Some people find fantasy role-player games to be confusing and overly complicated. Well they haven’t seen nothing yet. Even the most seasoned RPG gamers stand to be baffled by Sword of Angels, which can be played for free by registering on www.soaindo.com. To be fair, the game is obviously hugely popular, with over sixty thousand Facebook likes and shares and a plethora of ‘how-to’ videos on YouTube. But it’s one major drawback is that if you don’t speak Indonesian – shockingly I don’t – then your chances of making any progress in, or sense from the game are slim.
Good Knight
Never one to refuse the first hurdle, I managed to find how to sign up for an account to play Sword of Angels, thinking there might be language options beyond that. But no, everything stayed in Indonesian and I stumbled through to the character choice. One can play as an Angel, a Knight, or a rogue – feeling like a crusade, I chose to be a Knight and found myself cast as Solin Vita, a female knight, and an aesthetically pleasing one, too. It’s worth mentioning at this point that the design of the characters is bordering on the erotic; though skilfully drawn and rendered, you’ll quickly notice the penchant amongst the cast for plunging necklines and heaving cleavage.
Gameplay?
So far so good. I had an avatar, and the game was afoot, but that’s when things got even more confusing. I deduced that ‘Malai’ and a big pointy arrow meant I was to roll the virtual dice, but had no idea what the intention of that roll was. Solin Vita now appeared to be in a duel with a rogue, but that clash was happening independently of me; it may have been just a demo. Solin showed off some gnarly skills of a slow-motion sword sweep that generates a glowing sword in the air to destroy her foe. Pretty cool, but darned if I can find the key to make it happen again. In fact, apart from moving left and right, up and down, I can’t get Solin to do anything.
Interlude
Abruptly, I’m brought to what can only be described as a shower scene, where Solin is talking to Luerre – a buxom bow smith. Of course, I have no idea what’s being said, though I imagine it was something about why they’re chatting while Luerre soaps herself down! After this confusion Solin is brought to a village scene, from which there appears to be no escape – I tried. And after a spell of running left and right just like all the other players in the scene, I decide that until I improve my language skills I should leave Sword of Angels alone. But it left me with some important questions:
- How do I DO anything in this game? Surely 60,000 people don’t enjoy running from side to side this much.
- Is it wise to go into a swordfight with armour that barely covers one’s nipples?
- How did that one guy in the village get those cool green wings? Mind you, he never used them for much.
- When’s the English language version coming out? I kind of liked it!