MU: Origin Closed Beta Impressions

“It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that plays this much of itself,” I thought as I played MU: Origin’s Closed Beta. The game can auto-path, auto-battle, run dungeons, and even open NPC dialogue. You’re not exempt from inventory management, skill management, upgrading items, or pressing the Accept button on NPC dialogue, but you could easily leave the game alone for long periods of time. In fact, the game encourages it heavily as it will automatically turn the auto-pilot option on after every quest you accept. I don’t think I’ll ever quite get used to watching a game play itself, and I often stepped in and took over during my playthrough.

Not that taking over for the AI will do much. MU: Origin has an exceptionally low challenge factor. I played as a Dark Wizard and nearly every one of my skills was a different kind of DPS-heavy AoE. Depending on the type, you wait for enemies to either line up or gather and then hit them hard. The ability to aim certain skills manually was welcomed, but ultimately changes nothing. The notion that the game is too easy isn’t helped by the fact that enemies never seemed to be able to drop my health below 2000 under the maximum. Two thousand less than maximum seemed to be the magic number for when my character would automatically use a health potion, of which the game gives you hundreds.

[singlepic id=44723 w=600 h=338 float=none]

The problem is further exacerbated by a relaxed leveling curve employed in the early game. I reached level 100—and by extension, my first rebirth—within the first hour of play. For comparison, I first took note of my level again after the first rebirth at level 47. It took another hour of play to reach level 72. The leveling curve seems to get exponentially less relaxed as you continuously rebirth, but the path to the first rebirth can be rushed through discouragingly quickly. In a confusing twist your rebirth number and player level are less important than your combat rating, which is a numerical representation of your overall power based on level, gear, and upgrades.

In addition to leveling and rebirths, MU: Origin employs several other forms of advancement. Skills can be leveled either with use—which happens extremely slow—or currency. Players can upgrade their wings using various items for direct stat boosts. A certain type of gem, and a near-exponentially growing amount of money, can be used to enhance gear. I’ve yet to have a gear enhancement fail, but the enhancement chance drops by 10% every upgrade or two and I cannot confirm whether or not the item is destroyed upon failure.

[singlepic id=44778 w=600 h=338 float=none]

With all of these progression systems in place, it feels like you’re always way ahead of your AI opposition. At any one time the AI are upwards of 40 levels over you, supposedly, but they can be cut down in large groups regardless. Even dungeon bosses are rather easy. The only things setting them apart from the average mob is their health pool—one boss even had something like 50 health bars—and the fact that you have the option to dodge several telegraphed attacks.

MU: Origin handles quests differently than most games I’ve played. There are always events going on: dungeons, world bosses, dailies, “Golden Forces” that spawn as another kind of boss, the Colosseum, the Crystal Mine—there’s always something to do. But they aren’t handled as quests. Only the main quest and dailies have a spot in your quest log. When the dailies are completed that spot will be relegated to telling you you have completed them. This means that, at any one time, you will only ever have two quests going. It is an oversimplification that I’m not entirely fond of. Sure, you could explore the various events that are slowly being unlocked for me, but you don’t have any incentive to deviate from the main storyline—other than for dailies, which take into account which zone you are currently in—until you reach its conclusion.

[singlepic id=44795 w=600 h=338 float=none]

PvP arenas were a nice added touch, but the setup isn’t ideal. PvP matches appear to be asynchronous. You choose an opponent out of three choices randomly given to you based on your current arena ranking and instantly enter the arena. Or, if you are feeling confident, you can take on the division leaders at any time. From there, I am fairly sure that you face an AI that simply makes use of your opponent’s character. You can even allow your character to auto-battle in the event that you think that it can do better on its own. Should you defeat your opponent you will take their rank.

It’s a simple system that keeps queue times nonexistent, but a more involved system would have made for a better experience. Furthermore, it underlines a core issue with MU: Origin’s balancing: The player with the higher combat rating will usually win. If you are just below another player you may come close to defeating them, but the chance of actually defeating them is slimmer than I would have liked. Additionally, you can only challenge so many people per day. Repeated failures will cost you upwards of 24 hours.

I also found the game’s presentation to be lacking. The graphics are fairly far behind the curve. There are far too many menus and it can be difficult to remember where everything is located on the UI. There are too many buttons and too many places that those buttons could potentially lead, requiring the player to click their player’s face to see a completely different, larger set of buttons. Skill effects are flashy and take up large portions of the screen, but lose their wow factor quickly. Players can only equip four skills at a time and seeing the same effects played over and over as they take over the screen becomes mundane after a short time.

[singlepic id=44791 w=600 h=338 float=none]

Despite the lackluster graphics performance is less than adequate. On my Samsung Galaxy Tab 4, I found that the framerate would often drop below 30 frames per second when lots of effects were going off simultaneously. There was also an issue with enemies popping in after I had already passed them, but that may be down to the servers currently.

MU: Origin is a fairly standard mobile MMORPG based on the browser MMORPGs that came before it. It is another game that is made to be played in a casual manner, but played a lot. The game’s graphics are out of date, PvP is asynchronous and blatantly favors the player with more power, and the challenge factor is nearly nonexistent. Despite that, it may be a good option if you’re looking for something short term that’s more substantial than the average mobile game. With the auto-pilot off, it can be fairly entertaining, even if incredibly easy. There is no shortage of content to take part in. Just don’t expect it to be exciting.