Gaming World: Thoughts on Legends of Equestria

Given the heavy load that Legends of Equestria's servers are under, it was a wonder I was able to get into the game at all. Many were not so fortunate; I've heard of people who literally spent several hours trying to log in before giving up, and over the weekend things are probably going to get even worse as people use their day off school/work to participate in the open server weekend.

Aside from the connectivity issues (which are to be expected, given the game's current popularity), how good is Legends of Equestria in its current state? You can find my thoughts on it below the break.

After spending several minutes logging in, I decided to start off with a unicorn character and fondly named him "Terrible Tuxxy", only to discover that the teleportation system is horribly broken and requires you to mash the left mouse button in hopes of it actually working. There's not really any point in using it unless your destination is some otherwise inaccessible high spot on a building, since the time spent mashing could otherwise be used to simply walk there like a normal pony.

So much for them, I guess. Pegasi are really the only class worth using at the moment anyways, since they can fly and whatnot. They also have this amusing glitch that lets them effectively limp around in mid-air instead of flying, and since they can fly it's possible for them to reach areas that nobody else can. Oh yeah, and navigating Cloudopolis as any other race is a pain in the ass (especially since you can uncontrollably slide around after jumping and accidentally slip off a cloud), so there's that.

It's easier to appreciate a lovely view when you've worked hard to reach it.

Even if pegasi are the only really useful class, shortly after making the purposefully tacky mudpony "Cantermore Invader" I realized that LoE's movement system is flawed in that the player can, with some practice, walk around the sides of near-vertical walls, enabling them to access incredibly remote areas that only a pegasus should be able to reach via normal gameplay. This was honestly the most enjoyable part of the game for me, and I hope that the developers decide against fixing this quirk or go out of their way to make these high spots easier to reach. In its current state the game unintentionally rewards players who are willing to think outside the box, something which should be treasured.

Scattered about the wondrous land of Equestria there are NPCs, most of which are involved in fetch quests. Some will also break the game if you try speaking to them, forcing you to log out and waste valuable time. These quests often provide very little reward for completing them, and if you'd really want cash you're much better off farming the mines for gemstones and selling your findings to a merchant.

Being able to hang out in someone else's bedroom is kinda creepy, come to think of it.

Once you've gotten bored of exploring, doing fetch quests and engaging with combat with enemies (which mostly involves running up to foes, using the ground slam ability and retreating before repeating the cycle once more), there's not much to do but chat and roleplay. The game would be pretty good for this if the chat window didn't keep automatically scrolling back up to the top, making conversations at a distance/in a crowded area fairly difficult. I'm also baffled as to why the chat was censoring "earth pony" but not "mudpony" at one point, perhaps the filter's maintainer is a unicorn supremacist or something.

Of all the parts of Legends of Equestria that need work, the environments need the most. Ponydale feels more like a collection of oddly misshapen boxes than a small town, Cantermore's skybox distant mountains and water have incredibly shoddy textures that look like they were borrowed from a bad SuperTuxKart track, while the ground far below Cloudopolis resembles an ugly green blob. I know, they need to keep system requirements fairly low, but I've seen far more lightweight amateur games that looked much better (most of which admittedly benefited greatly from good art direction, I might add).

So...yeah. We all knew the open server weekend would feature an unfinished game, and that's exactly what we got. It's not something I really enjoyed (aside from the time I accidentally escaped the skybox, along with the aforementioned "exploit the movement system" bits), but plenty of casual players seem to be enjoying it and if you're one of them I'd definitely recommend giving the game a shot if you manage to download it successfully and are lucky enough to get logged in.

For a brief moment Cloudopolis reveals its dark side.

Based anon from /mlp/ shows us a weird cloning glitch his friend discovered.

Outside Ponydale's skybox the ground slopes downward, making it feel like you're descending some kind of green mountain into oblivion. It's strangely calming, actually.