Continents of the Ninth Open Beta Review by Heartless

Continents of the Ninth Open Beta Review by Heartless
Are you looking for intensive, fast paced action, non target locked and player vs. player based multiplayer online role play game? Then stop looking! Continents of the Ninth will satisfy your needs.

Continents of the Ninth, known as C9 is 3D fantasy MMORPG published by Webzen. The game itself was official released 12th July 2012. Today we are going to take a deeper look of what Continents of the Ninth offers.   
   
Story- One Hero, One Journey

Like most traditional MMORPG, you will start by doing a simple tutorial and learning all the basics about the game. Once you complete the tutorial you will be transported to a small harbor Waterford which is located in first continent; Kingdom of Tampera.
The storyitself is based on “good and evil” style. As a hero you will complete quest after quest in order to advance to next level, and in the progress you will get to experience how your character develops around the story of C9.
The storyline of C9 itself is interesting. However quest cut scenes in game are rather dull and predictable. Developers of C9 changed a few detail ofthe game in the recent patch. They successfully removed a few boring cut scenes and replaced them with animated short movie with voice actor, which is a great improvement for those who loves C9 story.




Let’s putthe linear storyline aside, and see what really makes Continents ofthe Ninth shine as an MMORPG.


Control- Master of Combo

Unlike many other MMORPGs, C9 is a non target locked and FPS based game, which means as a player you get to fully experience the intensive movement, precise control and aim.


Continents ofthe Ninth has one of the most complex control systems I ever encountered. Beside the basic”WASD” direction movement and“1234567890” hotkeys, C9 does have special combination keys for each action you perform. C9 is a heavy combo depended game and you will eventually learn to use all of them which cover up more than half of your keyboard!

As a player you get to choose how you want to play. Variations of combo are literally unlimited for each class; the only thing left is your fantasy to create your unique way of fighting.

Classes– Shaman, Fighter, Witch Blade, Hunter

Despite gender lock, we do have four well balanced main classes in this game,and each main class have at least 3 sub classes, and each sub class have different play style as well. Continent of the Ninth offers player a large portion of choices when it comes to how and what you want to play.
Fighterclass: Blade Master, Warrior, Guardian, Berserker (Not yet released)


Shaman class:Elementalist, Taoist, Illusionist, Reaperess (Not yet released)


Hunter class: Ranger, Scout, Assassin, Shadow (Coming soon), Bullet Shooter (Not yet released)


Witch bladeclass: Warden, Slayer, Blade Dancer (Not yet released), Night Stalker(Not yet released)





Flashy max fury skills!

CombatMechanism – Core of balance

Continents ofthe Ninth also have a very complex combat mechanism, which improveand keep the game well balanced when it comes to player vs. player byusing “rock scissors paper” logic. Each skill has their own attribute; for example: super armor, invulnerable frame, Knock down,Stun, Grab etc. Each attribute have they own weakness and can becounter one or other way. This is one of the most important elementsthat lead C9 to one of the best Player vs. player based game.



PVP– Arena and Intrusion

Player vs.Player; the center of the light in C9, this is the factor that separate C9 from the rest of MMORPGs. There are two kind of Playervs. Player games in C9; Arena and Intrusion.


There arefour different types of arena mode.
Relay Match,players are divided into two teams and players from each team willfight each other 1 vs. 1, the last standing player in the team wins.This mode is usually fun and relaxing, you get to spectaculate other players while they play.
Death Match,players are divided into two teams and fight each other within limited time, for each kill you gain points and most point gained team wins. Intensive action will bring your PVP experience to anothe rlevel and give you the adrenaline rush you needed!
Team Match,this mode can be hosted up to 8 vs. 8 or as duels. This is one of the most played matches, if you just want a casual 1 vs. 1 game.
Finally the Ranking Match, once you apply for Ranking Match you will automatically assigned to an enemy that is close to your rank. Player that wins three rounds will win the match. The higher rank you get, the tougher to advance. This is also the fame system in C9; your score will be made public and notified by other players.



Intrusion;spice up PVE game play with PVP.
As a dungeonstarter you can enable intrusion, which allows other players toinvade your instance in exchange you get more experience and reducestamina usage. As an intruder you get the possibility to steal items,kill the dungeon owner, and take over dungeons and no staminarequired.


Sorry for the low quality, i recorded it with my crappy laptop.

