I have been playing this game since it's CBT (Closed Beta Test) back in 2011, and watching it evolve over the years has been an interesting experience. To make things simple, I will list 5 things that the game does really well, and 5 things that it does really poorly.

★ Positives!

1. Incredibly fun and intuitive combat system that is mechanically nuanced and fun to master. The game sets itself apart from other MMORPGs by focusing on the player's mechanical skill more so than it's competition, especially during the endgame dungeons which further explores the platforming aspects of the game as well as it's fighting genre traits. This also means that the PvP aspect of the game is a very fun and rewarding experience to play in, at least most of the time. It also helps that the game IMMEDIATELY throws new players into it's dungeons without wasting any time on needless fluff like story exposition.

If you're a fan of games like Super Smash Bros. and/or the Tales Of series, then you will definitely love how this game plays.

2. Very fun and fascinating character designs and backstories. For an anime game, they are surprisingly well written and are very fun to read and watch unfold. While there are a ton of tropes and bland writing for the first few hours during the initial grind to level 99, the midgame and endgame quests are genuinely fun to read and the characters actually feel pretty cool. It helps that most of the cast are fully grown adults by the midgame quests so they drop the cheesy shōnen tropes almost entirely.

3. Despite lacking a character creator and that every playable character is their own person within the game's lore, Elsword features significantly detailed customization tools to truly make yourself stand out from other players.

4. Incredibly fun and welcoming player base that is endearing to be a part of. The developers also interact with the players very consistently, even after a decade of being active. The constant events and player interaction makes the experience very welcoming to newcomers and inspires a strong sense of community that a lot of other MMORPGs tend to lack.

5. A pretty charming art style that is reminiscent of games like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Tales of Symphonia. While they do obviously show their age in comparison to modern day anime games, the game still remains rather pretty and nice to look at despite that. Also, a lot of music in the game is just...incredible. If you want to hear some examples of this, just search up "Underground Waterway Elsword OST", "Dragon Nest Elsword OST", "Altera Plains", and "Ponggo's Hideout".

★ Negatives...

1. The game features Gacha mechanics, specifically in the form of costumes. Costumes in this game offer slight stat bonuses, on top of being able to be socketed with stats just like regular armor. While the game constantly gives away free costumes during it's many events, the indisputably best costumes are the Ice Burners costumes, which have significantly better stats and bonuses compared to normal ones. The only way to obtain these are to buy Ice Burners with real world money which are priced at $1 per Ice Burner, and opening one gives a SMALL CHANCE to obtain even one of the pieces of these costumes, which combines an obnoxious amount of RNG alongside slight Pay-To-Win mechanics. While these stats don't matter too much in the endgame, where 75% of your stats you actually have to work for and grind, that extra boost can still be really frustrating to a new player trying to survive in PvE & PvP.

2. The English dubbing in the game is rather odd. While the voice acting for the main cast are actually of a really high quality, the dubbing for the NPCs are cringe inducing at best. Also, the voice acting in the story cutscenes and dungeons are cut off frequently due to the cutscenes being paced around the length of the spoken sentences in the original Korean dub, which results in characters constantly talking over one another or even interrupting their own sentences with English voices on. On top of that, most of the "new" content added after 2018 (Yes, you've read that right. 2018.) hasn't even been dubbed at all, resulting in the game going back and forth between English and Korean voice lines which becomes obnoxious very quickly. Audio mixing is also an issue with the English dub, with some characters being incredibly quiet and hard to hear even at max volume, with the biggest examples of this being the playable characters Add and Lu & Ciel.

