Beta Impressions: Earth Eternal

By Jeffrey Philipp | February 5, 2010 | | Filed under: Features, Impressions | Tags: Browser based, Earth Eternal, Free to Play, Sparkplay Media

Jeffrey has taken a look at Sparkplay’s browser-based MMORPG Earth Eternal. The game is currently in beta and aimed at a younger audience. Hit jump to find out what Jeffrey thought of the game.

Here we go, like Alice down the rabbit hole, venturing into a fantastic world of wonder and awe.

I apologize for the grandiose introduction, but something about a land filled exclusively with anthropomorphic animals does bring to mind certain images.

I refer of course to Earth Eternal, the initial offering from Sparkplay Media. I must admit that Earth Eternal isn’t at first glance something I would have considered for regular play, but it seems that I was very much selling it short. Having been able to spend some quality time with it, I will say that it certainly is something that I could get into.

I suppose we might as well start with the basics. Earth Eternal is a fantasy MMO, set in a world where humans have become extinct and animals have evolved to fill their place; at least in a nutshell.

Players may choose from a rather impressive list of anthropomorphic animals as their character; though as far as I can tell at this point, this selection doesn’ t have an effect on the actual stats or choices possible for the character.

The game is free to play, with the requisite cash shop, and as a final bonus, you can do it right from your browser.

Now I am suitably impressed by the technical savvy displayed by working out a way to get this to play in a browser, as it does actually look fairly good, but I have to admit that I personally far prefer playing with the downloaded client that comes with it. I may be just a little bit crazy, but for some reason the client seems a little quicker to respond to me.

In the interest of keeping things brief, I’ll start with what I like about the game, before I go on to some things I think might merit some changes.

First and foremost, I would say that the art team at Sparkplay deserves a rather heaping helping of kudos. The limitations of the browser based game they have could have proved a problem, but even with the reduced polygon counts, and lower texture resolutions, they have managed to make a game that looks very good.

I don’t want to mislead anyone and say that they’re going to be getting anything even approaching photo-realistic, but all of the game’s visuals work excellently together to create a coherent visual style that’s colorful and fun without being saccharine and “kiddy.”

The game also plays very well, though as I did mention above, it suffers from a little sluggishness in the controls occasionally, the control scheme is very similar to the standard layout that you find in most games these days, so anyone who has experience should not find themselves having any difficulty in picking up and playing.

One of the strongest parts of the game in my opinion is the level of character customization through skills and spells.

While one does select a class to play as when creating their character, they are not limited to only the skills available from that classes “Skill tree” for lack of a better word.

Certainly there are several skills and abilities provided to each class that are solely for them, but I would go so far as to say that fully half of the class skills in the game can be “Cross classed” allowing for a rather wide range of skills and abilities regardless of your initial selection.

This system is one of the better I’ve seen in recent years, allowing players to play and build their character based on their experiences and preferences rather than locking them in to a set selection of abilities right at creation.

Now there are a few things that I imagine could have been done better, and in most cases likely are expecting to be changed.

The first and certainly most annoying is the loading times. As someone who has been playing online games for a long time I like to think that I’m patient enough to deal with reasonable loading times. The loading times for Earth Eternal on the other hand simply are out of hand on occasion.

I certainly imagine that this is in fact a priority for the team behind the game and I would be shocked if this wasn’t fixed before the game was sent into a live environment.

Another minor qualm I have with the game at the moment is with the animation.

There are a few instances during which I have noticed a little bit of stuttering in the animation to the point where it actually did become a distraction. Again, this seems like the sort of issue that is likely to be sorted out during the beta.

One thing that does slightly bother me that isn’t a technical issue is the sound.

Perhaps I’m just being nitpicky here, but the game doesn’t seem to have that many sound effects, and when you hear the same one all the time being used for a number of situations it does start to grate a little, but like I said, perhaps I’m just being a little nitpicky.

All things considered, Earth Eternal is a very highly polished game that raises the bar for free offerings.

About the only thing that it has going against it, is that it does everything well, but as yet doesn’t seem to excel in any one area, though one might say that the atmosphere and setting are unique enough to make up for that.

Since it’s still a beta at this point it’s tough to make any real calls on how it’s going to turn out, we all know a lot can change.

But, at this point I would say that Earth Eternal is an amusing jaunt into a pleasant world, and a good way to while away a few hours. By all means, anyone who’s looking for something to amuse them should at least give Earth Eternal a try.