3. Vindictus
It’s entirely possible many American and European readers won’t even know what the hell this game is, which is a shame, because Vindictus is kind of awesome! It’s also the only game in this entire article which didn’t fail as a subscription-based MMORPG to become free to play later. Vindictus is a hack-and-slash title made by devCAT, an internal studio of Nexon, and it’s probably the only MMORPG in existence to have actually got the hack-and-slash gameplay mechanics perfected in real-time. Imagine that, an MMORPG that doesn’t rely on under-the-hood dice rolls. Shocking!
Players choose from 6 (5 in the US & UK) character classes of various abilities and combat styles, each falling into the rolls of the ranged and melee archetypes you’ll find just about everywhere. Of course, in typical Korean style, the characters are all unique and quite bad ass in their various looks. Combat mechanics are really solid and some of the special attack animation sequences are masterfully done. That said it has a story that largely makes no sense, a virtually non-existent character editor (players can dye their character’s armor) and lacks the deeper RPG aspects of Western MMORPGs…which is why it’s number 3! Still, if you’re at all a fan of solid hack-and-slash RPGs, you really owe it to yourself to check out Vindictus.