3. The game gatekeeps a lot of it's endgame content behind power walls. The only way to get around these walls are to grind for weeks, sometimes even MONTHS at a time doing daily quests to slowly but surely obtain enough materials just to craft the armor and weapon enhancements needed to prove your strength. The enhancement system is also absolute garbage as the odds of a successful enhancement are minuscule at best once you get above the +8 range, and the endgame content expects you to be running AT LEAST some +10 gear. Since it's possible for your enhancement attempts to not only downgrade a weapon instead of upgrading, but can also COMPLETELY RESET IT BACK TO +0 or EVEN BREAK IT, the enhancement system winds up becoming an extremely miserable experience to tolerate. The game demands a lot of your time just for a little in return, which can be very insulting to players who simply wants to enjoy what the game has to offer. This has resulted in a lot of the player base getting burned out and is the main reason why new players tend to run away the instant they get to the midgame.

The enhancement system can only be overcome with enhancement materials that can protect your equipment from resetting or breaking.....but they are (mostly) only obtained through the cash shop for real world money. Needless to say, THIS is why 99% of the community calls the game Pay-To-Win. THIS is the reason why the game has that reputation.

4. The game is very poorly optimized. I can give it a slight pass since the game was released in 2007, but don't go into this game expecting it to run well due to it having a cel shaded art style. The poor optimization and the amount of particle effects that are constantly flying around in dungeons can make even higher end PCs cough up blood struggling to run the game above 60 fps.

5. About half of the endgame content uses licensed music, which can be read into more detail on the fan made wiki “ElWiki”. While there's nothing inherently wrong with using licensed music, it does make the game lack a bit of it's own identity using music that other media could be using as well. But at least the music tracks themselves are still really well done and nice to listen to. The game continues to frequently gets it's own original compositions, but it's still rather bizarre for them to take this route with the game's OST.

You can see for yourself just how much licensed music there is by going into the "Elsword/data/music" directory and seeing how many music files have the "li_" prefix at the beginning of the filename. As of posting this review, 226 out of the 515 music files in the game are licensed music, which is nearly half!

★ Final Score.

Overall, I'd still recommend the game if you're a fan of action & fighting games and/or MMORPGs. Despite its flaws I'd still give it at least an 7 out of 10, as it does more good than bad despite being a F2P game. I still have a lot of fun playing it to this day.

