Asda Story is the final game in the MMO review series I'm kinda doing. I spent a lot more time on this game than any others. I put it down a few months ago (much like I wrote most of this review months ago, but put it down until now). When I did play, there were new features added every few weeks, which was pretty cool.
It's a 3D game, free to play but with paid content. The art style is anime-influenced, and the target demographic seems to be teenage boys. It had some translation issues, such as referring to all NPCs as "he". These aren't figures in dark cloaks and armor where it could go either way; the predominant theme of the female NPCs is "anime cheesecake". One translates "west of the river" as "east of the river". When you trade items, you're told "It is possible to trade charged items by 24 level". This means, I'm told, "You must be at least level 24 to trade items bought with cash money".
Similarly, the game has a "title" system. Titles were a random mix of nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives. "Stealthily", "Sworn Clan", "Confident", "Come Back Home", and "Bad Habit".
The good points:
I love the skill system. There's a ladder system. You need to put a total of 5 points into the first row of skills to unlock the second row. You need to put a total of 10 points into the first and second rows to unlock the third, and so on. There are three such ladders, which means there's a bit of strategizing to this. Each ladder has a good mix of attacks, buffs, and support skills. But you don't choose to be a fire mage or a healer or an ice mage. You choose to be a mage, then put points in where you want them, and you need to decide if you want to upgrade your fireball attack or put your points into a minor buff on the healing side to help unlock something really good, for instance.
The bad points:
The camera can be manually moved. But when you turn, the camera doesn't. If you have it pointing North, it'll point North until you move it. The problem is that every single dungeon is a maze of twisty paths that requires the camera to be moved every few seconds.
There are quests - plenty of them. I like having quests. It gives me something to do other than wander out into a field and kill stuff because it's there. The early ones have decent stories (too many RPGs just throw four pages of backstory at you because they think more words will make you care more). The later ones just tell you to kill a couple dozen of something. But quests make you feel like you're doing something worthwhile, that you're working towards a goal. Then about level thirty, the quests stop and it's all about squad-based instanced dungeons. Everything is balanced for an optimized party of six - and because of the skill system, it's hard to tell what your mage is good at. If you have five people, or don't have the right group, it'll be tough going. If you have four people, you die. I was spending more time trying to find a party than I was actually playing. That's when I quit.