Maple Story is a new twist on a very old theme. Like all good online RPGs it has your standard classes and skill advancements, the ability to create items, the ability to form groups, parties, friends, and guilds, and a very large world filled with dangerous monsters and a couple 24-hour convenience stores to adventure in. What Maple Story has that no other RPG does is the very nature of your adventures, for you will only see half your character at any time. No, it’s not a strange world where people have two bodies; it is a 2D Side Scrolling adventure! It is as if someone took Mario, gave it better graphics, and slapped a controller into the hands of a few hundred thousand friends.

Imagine a huge world consisting of nothing but jumping puzzles, including things to climb, jump over, jump on, dodge, and duck under. Now populate that world with tons of monsters that you will have to avoid or kill while going through the massive jumping puzzle. Toss in 4 possible classes (Warrior, Bowman, Thief, and Mage) each with a unique set of skills that you will have to invest points in. Finally, add a pinch of quests that consist mostly of collecting items or completing long jumping puzzles. Viola! You have created Maple Story!

The strengths of this game come from the fact it is free, it has great animation, a lot of people to play with, 4 classes and tons of second classes to obtain (For instance, a thief can become either an assassin or a bandit), very cute monsters, and a lot of places to explore and things to kill. Unfortunately, the game is marred by some very hefty inherent problems that may never go away. The game is excruciatingly repetitive at higher levels. I often found myself standing in the exact same spot killing the exact same spawning monsters for days at a time. For all my work I would be rewarded with maybe 1 level and a handful of material for crafting items.

This brings me to the next major flaw: Crafting items. The material system is a real pain. I understand why they made it so time consuming to get craft materials (ores, leather, gems), but it is so severe that by the time I could collect enough of a material to craft an item of my level I would already be able to use a better item. This brings me to the final major flaw, which is the equipment system is severely linear. There is basically one type of item (though with different colors) for every 5 levels. So as a thief you go from a beanie to a hood to a loose cap at levels 10, 15, and 20. Everyone does this, there are almost no alternatives, no options such as a hat with a higher physical defense or a higher magic defense, no items with an option between stat boosts. Worse yet, you can find better items on monster who drop them, except that monsters only drop real items about once every few thousand kills! The odds of you finding an item that is actually suited for your class is pretty slim, especially one that is your level.

The quest system is fun but very limited. You can complete all the quests for your level in a couple hours, leaving the rest of the time for endless treadmill style leveling. The party system also has some flaws in that multiple people fighting the same monster yields some lag issues with monsters suddenly appearing in a different spot because someone knocked them back there (often times right where you are standing). The game has been “fully” released in Korea and contains many more features than the free “World Wide” version. From what I understand the game will always be free but there will be options available for purchase, such as cool clothes, spray paint for graffiti, and powerful items/potions.

So what is the conclusion? Is this the answer to all the poor MMORPG fans? The answer: A resounding maybe. Maple Story is worth checking out, you have little to lose by it and I had a blast with it for a long time. However, I think many people will lose heart once they reach the higher levels and begin to see how much time if required to continue advancing at any reasonable pace. Lucky for Wizet, MMORPGs can change with time so these problems may be fixed in the future.