Throne and Liberty, developed by NCSoft and published by Amazon Games in the US, has a bit of a troubled history behind it. Originally announced in 2011, it was intended to be a sequel to the groundbreaking Lineage series, built on decades of immersive online RPGs. But the project was delayed multiple times, eventually splintering off into an original piece of IP, and being rebranded Throne and Liberty in 2017.
In many ways, Throne and Liberty plays like a typical MMO. Players explore a variety of different fantasy environments, fighting a variety of different monsters with a variety of different class-specific abilities. There’s an extensive main quest, side activities like crafting and fishing, multiplayer dungeons, competitive player-versus-player matches, and everything else you’ve come to expect from the genre. It has a handful of unique ideas, but they don’t always go far enough to carry an otherwise generic MMO.
Already out in South Korea, Throne and Liberty is preparing for a worldwide release this Fall. It’ll be available in the US, Europe, and Japan beginning October 1, with early access beginning September 26, but I was able to check out the single-player campaign for this review.
Why is this a review in progress?: The multiplayer aspects of this review must wait until early access begins, until which point this article will remain a review-in-progress with no final score. This article will then be updated to a full review, with score.
Throne And Liberty Portrays A Beautifully Realized World
Gorgeous Environments, Sonorous Music
The first thing most players will notice about Throne and Liberty is its gorgeous environments. Beautifully rendered with a great deal of detail and color, it’s easy to get lost in a vista of rolling hills or craggy cliffs, or get lost down the cobblestone streets and dirt roads of its bustling towns. This carefully detailed, immersive atmosphere is aided by good, occasionally great music, with much of the game scored by lilting flute melodies that complement and elevate the visuals.
In a similar vein, many of Throne and Liberty ’s characters are memorably designed, including, but not limited to, those made in the game’s robust character creator. Beyond that, there’s a lengthy, but uncomplicated menu of craftable weapons, armor, and accessories to ensure your character is always looking their best.
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Excellent presentation aside, Throne and Liberty suffers from a mostly generic story. It’s a perfectly suitable fantasy framework to hang a game on, but little more, mostly centered on a group of chosen ones (the player characters) and a war against those who would exploit their powers. It occasionally introduces some interesting concepts, like the main character’s ability to travel through time and visit pivotal events in the world's history. But those rarely amount to anything more interesting than they appear on the surface. Unfortunately, that sort of thing is a trend for Throne and Liberty.
Throne And Liberty Includes Great Concepts, With So-So Execution
Real-Time Defense & Animal Morphing
Throne and Liberty ’s gameplay is pretty typical of the genre. There are seven character classes, each of which is based around a particular weapon type: greatsword, sword and shield, daggers, crossbows, longbow, wand, and staff. Each one is associated with an auto-attack and a defensive skill, as well as a glut of active and passive abilities that make up the bulk of combat. These may be AoEs, push attacks, damage mitigation, or anything else. You can have two different weapons equipped at any given time - generally one melee and one ranged - and swap between them with the press of a button.
You can use skills related to your secondary weapon even when your primary weapon is equipped.
Switching character classes, too, is as easy as switching the equipped weapons and associated skills; you can save up to three different equipment and skill sets at a time. Each time you level up, you increase one of your main stats, but every single one of them is helpful for every single class. Even greatsword wielders need mana, and even spellcasters need strength. For someone like me, who tends to be indecisive when it comes to RPG builds, this kind of flexibility amounts to a quality-of-life feature. It’s almost definitely inspired by Final Fantasy FFXIV’s simple class-changing system, and I’m incredibly grateful for that.
As far as unique ideas go, Throne and Liberty ’s main claim to fame is its addition of real-time attack counters to typical MMO combat. Occasionally, in battle, a pair of concentric purple circles appear around an enemy. The larger one begins to close on the smaller one, and as long as the player presses the correct button by the time they align, they’ll enter a defensive posture for a few seconds. In this posture, they’ll deflect any attacks that come their way; the better their timing is, the more damage they’ll avoid.
This is a really cool concept, and offers something different from the usual AoE-avoiding that comprises your average MMO’s sole defensive maneuver. With the right application, this parrying system could make certain battles more exciting, but ultimately, it just amounts to another piece of UI you have to keep an eye on. It can be distracting from the offensive aspects of combat, and doesn’t live up to its fullest potential in the current version of the game.
Throne and Liberty's morphing mechanic has a similar problem. Per the lore, certain individuals (mostly the player characters) have the ability to transform into various animals. At the beginning of the game, these are a wolf, an otter, and a hawk, and different species may be unlocked later. Again, this is a lot of fun in concept, but each morph really only amounts to a simple traversal ability - wolves for sprinting, otters for swimming, hawks for gliding. The other animals you unlock at higher levels do improve traversal, but basically only amount to cosmetic differences.
Much like the time travel concepts introduced in the story, real-time defense and animal morphing are unique ideas, but they don’t go as far as they could. There's a possibility for them to be expanded on in future expansions or updates, but in their current form, they fail to make Throne and Liberty as interesting as they could.
Progression Problems Hold Throne And Liberty's Classes Back
A Lack Of Meaningful Skill Development
Some of the leveling up in Throne and Liberty is done through experience points and increasing stats, but a lot of it is also done by crafting upgrades. You rack up a ton of crafting materials just by playing through the campaign - different materials are used for upgrading weapons, equipment, accessories, and skills. I never found myself having to scramble for the necessary materials to reach the next level, but did quickly discover that you really need to spend all the crafting materials you get in order to stay competitive. There’s no saving them for a potential class swap later.
That’s all well and good, but the problem is that you have more than enough skills to fill your hotbar from the very beginning of the game. You can unlock a handful more as you level up, and your base abilities do get stronger and gain additional effects as you develop them. But for the most part, if you don’t radically change your build at some point, you’re performing the same five or ten moves throughout the entire game.
It’s basically the opposite problem of power creep: I got used to, and then bored of, my base abilities too quickly, and found that I didn’t gain enough more to feel like my progress actually mattered. Sure, I was dealing more damage as I leveled up, but I was using the same exact combos, the same exact tired strategies in every single battle. As a result, later battles, especially the more difficult ones, felt like more of a chore; I just wanted to get through them so I could move on and explore the next locale.
Final Thoughts (For Now)
Multiplayer Will Make Or Break Throne And Liberty
Again, during my time with Throne and Liberty, I only ever played this MMO alone; I think I saw another player running down a city street once, but they disappeared before I could ever catch up to them. While the single-player content has its flaws, at least one of these could be addressed when early access servers go live. The lack of development in combat skills could be improved by the variety of party synergies available in multiplayer dungeons.
But the lackluster story and the unrealized potential of certain mechanics will likely remain that way for some time. They could be expanded on in later updates, but in their present state, they don’t do enough to elevate Throne and Liberty over similar games in the genre. Most MMO players are pretty entrenched in their favorite games. When a new title comes along, it has to offer something special enough to draw players away from their current obsessions.
Throne and Liberty doesn't do that, at least not yet. The introduction of multiplayer will certainly force me to reevaluate my experience, but for now, I prefer to look at Throne and Liberty as a fledgling MMO that’s laid a lot of good groundwork, but still has a long way to go.
A digital code was provided to Screen Rant for the purposes of this review.
Source: Throne and Liberty/YouTube
Throne and Liberty
Pros
- Beautiful world, great music
- Robust character creator
- Easy class switching and other quality-of-life features
Cons
- Too generic to differentiate itself from well-established MMOs
- Unique ideas rarely live up to their full potential
- Not enough skill progression to keep the mid-late game interesting
