Noob – The Factionless from Microids and Olydri Games will take you on an RPG journey with adventurers from the Rush Guild. Check our Noob – The Factionless review!
Noob – The Factionless from Microids and Olydri Games will take you on an RPG journey with adventurers from the Rush Guild. You’ll be exploring the world of Olydri as you journey into the Horizon MMORPG as four individuals who will take on a variety of quests inside of Horizon and in the real “world.” You’ll be going on an adventure with Baster the Neogician, Drek the Berserker, May the Cartomancer and Logs the Elementalist. But first, you’ll go through the real world as Martin and Adam, which are the real names of Baster and Drek.
The vendor asks if you have a faction in mind for when you finally install and login to Horizon, and since you didn’t even know there were factions in the game, he kindly proceeds to explain things. There’s the Empire, which advocates harmony between magic and technology. Another one is the Coalition, who aim to make magic the only power over Olydri. The third faction is the Order, who just want to be left alone so that everyone can be free and be one with nature.
As you explore the world of Olydri or take a stroll in the real world, you’ll notice some icons pop up. These are interaction icons, which means that you can press the A button to perform an action. Your journey will begin after you buy a copy of Horizon 4.2, which includes the expansions for the game ready to go. That is, once you download all of the latest updates! The good news is that you have a fiber connection. Both characters decide to join the Empire as they begin to explore Olydri. Quests start off easy enough, with the first one requiring you to find a character… that is literally standing next to the NPC that gives you the quest.
Once you complete it, you’ll get your first proper quest. An evil bandit named Sifflar is hiding in the forest, and you’re asked to bring him to justice. The villagers of Spindlegrist are upset and ask that the Empire takes care of him. Since you’re already going to the forest, you might as well take on another quest from a pair of Empire alchemists who require some globorosporoms – eight, to be precise.
Drek does not like them and says you should change factions so that you can beat them, but Baster mentions that since the Horizon 5.0 expansion is launching soon, they should focus on completing as many quests as possible to level up to reach level 100. Why is this important? Because the 5.0 expansion is designed specifically for esports, and that’s very important for Baster, who ended up playing Horizon after failing in his efforts to climb up to the top of the esports scene.
Since this is a fantasy-themed RPG, you’ll also have to fight against a ton of enemies. Combat will be triggered when you come into contact with an enemy. The class for each of your characters will come into play when you’re in battle. Battles are of the turn-based variety, which means that you can review the progress for each character and enemy in the timeline on the upper part of the screen. Once all characters and enemies have performed all of their actions, the next round will begin.
Baster is a Neogician, which means he will use grenades and traps and make the most of his equipped items during a battle. He’s very technology oriented, so he will, for instance, attack enemies with his pistol, or even use his armor’s nanotechnology to heal his wounds! On the other hand, Drek is a mighty Berserker, and he specializes on dealing a ton of damage based on the Rage he builds in combat as he takes damage. And the more his health drops, the stronger he becomes!
Later on, you’ll have two additional characters joining your virtual adventure: Logs and May. Logs – real world name Léo Fleurot – is an Elementalist. Thanks to this, he’ll be able to act as your party’s healer, casting Splasheroum to heal your wounds, or Mortus Reveillus to bring a fallen ally back to life. It can, of course, also attack an enemy if that’s needed of him. May – real world name Sarah Bousquet – is a Cartomancer. What does that mean? May can use a deck of cards as her abilities while in combat. Her deck can include cards that can inflict burn on enemies, heal some HP, resurrect allies, or interrupt an enemy’s channeled spell before it ends up casting it. She can play cards individually or draw two in a row to combine them. Do keep in mind that some card combos might fail!
As you defeat enemies, you will be rewarded with experience points, credits, and items. Once you obtain enough experience points, a character will level up. This will allow it to improve its stats – more hit points, more mana points, an increase to your attack, stamina, and more – as well as gain skill points that can be spent at their respective skill trees. You can spend skill points to unlock skills for your party members, with each one having a different one to choose from based on their specialization, with the exception of Baster, who has a global skill tree.
To open up a new row of potential skills to unlock, you’ll first need to spend 10 points in the previous row. This is the game’s way of balancing things out, so that you don’t skip ahead by saving up all of your skill points in order to unlock more powerful abilities. What are the skills that you can add? Drek can add Reinforced Armor to boost defense, add a bit of Dodge to have a chance to avoid attacks, or even add some Improved Magic Resistance, which is a must for a Berserker like Drek. How will you build up your party members?
If you want to 100% the game, you’ll be happy to learn that Noob – The Factionless features an in-game achievements system. The first you’ll get will happen when you login to Horizon 4.2 for the first time. After that, there are achievements for completing each of the story chapters, as well as one for completing the main story, some for leveling up and reaching levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, and 90, a separate one for making it to the elite level 100 threshold, some more that are related to your guild, a handful for getting a ton of credits, and more. There’s plenty to do in this game, but talking about the rest of the achievements would take us into spoiler territory.
Noob – The Factionless brings us a turn-based RPG journey wrapped within an in-game MMO in which you’ll form a party of four different character classes that will give you a good variety of abilities and skills to make the most of. As you jump from the real world into the virtual world of Olydri, new elements will be introduced at a steady pace. You’ll take on main story quests, partake in many fetch quests, and even go on the always available “defeat X of Y” quests that MMOs are known for.
There is additional stuff to do here and there by way of the Jobs like Beastmaster that will have you catching pets as you explore each region, or the Chef, which will require that you cook up some delicious meals that will also aid you – make a Dragon Skewer to heal an ally’s wounds. Other than the Chibi-esque art style for the game that you’re either going to love or hate – and how, for some reason, character portraits don’t match the 3D look of each character in the game – there’s not much to complain about. Noob – The Factionless is out on Nintendo Switch with a $39.99 price tag.
Disclaimer
This Noob – The Factionless review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Microids.
