Fractured, the new sandbox MMO recently arrived in our regions in beta. If you were lucky enough to have had one of the keys for the test which is taking place at the moment, keys that we distributed a few days ago, you have been able to discover this game like me. For those who have not had the chance to participate, or simply those who wish to have another opinion, I invite you to read my overview below to get a better idea of the beast!
Let's go over the story that is not really implanted in the game currently, without even knowing if there will really be one. You are dropped in a village with a tutorial of a few quests ... but we'll get to that later.
Graphics & atmosphere
For laptop PC users, be careful that your graphics card is taken into account, and not your integrated card. Otherwise, the game will risk appearing to you too greedy as I could believe, having had this rather particular case. The developers assure us on Twitter that with a GTX 970 type graphics card, it is possible to achieve "ultra" graphics with a number of FPS running around 100. So I suppose that even more "modest machines ", will be able to run in good conditions Fractured.
Graphically, the MMO is doing quite well and offers us a varied display of wooded areas, plains, hills, woods covered with canvas and infested with giant spiders ... for the moment. More and more areas will be revealed as the tests are carried out. The sound environment is nice, but the sounds of combat sometimes become monotonous when you tap for 2 minutes on the same bug!
gameplay
In this version, you can choose either a mage or a fighter to start your journey, with for the moment a meager choice of customization. Following this, you will have to put your starting stat points for your character: be careful, it's permanent.
You are unleashed in a village with a somewhat obscure tutorial that asks you to accomplish sometimes simple objectives: pick wheat, grind wheat and then ask you to make dough and bread without telling you if the you can do it on the spot, or if you have to go somewhere. It might seem logical in itself, but the average player in a new game without any benchmarks can quickly get lost. For the rest of the tutorial, it will remain classic: kill wolves, create armor, objects, visit places ... classic and efficient!
One point of the tutorial, however, seemed really interesting to me: the skill and knowledge system. When you kill a creature, you learn a bit more about it, its stats, strengths, weaknesses, and skills. When you discover a new material (grass, wood, stone ...) or when you kill a creature, you gain knowledge points giving you the opportunity to unlock the skills that you can learn from your studies on creatures. This system is really interesting, because even though it does require you to zigigrate en masse monsters and other stuff that inhabit these lands, it allows you to really customize your character however you want and to ramp up, because there is no just no level.
In addition, some monsters rarer than others will teach you more specific skills, at the cost of more arduous combat. This is where, for the moment, a major concern appears: since only the basic equipment has been deployed, we will have to rely on the many systems that allow your survival to fight these enemies stronger than all. The first, the most obvious, is to play in a group: a fighter and mages are the best way to face a crush, then comes the one I use when I play alone: the bandages. Every 6 seconds you will be able to use a bandage that will heal you (even in combat) and keep you alive.
However, health points and mana are not the only resources in this game: on top of that, there is morale, energy and hunger. Morale is a fairly fluctuating resource and not at all explained in-game. Once empty, you will be teleported to the starting village after having a weakness. If, like with energy, it recharges while sleeping, the fighting starts and if you get defeated, or if you use certain skills, it will go down. If you are defeated and have morale left, you will be able to come to yourself in 30 seconds to flee or fight again.
But the most interesting aspect remains the harvest and what we do with it: houses to live peacefully, or wild PVP that can be activated by pressing the P button.
Home Sweet Home
After killing the goblin to have enough money (500 gold), you can pay yourself a slot among those available on the world map, findable by roaming here and there. For my part, I opted for an area close to a river ... the charm of the place. And this is where you will discover a real part of the game: housing. You can build your house according to what you want: a simple classic house, with or without a terrace, more or less large, in short you can do what you want with your construction space. The most common is to make your house with all the vital tools for crafting and enchanting.
Only a house is not going to be done without effort. After choosing your format, you will need to create tools to cut down trees and cut rocks. Lack of pot, we must guess that it is ranked among the weapons, and that it can also be used as a weapon! After this little moment of perplexity, we get to work: location and transport. Have you ever tried carrying a block of stone or logs like this? here we opt for a certain form of realism: for these two resources, you will need a transport cart.
The cart slows you down a bit and will require you to do some scouting to find the few stone quarries and the many trees to build your home as well as the many tools that will help you. The construction is done in stages: the foundations, the bases, the ground, the structure and finally the walls, the roof being visibly supplied with the walls. Only minor issue I found: Sometimes certain items are currently below the ground level of your house when placed inside!
You can finally settle in your home, and share your home with your friends, your guild, etc ...
Summary
This beta shows us enough to pique our curiosity, and not enough on the end goal of the game. Because after making your home, finding a number of skills and exploring new areas, you really don't have much to do. . Quite logical for a beta in short, but we can not wait to have the finished product as it seems interesting. Between an interesting skill system, the feeling of freedom and the map that seems gigantic, it almost makes you forget that this game requires a really solid configuration to run properly. We can't wait for the next beta phases with who knows ... new classes, new areas and skills. Different Founder's Packs are available HERE if you wish.
