Knight Age Online (called Carpe Diem 2), is a Ride-centric MMORPG from South Korea, majoring in mount  battles and the Pupa System, where you spend (some of) your time finding, raising, summoning, and synching pupas to become more powerful (think of it as similar to  a Shin Megami Tensei Game only without the dark plot and mythological tones.)
BEFORE I START THE REVIEW:
I found out that Knight Age is actually a sequel to an oldschool Asia-only MMO called “Carpe Diem Online” in fact, GNIsoft’s own logo has the tag line “Seize The Day” which is generally what the phrase Carpe Diem means. Sneaky Sneaky~
Apparently, there was a transition in style between the two games. Carpe Diem Online looks more like a straightforward  medieval fantasy while the sequel has a more… cartoonish tone. The reason behind the transition is that the developer wanted to aim the sequel for younger and female audiences. You can play the Original Carpe Diem Game around here, I’ll just wish you luck if you can understand a lick of Chinese in there (I also found out that the defuct runup.com.ph is affiliated to the site.)
So generally, they turned this:
http://www.youtu.be/vr_0boxx5y8
This oozes Shonen elements. All we need is to shout skill names and slice everyone with the power of friendship or something.
to this:
http://www.youtu.be/cijZL2CrHpo
Abubububububububububu *cute faces*
Anyways, onto the review.
LE REVIEW:
We are told of Rhude, an evil god threatening to destroy the world of Hayde, this game’s setting, by applying darkness to humankind during the world’s creation. Due to the gods’ laws and the existence of Drakes, otherworldly forces who act as Hayde’s guardians, Rhude’s plan to self-destruct the humans failed. Instead, he imposed a war between good and evil, with the drakes being separated and afterwards, 7 curses that plagued Hayde.
Luckily, the main god Genni created 4 treasures that can stop Rhude (in the form of a sword, a shield, bow and arrow, and a magical staff) and the war hero Sigmund created the Knight’s Order that spreads into different branches across Hayde, with the mission to destroy Rhude in mind. Maybe there is hope yet.
(I got this from the official website and they also tell the story when you install the game and this is what I think happened.)
Tutorial mode is optional, but the mode centers around the protagonist saving a young unconscious girl from a mysterious crab army. Even without the tutorial mode, you can automatically get a Pupa headstart. But best if you guys start with a tutorial mode for good extra XP.
 This is the screen. And as you can see, this is kinda cramped for me. Especially the Emoticons screen.
 Stylewise, the look is incredibly different from the predecessor: The pets are now aplenty and varied (the first game has just pallete-swapped fairies, methinks. Iunno, I was l0oking at the trailer!) and the mount system has more than just color-swapped horses. Maybe it did have a good long way to go.
The character designs also changed as the characters themselves are incredibly Super Deformed to blend with the cute fantasy setting with pastels replacing the first game’s bolder tones and the music fitting incredibly well AS a cutesy fantasy game (Sucks that they can be quiet with their music sometimes. SOMETIMES).
So yeah, over the while that I have played this (which is about a week), I got some good stuff and bad stuff about this game, which I will summarize in the Final Verdict. Also, I’m not a competitive person so PvPs and War battles will be either for another day or when I can get stronger in this thing. Apologies.
THE BAD STUFF (?):
1. This looks all too familiar.
I don’t mind MMOs like these, but all elements are not as new as I thought it would be. We already got the pets and the mounts and stuff. So those who are probably experienced in MMOs might state this to be similar to every other cutesy MMO out there . Though this is just me playing too much Cutesy MMOS to be just astounded on.
The familiarity on these elements makes me wonder… when will we find a MMO game that is so bloody and destructively dark but will have “cute” themes written all over it? If anyone knows one game, please let me know~
2. You want to be good at this game? MAIN QUESTS!
There’s not a lot to say about this part but, this is Main-story driven. It’s good if there is a story behind these but it doesn’t give off as much of a free-world feel, to be honest. Thus, what you get instead of auto tracking, quest, auto tracking, kill a buncha monsters, auto tracking, quest done. Rinse and repeat. The job billboard thing is more of “kill certain monsters” quest. Not a lot to see there though.
It also annoys me on how slow and grind-happy the levelling is overall. One level up composed on filling TEN parts of the bar. Go generally what we got is “Level 5.1, Level 5.2” and so on. I do not know if that would do anything useful than make it feel like you’re progressing real well, but the XP system is quite slow and linear. There are things to do, though mostly involving quests, PvPs, Job Boards, Pupa Summoning and Training, and Potion Making.
