Choose My Adventure: Levels and confusion come fast and thick in Tree of Savior

So as the headline suggests, the game we’re starting November off with is Tree of Savior, an anime-styled OARPG that I’ve played a couple of times before. I will admit that there’s always been a long break in between each return trip, so I’m probably not remembering things right, but I also don’t recall gaining levels this quickly.

I know that levels in this game are pretty well inflated, so I’m both not too surprised that the level-ups are pouring over my head like a deluxe shower and expecting the other shoe to drop. Still, the initial leveling experience is nothing like I ever remember. And it’s a welcome change so far.

The way the game starts is still completely familiar: Some castle of some importance is assaulted by giant dangerous vines, an angel awakens from a tree, and my character is told that she’s the one that has to stop a doom from happening. Thus begins my little Wizard’s journey into the wilds to destroy the menace of… adorable blobby monsters.

That’s another thing I remember about TOS: The enemies all look adorable. I would feel bad if Secret of Mana hadn’t conditioned me to blow up all of the cute foes with violent impunity.

Of course that’s kind of a given considering what title this game is cribbing off of, but even so I keep being astonished at how very lovely TOS looks. And not just in pictures, either; this game is a wonder to behold in animation, with extremely crisp sprite art and gorgeous storybook painting maps. Whatever shallowness there is in the themepark MMORPG gameplay, the visuals garner a huge amount of interest.

What might not be garnering my interest, however, is starting off as a Wizard class. I had made the choice assuming that I was going to be a bit of a glass cannon, and perhaps that will be true later on, but right now the “cannon” part of glass cannon is absolutely true. This character absolutely explodes mobs with impunity, and considering how fast the enemies respawn, I’m sure that’s probably a good thing. But it’s also a bit on the mindless side. Seriously, nothing gets to really hit me, and the bosses I’ve faced to this point are mostly providing no problems. Can’t worry about having low defense if things can’t touch you, I guess.

Now I should point out that I’m not really trying to test my mettle here, and there’s absolutely something to be said for the catharsis of watching enemies completely melt in front of me, but I was sort of hoping for things to be a little bit tougher. Perhaps the immense amount of leveling up that I’ve done in just the first few opening quests alone is skewing my perceptions. It’s kind of hard to know, honestly, so I do plan on sticking it out with this class for at least a little bit. And who knows, perhaps choosing a different Wizard class will shake things up, but that’s something we’ll get to in a moment.

Another thing about TOS that kind of makes my eyes glaze over is the number of systems, upgrades, and other micromanagement tasks that players must do. The game did sort of “streamline” things insofar as leveling up doesn’t require you to stop what you’re doing in order to bump up stats, but there are still other considerations to account for like leveling up skills, increasing skill attributes, improving equipped gear with some enchantment system, and maybe a couple more advancement mechanics that I just stopped paying attention to. The tutorial pop-ups that explain these systems are extremely long-winded and not really well localized, so it all sort of turns into a morass in my brain.

But maybe I won’t need to worry too much. Even if I am playing optimally, my character is just erupting with ding particle effects. It also seems like I’m being drowned in materials I need to do these enhancements as well, so that also might make things even more mindless.

I appreciate that a lot of this reads like I’m oscillating between praise and complaint, and that’s certainly by design. Honestly it’s kind of hard to know whether I’m having fun or if I’m just being distracted by all of the pretty colors and intense explosions. You also might notice that I’m not bringing up the narrative much because it’s not very good and even more poorly localized.

Really I’m not sure if I’m playing an MMORPG or a pachinko machine. I will admit that it’s been A Week, so maybe this is the kind of mindless gaming that my brain needs as a salve. Or maybe I’m just stupid. Or maybe TOS is making me stupider somehow. I’m undecided, but I at least am curious enough to want to keep pushing on with this one.

Speaking of leveling as well as indecision, I am now at a point – I think – where I can advance my Wizard class into something else. This is another system that I was sure came much later and through speaking with some quest NPC, but now that’s been smoothed out to just a single button press and a decision to make. It’s convenient but also kind of jarring, but it also means that there’s something new to consider.

So, yes, that means the decision to make is going to be left to a poll. Naturally.

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Polling will once again close up at 1:00 p.m. EST on Friday, November 17th, just as per usual. I would keep playing this more out of the column, but my class level is pretty much fixed, and I can’t really do much else until I decide on which Wizard class to pick up, so this really is dependent on all of you helping me make a decision. This pause is probably for the best, though; the more I think about my time in TOS so far, the more confused I am by it all. Is this good? Is this bad? I can’t say. It’s most certainly a game that you can play, that much is a given.

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.