a small amount of spammers and rude players, most of them are ignored by others and quietly reported to GMs. However, scamming is quite common, because players engage in the famous “real-money-fake-money-trade”; which is not recommended because it’s risky.

Being that level 400 is the highest a player can get to, they have a ton of time exploring different areas, opening a shop to sell items, forming or joining guilds, drilling for rare items, modifying weapons, acquiring new skills, decorating a home, card battling and much more.

Unfortunately, “Trickster Online” has trouble working on Windows Vista for many users, and it also does not work at all on Windows 7. The game is a rather large file and does require a lot of memory to run. Though it stated the minimum requirements on the main site, it isn’t enough to run the game smoothly with old computers. It also has issues updating occasionally and has random errors during game play. On the more hysterical side, the game has many typos and grammatical errors on places such as the NPC dialogues and item description windows.

Overall, “Trickster Online” is still an entertaining mmorpg for all ages and it updates so often that there is always something new to look forward to all the time.