Khan On-Line is a Massively Multi-Player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that features smooth, attractive 3D graphics to portray a fantasy realm based loosely on the history of Genghis Khan. This "historical" reference is mostly seen in the aesthetics of the buildings, player characters, weapons and clothing. From there on, the connection is completely lost. It's a very pretty world. I run a Dell Dimension, which has a terrible graphics card, and I was able to play at a reasonable speed without a lot of pop-ups or jaggies or sundry graphical artifacts.

The game play is quick to pick up. Essentially, you click on a monster, and then the two of you fight. Combat does have some more complexity to it than that, and there are cool visual effects that accompany different kinds of attacks. However, you mostly just double-click on a monster and watch combat animations until one of you dies. Other controls are also suitably easy. Right-clicking on a target allows you to use a skill, which is often a special attack or a magical spell. Q, W and E are automatically linked to any health, magic and antidote potions you have in your inventory - very convenient.

Movement is by mouse. This game has a nice touch in that instead of having to repeatedly click on the ground to move from place to place, you can click and hold to move around. This saves a lot of wear and tear on the old carpal tunnels and reduces that constant annoying "clickclickclickclick…." Likewise, you can double-click on a monster to continue fighting while you go make a sandwich or some coffee.

Yeah, there's not very much depth to the combat or game play. It's nice, but there's not a whole lot to do.

Of course, maybe the problem isn't that there isn't much to do after all. I mean, there are Guilds, guild*WARS*, some kinds of crafting, all kinds of elaborate costumes, spells, dueling and other such fun. The problem may be that I had no access to these activities. As a low-level character, I found myself either too weak to engage in some activities without immediately dying, or I was simply barred from the attempt. I saw a mysterious device marked in red on my map. I approached carefully, mindful of traps. I made my way onto the top to examine the strange markings. A message wrote itself upon the sky: "Must be level 100 to use". Well, #%^&!!!!

Being a newbie is always hard, but it's even more difficult to justify the expense of time and money when you are locked out of the prime features of the game. The creators did make an honorable attempt to help out newbie players. Just outside of your character's home city will be an area where there are low-level monsters. Talk to an NPC and they'll complain about suffering from these "evil monsters." It's your job to kill them off. Well, how evil are they, really? They don't attack you… or any NPCs. Only if you go up to them and start attacking them will they attack… erm… defend? This kind of makes my moral compass go a bit screwy. Go on then, game, have some little children NPCs and have them ravaged by virtual wolves, so I can reap experience points without guilt. Litter the landscape with bones and gore, so I know that I'm punishing evil. As it stands, I just feel like a mass-murderer. (Yes, I do know this is a game)

The documentation is moderately well translated into English. It isn't great, or even grammatically correct, but it will give you enough information for basic game play. Some items are missing from the documents, though, so it's anyone's guess as to what they actually do. This is disappointing to me, because otherwise the game has a nice, overall shine.

I use that word "nice" a lot. It is apropos here, because the developers have made a reasonably solid game that runs well on a less-than-stellar computer with a mid-level DSL connection. However, there seems to be no real sophistication, innovation or depth. I found myself getting bored quickly, and this was exacerbated by a few problems I had. For some incomprehensible reason, I had to reinstall the game every time I wanted to restart the client. I have no idea why, and half of the forum is written in what appears to be Tagalog. To be fair, the game is still in Beta, so I imagine that issues like this will be quickly remedied.

So, my final assessment is that if you like MMORPGs, you will probably like this, and it is aesthetically pleasing. If you don't, then you won't. Nice interface, too bad about the game - perhaps, one can hope, when it's done?