PVE– Dungeon instance, Survival mode, Hell mode

Player versus Environment is fairly simple in Continents of the Ninth, yet challenging sometimes.
Instance dungeon is the basic mode in C9, difficulty is rather pretty easy even in Master (hardest) mode, and with a decent knowledge of yourcharacter and skills you won’t find any trouble at all. However difficulty will rise to another level if you combine dungeon with intrusion, in that case doing dungeons will be more exciting and entertaining.


Survival mode is one of the most challenging mode in C9, you are given a limited time to eliminate elite monster from every continent, you will be rewarded if you success or die if you fail. In this mode you will experience fast paced PVE game play and mistakes will cost you a lot.So a proper teamwork is required.


(Video by EdvinPL)


Hell mode is the second most challenging mode in C9; monsters in Hell mode are dramatically boosted. Completing hell mode gives you exquisite equipment that normally doesn’t appear in normal instanced dungeons. However you can only be revived three times and bosses canone shot kill you if you are not careful enough.


(Video by EdvinPL)


Guildand Chat system – Essence of MMORPG

Communication in C9 is well made and can be customized by the player. Chat system includes several channels; World, General, Trade, Private, Party,Guild chat and of cause Private chat room. These basic chat systems pretty much covers up what a normal player needs.
Another factor that separate MMORPG from Single player games is guild system. And C9 does have a complete guild system, with guild house, guildstorage, guild skill and guild stats boost. Guild house are decorate-able with furniture, which gives player a positive feeling of belonging to a guild.


CashShop – Pay to look good

Cash itemdoes affect C9 game play but not a must. Cash shop does offer you alarge selection of costumes; inventory, storage expansions and statsboost items. However Continents of the Ninth is NOT a PAY TO WIN game, stats boost items effect are minimized and almost have unnoticeable effect. Just to mention that most items you buy in Cashshop can be sold via Auction house, which means you can get cash items with in game gold.
Costumes inC9 are relative cheap if you compare with other games, a full set ofcostume for 680 Webzen Coins, which is less than 7$.




Graphics– Decent, low requirement

Continents ofthe Ninth runs fine with 35+ fps on my four years old laptop on medium-low graphic setting. So congratulation those that doesn’thave high end PC, you will still be able to play C9.
And my laptop specs are:
1,8GHz Duocore, 2 GB ram, 256mb Geforce 8600 GT.
C9 on highest graphic isn’t too shabby either for a game that released several years ago in Korea. Environment looks pretty decent and colorful.



Features– New contents
New classes.

Expect new exciting classes such as Reaperess, Berserker, Blade dancer and Shadow.



Mentor system(coming soon).
New stories,level cap and continents.http://video.mmosite.com/default.php?controller=resource&action=play&id=13824




Guild vs.Guild System.





Finalscores
Story:  8,5/10
The story itself is very interesting, but cut scenes in game needs improvement.


Control:9,5/10
Complex movements, advance combos and acrobatic action, amazing control system. However it can be a bit difficult for new players.


Class: 9/10
Wide optionsto choose, you find the best characters that suits your taste, but not all classes have been released.


Combatmechanism: 10/10
Nearly perfect, unique skills with unique attribute. Well balanced. How wellyou understand the combat mechanism of C9 is how far you will reignin PVP. Those that complain about major imbalanced PVP in C9 either didn’t really understand the combat mechanism or simply can’t bear to lose.


PVP: 9,5/10
The light of Continents of the Ninth lies within PVP, no doubt one of the mos trevolutionary PVP systems ever. Down side would be the latency issue,players that have a long distance from main server will suffer lagand delay in PVP.


PVE: 8,5/10
PVE game playis rather easy, and grinding is not actually needed, you can reach max level in less than two weeks if you want to, and spend another week to gear up, and that’s all you need. Hell mode and Survival does offer you moderated challenge.  Big plus would be intrusion.However a major PVE balance is needed since ranged classes have farmore superiority in high end dungeons and survival.


Guild andCommunity: 8/10
Simple chat implementation that satisfy players needs, noting special. Downside would be unlimited world chat; sometimes you would see spam and insult in world chat. Guild house is a plus as well, just a place to gather around.


Cash shop:9/10
Cheap costumes not pay to win, variation of costumes.


Graphics:8/10
Decent graphic, excellent for a game that came out several years ago. It is nicely optimized for low end PC and nice graphics on max settings.


Features:10/10
Great expectation about new contents and especially new characters and Guild vs. Guild!


Overall: 9/10
Continents ofthe Ninth is a fast paced action MMORPG that has main focus on PVP,you won’t find this kind of PVP game play anywhere. The game has it's own unique style, and shouldn't be compared with other game.C9 has it's own minuses and own pluses, at some point you might hate itor love it, but you would definitely find a nice PVP game play and mechanics in Continents of the Ninth.


