Throne & Liberty Preview: Not quite a World of Warcraft killer just yet

Considering MMORPGs are games that tend to operate in the realm of the immortal, it can be, as a new player, very overwhelming to jump into the likes of World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV, Guild Wars 2, Black Desert Online, et cetera. If you've always wanted to experience an MMORPG, NCSOFT will be presenting an opportunity to begin your story in an all-new world this September, as Throne & Liberty will be making its debut on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S consoles. I've had a chance at Summer Game Fest to go hands-on with the MMO to see how it's shaping up.

First of all, let me just add that despite being a game designed from the ground-up for PC and consoles, this is still very much an MMORPG. After you make your own character using a complex and deep customisation suite you're thrust into a massive open world and forced to look upon a HUD and UI that hurls tons of information at you, so much in fact it can be, and often is, overwhelming. You have the typical inputs that cause your character to move and aim, and then (on PC) you can click all of the function keys to use one of many selected abilities that reflect how you've built, equipped, and specialised your character. It's a lot to the uninitiated.

But once you're through the growing pains and have finished selecting the right abilities for the task at hand, you can begin exploring the world and undertaking activities and challenges. For the sake of this preview, I'm going to focus on running through one of the dungeons in the game, something I had the chance to experience myself in a guided session with a developer and four other members of the media.

This dungeon fits the frame and design philosophy of most dungeons I've encountered in MMO games. As a six-person unit, you have to work through hordes of enemies, complete minor puzzles, and defeat a few unique minibosses before being able to take down the main boss at the end. The combat part came across as very traditional for MMORPGs, in that you allow your character to free cast basic damaging attacks at a targeted foe, while you run around, evading damage and choosing the right ability/spell to sling to add extra damage and effects to the threat at hand. It all worked fine in practice and being able to seamlessly swap between a couple of different weapon types (for example a staff and a bow) did work wonders to keep things fresh, but at the same time it wasn't anything I haven't seen elsewhere.

One of Throne & Liberty's most unique elements is the movement. To get around the world you can both use a grapple to fling yourself up inclines and heights that feature grapple points, but you can also use the morphing system to switch into a land, airborne, or water-based animal to sprint quicker, glide through the air, and swim. For the most part, this is intuitively designed and automatically kicks into effect when required, but there are occasions where this doesn't happen, such as when using the flying creatures that utilise a specific input to activate.

Otherwise, the puzzle design in the dungeon encounter I tested was also quite familiar and similar to what I've seen elsewhere. It wasn't demanding or complex and was mostly about activating clear mechanisms throughout a level to be able to access and continue working through the dungeon. These puzzles did serve as slight teasers of the mechanics in place during the boss encounter however, so they do have educational elements in many ways.

As per the bosses and more challenging foes, the minibosses came across more as tougher and harder to kill regular enemies, but the actual main dungeon boss was a different thing entirely. It was here that Throne & Liberty first showed its full potential to me, as not only was the boss visually very unique and highly stylised, but it used new attacks and mechanics unheard of before. This involved one such system where the boss charged a supremely powerful attack that could cause teamwide devastation and to prevent this from taking place, four of the six members of our party would have to use our grapple ability on four pillars around the boss room at the same time to drench the enemy in water and cool it down. Needless to say, this required a bit of team cohesion and skill and showed that Throne & Liberty will be at its best when playing alongside friends and guilds.

But all things considered, Throne & Liberty didn't exactly stand out to me as a fresh take on the MMORPG formula. For people who live and breathe this genre of games, there will be something of interest to experience here, but otherwise from my time with the short preview build I can't say that NCSOFT and Amazon Games are on to a World of Warcraft killer just yet.