Good game. Only complaint is: WHY ARE YOU MAKING IT SO LOOT IS DPS BASED. HEALERS/TANKS CAN NEVER GET ANY LOOT BECAUSE THEY CAN'T OUT DPS THE DPS CLASSES!!! Did you fall on your head when you made that system up?! FIX IT!

Added complaint after much frustration (1 day after review): WHY DO I HAVE TO KILL OVER 500 CRABS FOR ONLY 1 SALT (only an uncommon rarity cooking ingredient, btw) TO LVL COOKING, ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MINDS?!

Edit: Amazon said there is a bug with Lucents (premium paid currency). If you bought Lucents and it shows 0 Lucents (like me), they say they will fix it. I lost 2800+ bought Lucents, so I hope I get them back and FULL COMPENSATION for not being able to use what I bought. Anyways, don't buy anything until they fix this. I have warned you all!

Edit 2: My Lucents are back, but the shop can potentially still be buggy. I don't recommend purchasing until they announce a permanent fix to this issue and hecc, if I was a healer/tank main, I wouldn't even spend on this game until they fix the drop system.

Like I said, it's a good game, but those issues can't be ignored and are honestly pathetic to see.

The successor to Dragon's Dogma Online, basically. Well, a lesser, deformed version that's a mashup of competing Korean and American ideals, anyway. There are lots of people playing this MMO right now, so try it out now before this one billionth tab target WoW iteration ends up going the way of the Dodo like all its predecessors and eventually dies out only a couple of weeks in after the initial interest has begun to wane from the big launch party.

Also, here is guide for a better and easier game experience, especially helpful on your wrists:

Go into Settings -> Gameplay -> Controls
Make sure to checkmark the following:
Queue Skills
Auto-Move within Range to Attack Target
Auto-Move within Range to Use Beneficial Skills
Auto-Use Non-targeted Beneficial Skills on Self
Toggle Basic Attack
Toggle Charge Skills
Toggle Aimed Skills

Go into Gameplay -> Target
Auto Target Nearest Enemy when Attacking without a Target

I've hit max level, ran all available dungeons, PvPvE'd/3v3 PvP'd, finished the secret dungeons and completed all 10 chapters of the story. Don't really want to compare this game to something like Lost Ark or Black Desert Online, because those games are terribly overpowered with the most toxic game systems ever invented, but there are *some* similarities. The Auction House is blocked unless you spend real money to buy a currency used for AH purchases (Lucent) or if you get a good piece of gear/materials/traits you can list it on the market at no cost and get your Lucent that way. In my experience I've grinded items, ripped traits out and listed the extracts on the AH in the early access alone and got around 1200 Lucent (something like 30$ worth) so F2P is 100% viable. It's not like Lost Ark where you need to have an alt army, running the same raids, dungeons, dailies and weekly quest across 100 characters to funnel into one (execute people who come up with these ideas). Throne and Liberty promotes maining a single character as resources and equipment are not shared. This forces most players to rely on each other for progression, boosting dungeon/raid activity. There is of course the classic korean-style upgrade mechanics for gear but it's not a punishing system like BDO or Maplestory. You will always get progress towards your gear, it's just reliant on luck and time spent, mostly being the latter. The swiping for power aspect of this game is very prevalent as you can buy Lucent, then buy the BiS traits for your armor/weapons and be overpowered in PvP/PvE but the grind to GET there isn't as bad as what MMORPG players have been accustomed to with similar K-MMOs. Also should be noted that in the global version, at time of review at least, you can not sell dungeon/raid gear (in Korean version you can). This must be an Amazon Games change.

ALL IN ALL 7.5/10 - Combat is fun, PvP is interesting, good sense of everyone being on a level playing field with grinded hours equating to a visible reward path. No item booming, no loss of upgrade levels, always progressing in some aspect even IF it can be slow. Good sense of exploration and class identity (if you follow the holy trinity > DPS > TANK > HEALER) for a tab target game. I would say play it on full release, if you like the leveling experience 1-50 chances are you will also enjoy post 50 content to keep you around.

Throne and Liberty is not a bad game but it's not a good game. Performance is smooth featuring quality Unreal tech graphics; it's impressive when there are 100 players on screen in massive PvP battles or competitions. Game mechanics are relatively standard for any MMO but with a parry system that's crucial for Tanks but minimal for other roles.

The problem is the lack of...soul? There's no sense of exploration or feeling of 'adventure'. You'll never stumble upon a side quest or a treasure chest or a surprise puzzle because they're already listed for you to target farm. The story is shallow and uninteresting with no environmental storytelling or memorable characters. Environments are generic MMO fields of varying ground colors. The UI is bland and uninspired. The game is about the grind.

Itemization is boring. You'll never find that one cool weapon or helmet from defeating a boss or doing a quest due to the nature of the game's design philosophy. Obvious target farming is not interesting. The design variety of the items seem to be a matter of 6-10 per rank; white, green, blue, purple. No uniques. There's no sense of "fashion", which is important for an MMO where everyone can see every player. Its all about the number.

The biggest issue with the game is the leveling system. Skills and items are upgraded with increments of evermore rare or expensive materials. There is no simple "free re-spec button" for skills or items which means you'd need to pay money or grind for dozens of hours to alter a single skill if ever you chose to change weapons. This doesn't feel like a problem during early hours of gameplay but it becomes noticeable at high levels. There is no room for error. This is an Excel spreadsheet-type game to its core. But a spreadsheet for what, exactly? Each weapon has 12 active skills, 7 passives, and a parry; the player can access the skills of any 2 weapon. To have any sort of build synergy, you're limited to specific weapons so you can access the desired skills; be them attacks, nerfs, or buffs. Of all classes, Healers have it worst which just means that there aren't many dedicated Healers in the quick queue matchmaking.

The Co-Op Dungeon matchmaking system is terrible. Due to the free-form nature of player leveling there are no defined classes. Roles of Tank, DPS, and Healer are filled on an honor/self-regulatory system. There may be times when you wait 10mins for a Healer only to spawn into the dungeon and discover that your Healer is actually a DPS who wanted to skip the queue time.

So what is the incentive to play? Guild based PvP serves as a conduit for a "me better than you because bigger number" mentality. If the end goal is a chaotic swamp of flashing colors because 200 players are spamming skills...what is the point? There aren't any tactics in chaos.

Free to Play games deserve to make money, but Throne and Liberty does so in a way that emphasizes the grind. This isn't a time friendly game. It's a matter of grinding for 1000 hours or buying something in a second with actual money. Helldivers 2 has a similar system where players can earn premium currency to purchase gameplay altering equipment. But that equipment is not core to player progression as it is in Throne and Liberty. Buying a different gun in Helldivers 2 is just buying a different gun, not necessarily better or worse. Throne and Liberty's progression system is tarnished because you buy direct stat increases via crafting materials or simply better gear. Time is money.

LOTRO is still the best free-to-play MMO.

This game is a monetized PvP "number" measuring contest.

most of these negative reviews are based on bugs and performance issues.

This one is not.

i hate the drip feeder system. You want to run a dungeon, try to get some loot? to bad you cant, you can only get a chance at loot 3 times a day. maybe do some contracts or a open world dungeon, limited amount per day.

Everything in the game is on this time-gated type system.

Throne and Liberty is, sadly, the kind of game that follows all too common a blueprint with many other Korean MMORPGs. The game would seem to be an open world with fancy graphics and effects, but you are just being drawn in like cattle to slaughter.
The mechanics are shallow, the taxes are high, and returns are diminishing, making progression unbearably slow. Crafting is terribly boring and tedious, one of the main value points for many players. You will be trying to farm for DAYS (you read that right) just to get the ingredients you need for a single crappy item. When you add to that the fact that pretty much all these crafting materials can be bought in a cash shop, it starts to seem almost designed this way purposely to encourage spending, instead of playing and enjoying crafting.

The Bot problem is up front and center, and it's tough not to feel that this may be a feature than bug of the eco-system. With the farming process taking so long, players may begin to feel obligated to resort to bots to remain competitive, which in turn provides a much greater market for third-party sellers and just ruins the whole purpose of playing the game.
And PvP is no better. The mechanics of this game are not satisfying and the disparity between players is off-putting. The fast levelers are free to crap on those much lower (who literally cannot hit back) of course because there's no real penalty to them so the rest of the players not able to play 20 hours a day without throwing money at the game have a rough time.

At its most stripped down, Throne and Liberty is a very brazen cash grab that only pays lip service to the IDEA of being an MMORPG. Mechanically shallow, monetarily aggressive and extremely tough to recommend. In its current state, I can't see this game having any long-term appeal beyond the initial first week. Of course, there will be the (probably) paid positive reviews from little calf's, bleating how “Great” it is, looking for the next drink and too blind or young to see that this is just another violent reach into your pocket. But to those who “Love” this game, Moo Moo to you.

First time rating a game. The MMO drought has been real. This scratches all the right spots.

It's free 2 play, and has some of the ick that comes with that. So far, resources are rare and there's 400 mechanics to keep track of. To be fair, I switched weapon sets 3 or 4 times. Pick something and stick with it is my best advice.

Graphics, dungeons, PVP, everything feels super polished and great. It's a ton of fun, with no barrier for entry. I have a hard time going to bed again.

Try it.

It's exactly what you would expect a Korean MMO to be like, except it's not super ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ underneath all of the micro transactions, battle passes and shops. That's what makes it so sad. It's a fun and beautiful looking game, but almost every aspect of the game has a gacha system and a battle pass associated to it. The leveling, for example, even as a battlepass.

So there's a shop and then a battlepass for the general game, a battlepass for leveling, and then your weapons, armor and accessories upgrades have a gacha system of success rate. The surprising thing here is that your items don't break (at least low level?) when you get low "scores" on this gacha system. And then on top of that, buying, crafting, upgrading etc etc costs an insane amount of game currency known as "sollant". You don't get much of that garbage at all, only by "Hunting" and "Contracts".

Beyond that, the combat is like a strange mixture between Diablo IV, Lost Ark and a typical tab-target MMO. You can select a "class", I suppose you can say, and level "into" that more efficiently. With levels, you can drop skill points into your basic stats like health, dexterity, wisdom and perception (which all increase base damage) and then on top of that you have your actual skills which you can level up using in-game "tomes" (you can buy them from the real-currency store or take ages farming the materials to craft them yourself) and then you can also refine passive skills, too, using the same book method.

It has a LOT of Korean gacha systems. A lot. I'm honestly more annoyed with the systems in this game than others because at its core, it's actually a decent game, albeit riddled with hilarious dialogues from "decent enough" translations. It feels like NO ONE wants to challenge FFXIV and WoW because every time they try, they do stupid ♥♥♥♥ like this. lol

With that said, I would only recommend to people who are free-to-play and just want something they can drop into without much worry. Don't spend a time on this game, don't get so attached you "need" to buy anything. Just enjoy combat and sh!t.

For the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ gacha and battlepasses, I drop the game's score considerably.

3.8/5

EDIT

Anyone looking, whether you like the game or not, please enjoy the comment section. I promise you, these people are really that stupid and gullible.

After playing many mmos be it Lost Ark, Black Desert , Aion classic, and more this game is a refreshing experience.

What i like +

+ The graphics are a real eye-catcher again for a long time, with unreal engine 4 and some ue5 features, it's even more beautiful than black desert.
+ No direct class system where you can choose the standard things again. (but also has a small point of criticism with too few weapons in my opinion)
+ I think the open-world dungeons are the most beautiful in terms of design. I hope there will be many more to come. The same applies to co-op dungeons
+ There are so many world bosses already with the release that i'm very happy, they all have different mechanics sometimes harder sometimes easier.
+ Char editor is very complex and comes close to a black desert
+ A game for guilds and friends

What i not like so much -

- I would almost say that you are lost as a solo player because a lot of content is behind a wall.
- Coop dungeons are partly very exhausting not because of the difficulty but because if you run randomly people either don't understand the mechanics or rage quit (I get lost ark vibes)
- Server system is outdated I would have preferred a channel system like black desert/vindictus
- Servers run really problematic at the beginning of pre access and often crash, some have even lost lucent due to server problems.
- Combat system is still a bit too clunky for me better than normal tab target but still too little action combat but that's a personal criticism

I would recommend Throne and Liberty my answer to that is if you've been waiting a long time for a new mmo to sink your teeth into then yes.

[UPDATE] Oct 3, 2024

The P2W aspect may be slightly less forced in PVE than other MMOs SK has put out in the last decade, but I assure you the P2W is there. The shills can just cope until the game dies. My point stands that this game is one of the most soulless experiences I've had in years. Give me my 100% and let me GTFO.

PS: Didn't spend a dime.

Lost Ark PTSD Simulator

Bland story, lack of memorable characters, lackluster quests, janky combat, Ubisoft-level interface with flashy lights + SFX to make you "think" you're making awesome progress until they hit you with the P2W monetization.

Out of 100 players, I guarantee 100 players are not reading any of the dialogue. Mash F to skip, just as we broke the G key last year.

Final Verdict: D+
Another yawn MMO of post-2020. Disappointed in my own country for being so money-hungry all the time and getting in bed with Amazon (AGAIN). /shrug