Adrenaline rush! Massive combo! Advance combat mechanism! Zero pay to win! Intensive game play! New contents! Great graphic!

Special Thanks goes to:
SlowExtasy, Chris and EdvinPL.

References:
http://www.thisisgame.com/c9/
http://c9.webzen.com/
http://c9.mmosite.com/

WOW!

The game is ok, but the graphics are dated, but then again it has been out in Korea for years now.

the combo is awesome

"you won’t find this kind of PVP game play anywhere"

Dragon Nest? Superior in every way. C9 was a total letdown after the jewel that Shanda created.

haha, i have been playing Dragons Nest since Chinese version obt aka T2(Transform 2, lvl cap 24) till lvl 50 cap. And i can tell you that Dragons nest have a major issue when it comes to balancing class in PVP.
Here are phenomens that you might even not heard about in CN DN:

start of lvl 24 cap, Paladin; infinity combo which you cannot escape, and arieal escape has 30 second cooldown fixed.
start of lvl 32 cap, Swordmaster; eclipse reduces 40% of enemy super armor 20 second effect 20 second cooldown, which means they could cut thorough anything.
end of lvl 32 cap, Mercenary; Rolling attack+whirlwind combo, oneshot anything in pvp.
start of lvl 40 cap, Dark age of bowmaster; bowmaster that uses dark elemental bows, a skill call Guided Missiles eats 75%-100% of every player, even paladins.
start of lvl 40 cap, Dark age of Swordmaster; 90% swordmasters skill can be enchanted to dark element and that leads to the same result as bowmaster.
middle of lvl 40 cap, Compensation mode released means pvp will not longer be gear depended, which leads to unkillable paladins with 54k hp and warriors 50k hp, and number of swordmasters and bowmasters player were reduced dramatically.
end of lvl 40 cap, Elementalists, shield that grands them 100% super armor, they could tank better than paladin. However they were nerfed after 1 month.
start of lvl 50 cap, Raise of Crusader(paladin second job). with 50k+ hp and high dps skill, they reigned pvp, with defensive block/stance of faith/iron will/Avatard they can stay defensive at 90% of their gameplay which lead to a unofficial rule
"SOFT BANNED". Grand Cross enchant/Smite/electric charge have such a huge aoe and dmg.
start of lvl 50 cap, Raise of Tempest (acrobat second job). Highly mobile, and alot of skills have invincible frames makes them impossible to catch, and their skill have uber low cooldown and high dmg.
middle of lvl 50 cap, New class Academic; they are semi long ranged class and can summor alot of pokemons that cover up half of the map, which cause most of the bowmasters player switching to academic.

Thats basically the PVP History of DN CN, if you doubt my knowledge within DN pvp, please post info above in DN Freedom Section and im sure 95% of them agrees with me.

Now lets take a look about SEA DN that based on SEA communitys opinion, if you play there i assume.
lvl 24 cap; Swordmasters, easiers to play, hit and run style.
lvl 32 cap; Element with infinity super armor shield, paladin without "soft ban".
lvl 40 cap; Academic class that covers up half of map with their pokemon.

And dont tell me about non compensated and ranker game, because thats 100% pay to win.
Dragons nest does have a quite intensive pvp gameplay, the best and balanced period is 24-40 cap, after that... the pvp is ruined.
There, i just made my statement why DN PVP is NOT superior to C9 PVP.and to not mention the lag in SEA DN...

Now your turn to convince me why i should keep playing DN for the PVP gameplay, because i just cant understand the meaning of "Dragon Nest? Superior in every way. C9 was a total letdown after the jewel that Shanda created."

If you doubt my pvp experience i can always set you up some games in both DN CN and DN SEA up to your interest.

Nice one HeartlessOne, 1 more reason is I dont like the childish face they have in DN @_@
Fuurthermore from close beta no reset to open beta in DN SEA, I lost all my item in the warehouse (but 2mil gold still there >.<), and no GM help me fix that, and others said that I was hacked @_@ (my inventory still the same +gold in warehouse too). =>quit game , lol
*sorry for my bad English*

[b]Reply [url=http://forum.mmosite.com/thread/2/35/20120718/Continents_of_the_Ninth_Open_Beta_Review_by_Heartless-5007107fccd078313-1.html#p50079cfd5821c5]4#[/url] [i]190.*.*.133[/i][/b] [br] [br]Bi*ch Please. Dragon Nest is for kids. It's so boring button mashing. C9 has commands skills which makes it a lot more fun. Not just all hotkeys like in Dragon Nest.

just a great game~this is an awesome review as well. fair and precise. I would have to say that dungeon fighter's pvp system is also great. It got a complex and precise mechanism and the fair arena which you don't have to farm for pvp gears. Too bad for some reason DFO is not popular in NA and I never seen nexon do any kind of advertisements for DFO as well. Wish C9 had the fair arena. Im only counting on this game now!!!

Pice of shit game that should of came out when it was ready/ Greedy developers waited for US/EU launch and did not settle on the cash scheme so they just dropped it completely and moved on....2 YEARS LATER. So yes you get dated graphics and shit PVE. PVP is easy in these kind of games. Spa, spa, spa, dead. This is definatly not going to be a game I download any time soon or ever. Totally content with my current MMORPG.

Says the guy that didnt even download the game......

[b]Reply [url=http://forum.mmosite.com/thread/2/35/20120718/Continents_of_the_Ninth_Open_Beta_Review_by_Heartless-5007107fccd078313-1.html#p50079cfd5821c5]4#[/url] [i]190.*.*.133[/i][/b] [br] [br]agreed 100%

Combo's are nice but here's the problem(s):

The game is gender-locked. Picking a certain class involves either male or female roles. No mixing which SUCKS.

The graphics look out-dated. 2006 or 2005. Character models have some customization but a typical Cry-Engine 1 semi-western look. All the characters look old like 35 year olds. No option to change youthfulness or any real height-selection.

Playing this game feels like Vindictus but with combos like Rusty Hearts. The dungeon-only instance is a major draw-back to the game. There is no open-world environment so all the moving and hopping around is strictly done in dungeons or selecting locations from a map. BOO.

Game also relies heavily upon Cash-Shop. Cash-shop items themselves aren't too bad but the price-range smells like a broken fart inside a bubbling toliet of dung.

While it's nice beating around with the whole aim-scheme the game feels like a typical console brought to the PC. Selection is limited and it has an old mmo feeling to it when most Asian MMO's were nothing more than dungeon instances.

crappy game, crappy textures, crappy skills..

Outdated graphics but that's not a problem at all. The Lag issue is the problem. I don't know if the peer 2 peer is good thing or a bad thing. Dragon nest is not bad either. You cannot say it is imbalanced because the PvP is team vs team. Unless of course if you are 1 vs 1 type.

I don't get it why some people need to compare 1 game to another when evaluating the quality. I enjoy DN but I like C9 just fine. Both have unique PvP aspects. I like most aspects of C9. However, here are some of my issue with the game.

My main problem with C9 is that its graphics makes my head spin, similar to older games. I already tried the best graphic setting to no avail.
Another issue is how the characters look creepy. This is focused more on fighters. When I zoom in, I can see him having a hard time breathing. They tried making the character more alive, but the result is just weird.

Regarding PvP, I think its too early to say that it's got a balanced PvP. Why? Because from what I've heard and experienced, there's just some classes with better advantage in PvP. Take for example the assassin. Ask veteran c9 players and they'd agree that this class has the strongest potential in PvP.

[b]Reply [url=http://forum.mmosite.com/thread/2/35/20120718/Continents_of_the_Ninth_Open_Beta_Review_by_Heartless-5007107fccd078313-1.html#p5009b94e19567a]12#[/url] [i]46.*.*.4[/i][/b] [br] [br]I agree [SMILE=3] [SMILE=3]

I like c9. Great game , nice combos , even if few class missing there is still A LOT jobs to chose from , graphics are decent , not all ppl that plays MMO has superb PC's. Fast lvling , that means you dont have grind MONTHS till u get to endgame pvp.

What I see as a bad side is:
1.Webzen has not a very good name from some of they're MMO's past , let's see how they do with this game.
2. Need more things to make so the guild system would be more useful , like special guild raids etc..
3. Add some chat functions like ignore spammers , add emoticons coz typing them each time is no fun plus not all classes has same ones.

For me its 9/10 atm for this game. IF u like action based games with lotsa combos ,and you are bored or those old school games with left click and spam 1-9 keys boring stuff , go ahead and download this game.

Assassin is a risk character, means that he doesnt have weakness nor advantage. Do you know what it takes to be a good assassin? Assassin is no doubt the most difficult class to play with. and yes, veterans does agree that assassins have most potential; but most of all, the effort of that player who plays assassin.

Well, C9 is good. It's really fun to play because of the command skills but the issue is how Webzen is handling the game. So much issues with the launcher. It's making me waste a lot of time.