Laplace M has just launched across the globe as Tale of Wind in western regions. It’s a brand new mobile MMORPG by Neocraft that takes inspiration from the popular PC MMORPG Laplace. At this point, you’d be forgiven for writing …
Laplace M has just launched across the globe as Tale of Wind in western regions. It’s a brand new mobile MMORPG by Neocraft that takes inspiration from the popular PC MMORPG Laplace.
At this point, you’d be forgiven for writing it off immediately as just another autoplay gacha mobile MMORPG, and in many cases you’re correct. This is another MMORPG that largely plays itself.
However, there is plenty of room for some light innovation. Autoplay is here and present but there’s less of a focus on it. The focus, instead, is on partnering up with other players and participating in group events.
You’ll spend most of your time in Tale of Wind perusing the Kingdom tab, where all of the group content is located. There’s a serious amount of this type of content on offer, and it provides a ton of rewards.
There are your typical dungeons, which you can battle through to unlock the best equipment and upgrades, PvP, and an absolute wealth of limited time events, which provide tons of unique gameplay with huge groups of players.
You can choose to autoplay battles and talking to NPCs, but much of the content actually requires you to take control – provided you want to get rewards.
You’ll pick up eggs and carry them to safety, throw snowballs at world bosses, collect mana to assist NPCs, and a variety of other silly activities.
It’s a lot of fun witnessing literally hundreds of players battling the same boss or horde of monsters and playing your own part, either solo or as part of a group. It’s nothing particularly unique, but there’s a sense of camaraderie here not quite present in other mobile MMORPGs.
That’s thanks, in part, to the group system, which is a bit of a mixed bag. Most MMORPGs use matchmaking to quickly put you into a similar level and skill group. Tale of Wind, instead, opts to use a group finder system.
This isn’t inherently bad, and actually results in teams feeling less like faceless players. You can set messages for the type of player or class you want and get the group that’s right for you, for instance.
However, it’s not as easy, fast, or efficient as a matchmaking system. We’d much prefer to just choose a type of content and hit play, and let the game find a group and shove us in the content itself.
When not participating in group content, there’s a single player story to battle through. Impressively, this has full on cutscenes with voice acting. Admittedly, the voice acting is the worst we’ve ever experienced, but it’s an impressive feat all the same.
In gameplay terms, this is purely automated. You’ll watch your character battle enemies, bosses, and perform a bunch of menial activities. It’s pretty much just there to introduce you to a bunch of gameplay features and to breathe some life into the world.
Eventually, you’ll unlock a Stardew Valley-style farming simulator minigame, which provides stuff to do when you’re not in the mood for battling and questing. It’s a nice change of pace, and lets you acquire even more rewards.
Before we bring this review to a close, we would like to mention the visuals, which are super impressive. It’s a very nice anime style with cell-shading, and the skill effects are as intense as you’d expect from an anime-inspired game.
Overall, we’re quite enjoying Tale of Wind so far. It’s not the most innovative MMORPG on the market but it does enough to distinguish itself from the wealth of autoplay MMOs out there.
Its strength is in its focus on group content, and there’s a serious wealth of this. There’s no real padding or filler in the experience, like in its competitors, as it just chucks you right into the team play right away.
Looking for more Tales of Wind content? Check out everything else we’ve written so far below:
