MU Online

By Shawn Toh • UrbanWire Contributor
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Much in the vein of the Diablo series, players amass treasure and equipment while exploring the beautiful and mysterious realm of Mu. Players are able to choose between the starter races of a Fairy, Dark Knight and Dark Sorceror. The Dark Knight specializes in hand-to-hand combat and is proficient with weapons like swords and scythes,while the Dark Sorceror has control over lightning, fire and ice. The Fairy specialises in summoning creatures and is adept with a bow or crossbow, and is also known for her spells that enhance a character’s innate abilities (i.e. boosting their attack power).

With an interface somewhat reminiscent of the Diablo series, this Korean game published by Webzen boasts pretty good graphics and some addictive gameplay. Close attention is paid to detail. Tall grass and flowers at your character’s feet sway in the wind, and snow slowly drifts down before fading away. Characters wearing high level armor literally blaze and shimmer with light, and high level skills or spells, especially the Dark Sorceror’s, when used, practically fill the screen with light.

The variety of environments is pretty wide, from the peaceful grassy plains of Noria, to the enchanting yet sparse, icy wastes of Devias. The Lost Tower found at the farthest Northern reaches of Devias is suitably grim and foreboding, with pillars of flame and glowing murals adorning passageways hewn from obsidian rock. Upcoming areas soon to be implemented during the next few months include the watery world of Atlans, home to the terrifying Hydra, a multi-headed beast that spews forth deadly beams of light from its multiple mouths.

The game’s sound can be rather annoying at times though, mostly due to the constant roaring or growling of monsters (your enemies) as they go about their daily business before you kill them. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem in other games, except for the sheer amount noise they make, how regularly they do it, and how all their predatory sounds seem so repetitive.

That aside, the game does have some atmospheric music, and the occasional sound of gusty wind, which adds to the realistic feel of the game.

Features such as being able to ride a Dinorant (a 2-legged runner) are quite cool. However, while fun, the gameplay does get repetitive after a while due to a lack of varied skills or ways to kill monsters. Also, while new areas to explore (like the previosuly mentioned Atlans) are released periodically, it’s basically the same hack and slash action with just a change in scenery.

The game has good potential but can certainly do more.

Although plans are underway for the game to go “pay-to-play”, Mu Online can still be downloaded free at www.muonline.com

Minimum Specs:

CPU: Pentium III 550 Mhz or above
RAM: 64MB or above
VGA Card: 3D Acceleration Card required (Voodoo3 16M or above, TNT2 16M or above)

Images taken from www.muonline.com