And as I was riding on some NPC’s horse to my new quest, I got these words popping out. It was kind of boring.
And then the ride back…
I think half of the time of the autotrack I was playing Guild Wars 2 on another window. Don’t judge me.
3. Anti-bot Prevention!
I do not MIND features that prevents bots, I do. But doing so in the middle of the game, every hour, and even in the middle of killing a final boss? NONONO.
I can understand them doing this to determine the humans from the alien robots, but sometimes when I am in the middle of the battle and you are trying to defeat a really difficult boss and putting in what is on the screen and mistakes mean logging out and starting again? it’s kinda annoying.
You annoy me.
4. Other Bad Stuff Include:
- Loud as hell sound effects.
- I hate dragging Pupa eggs from one place to another. Half speed with enemies on your tail? Please wait until I can make a monster, enemies.
- Limited Customization on Characters.
THE GOOD STUFF:
1. MOUNT BATTLES, BABY~
One thing the game is pretty good at is the mount battle system. In fact, the Mount System is a game essential! Mounts are given to you starting with the donkey when you reach level 5 after a quest that involves saving a farmer’s animals from three wolves. There are plenty of mounts to choose from and they are a stable in going from one place to another half the time as walking and even fighting and running away from battles with it. Sort of like jousting only with more cuter pets and animals.
To be honest, I do not know what to say about this other than “DUDE I FINALLY HAVE A MOUNT IN AN MMORPG. ITEM MALLS GOT NOTHING ON ME! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA~”
2. Interesting Class System.
We start of with one of the four classes: Knight, Mage, Archer and Warrior. As much as you can try to control the heck out of customizations… they are gender locked. Archer and Mage are Female-only classes,  Knight and Warrior are male-only. The fun part is however that you can level up your own job and maybe level up other job classes and get other skills  on the side. Though you have to get a weapon matching their respective skill trees in order for the other classes’ skills to work. And no, you can’t really dress up in other classes’ armors that are not your own. So dude who is gonna make the ultimate Swordsmage… good luck with your defense.
The skill trees can grow stronger by leveling up, adding up two extra Job Points to level any skill tree you want. And new Skills can be unlocked as you reach certain Job levels. The green line below tracks your job progress. And if you maxed it… well… good for you~
You’re thinking “I can do a spellcasting projectile arrow-shooting, defensive warrior”, right? All we need is a staffbowlanceshield to do all these things.
3. Pupas are complicated here.
Of course, if you say “Pet System” in MMO, it’s will usually involve feeding, fighting, and sometimes acting all adorable. Knight Age is no exception and it goes to say that Pupas are kind of essential in this world.
In order to get pupas, you get them by getting eggs all over Hayde. However, they do have a time limit from getting them and delivering them to the nearest Pupa Master. Your speed when you carry these eggs is slow as heck, though, but it’s worth it  (no it ain’t, but there is an item that can teleport you to the Pupa Master ASAP, so…)
After fusing with your Pupa via the Pupa Masters, your newly hatched Pupa is now your faithful pet until you can make another pet by the same method and sync the hell out of it. Syncs carry over the recessive Pupa’s stats to the ‘Dominant” Pupa, making the Pupa stronger.
Feeding your Pupas is as easy as using your weapon as FOOD and the Pupa poop Panta. Pantas are the “socket gems” of the game and are used to strengthen your equipment and creating elementals and the like.
4. Other Good Stuffs Include:
- Instance mode ala Guild Wars 2 that can change the fate of your game. I keep on forgetting this good little tidbit.
- Auto-travelling.
- Really beautiful music.
- Bear Costume.
- Hourly Prizes.
If you have already experienced an MMORPG before Knight Age, you might think of this as yet another generic MMO: Mounts and pets can be generic staples in MMO nowadays, and the Cute fantasy theme is also getting kind of tiring as well without an interesting catch to it.
But somehow the good has shined as well in this game by the means of one-upping and creating a system where pets and mounts, an MMO feature that is only used for special occasions… or the item mall, became an actual necessity. It’s like they made some new games with the same old cards.
So for that, I give this game a fair-to- good score. Give them that for trying to make the MMO different from the other. It worked after all.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be playing Guild Wars 2 like a boss. (A very failed boss.)