I have been playing this game since it's CBT (Closed Beta Test) back in 2011, and watching it evolve over the years has been an interesting experience. To make things simple, I will list 5 things that the game does really well, and 5 things that it does really poorly. ★ Positives! 1. Incredibly fun and intuitive combat system that is mechanically nuanced and fun to master. The game sets itself apart from other MMORPGs by focusing on the player's mechanical skill more so than it's competition, especially during the endgame dungeons which further explores the platforming aspects of the game as well as it's fighting genre traits. This also means that the PvP aspect of the game is a very fun and rewarding experience to play in, at least most of the time. It also helps that the game IMMEDIATELY throws new players into it's dungeons without wasting any time on needless fluff like story exposition. If you're a fan of games like Super Smash Bros. and/or the Tales Of series, then you will definitely love how this game plays. 2. Very fun and fascinating character designs and backstories. For an anime game, they are surprisingly well written and are very fun to read and watch unfold. While there are a ton of tropes and bland writing for the first few hours during the initial grind to level 99, the midgame and endgame quests are genuinely fun to read and the characters actually feel pretty cool. It helps that most of the cast are fully grown adults by the midgame quests so they drop the cheesy shōnen tropes almost entirely. 3. Despite lacking a character creator and that every playable character is their own person within the game's lore, Elsword features significantly detailed customization tools to truly make yourself stand out from other players. 4. Incredibly fun and welcoming player base that is endearing to be a part of. The developers also interact with the players very consistently, even after a decade of being active. The constant events and player interaction makes the experience very welcoming to newcomers and inspires a strong sense of community that a lot of other MMORPGs tend to lack. 5. A pretty charming art style that is reminiscent of games like The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker and Tales of Symphonia. While they do obviously show their age in comparison to modern day anime games, the game still remains rather pretty and nice to look at despite that. Also, a lot of music in the game is just...incredible. If you want to hear some examples of this, just search up "Underground Waterway Elsword OST", "Dragon Nest Elsword OST", "Altera Plains", and "Ponggo's Hideout". ★ Negatives... 1. The game features Gacha mechanics, specifically in the form of costumes. Costumes in this game offer slight stat bonuses, on top of being able to be socketed with stats just like regular armor. While the game constantly gives away free costumes during it's many events, the indisputably best costumes are the Ice Burners costumes, which have significantly better stats and bonuses compared to normal ones. The only way to obtain these are to buy Ice Burners with real world money which are priced at $1 per Ice Burner, and opening one gives a SMALL CHANCE to obtain even one of the pieces of these costumes, which combines an obnoxious amount of RNG alongside slight Pay-To-Win mechanics. While these stats don't matter too much in the endgame, where 75% of your stats you actually have to work for and grind, that extra boost can still be really frustrating to a new player trying to survive in PvE & PvP. 2. The English dubbing in the game is rather odd. While the voice acting for the main cast are actually of a really high quality, the dubbing for the NPCs are cringe inducing at best. Also, the voice acting in the story cutscenes and dungeons are cut off frequently due to the cutscenes being paced around the length of the spoken sentences in the original Korean dub, which results in characters constantly talking over one another or even interrupting their own sentences with English voices on. On top of that, most of the "new" content added after 2018 (Yes, you've read that right. 2018.) hasn't even been dubbed at all, resulting in the game going back and forth between English and Korean voice lines which becomes obnoxious very quickly. Audio mixing is also an issue with the English dub, with some characters being incredibly quiet and hard to hear even at max volume, with the biggest examples of this being the playable characters Add and Lu & Ciel. 3. The game gatekeeps a lot of it's endgame content behind power walls. The only way to get around these walls are to grind for weeks, sometimes even MONTHS at a time doing daily quests to slowly but surely obtain enough materials just to craft the armor and weapon enhancements needed to prove your strength. The enhancement system is also absolute garbage as the odds of a successful enhancement are minuscule at best once you get above the +8 range, and the endgame content expects you to be running AT LEAST some +10 gear. Since it's possible for your enhancement attempts to not only downgrade a weapon instead of upgrading, but can also COMPLETELY RESET IT BACK TO +0 or EVEN BREAK IT, the enhancement system winds up becoming an extremely miserable experience to tolerate. The game demands a lot of your time just for a little in return, which can be very insulting to players who simply wants to enjoy what the game has to offer. This has resulted in a lot of the player base getting burned out and is the main reason why new players tend to run away the instant they get to the midgame. The enhancement system can only be overcome with enhancement materials that can protect your equipment from resetting or breaking.....but they are (mostly) only obtained through the cash shop for real world money. Needless to say, THIS is why 99% of the community calls the game Pay-To-Win. THIS is the reason why the game has that reputation. 4. The game is very poorly optimized. I can give it a slight pass since the game was released in 2007, but don't go into this game expecting it to run well due to it having a cel shaded art style. The poor optimization and the amount of particle effects that are constantly flying around in dungeons can make even higher end PCs cough up blood struggling to run the game above 60 fps. 5. About half of the endgame content uses licensed music, which can be read into more detail on the fan made wiki “ElWiki”. While there's nothing inherently wrong with using licensed music, it does make the game lack a bit of it's own identity using music that other media could be using as well. But at least the music tracks themselves are still really well done and nice to listen to. The game continues to frequently gets it's own original compositions, but it's still rather bizarre for them to take this route with the game's OST. You can see for yourself just how much licensed music there is by going into the "Elsword/data/music" directory and seeing how many music files have the "li_" prefix at the beginning of the filename. As of posting this review, 226 out of the 515 music files in the game are licensed music, which is nearly half! ★ Final Score. Overall, I'd still recommend the game if you're a fan of action & fighting games and/or MMORPGs. Despite its flaws I'd still give it at least an 7 out of 10, as it does more good than bad despite being a F2P game. I still have a lot of fun playing it to this day.