Nexon’s latest MMORPG is an LED candle.
Nexon’s latest MMORPG V4 confirms a theory of mine. I play a lot of MMOs here at MMO Fallout (go figure) and one question I find myself asking a lot is whether or not most of the mobile MMOs would be more tolerable if I was playing them on a big screen instead of on a phone. The answer is no, actually they are worse.
For the purposes of this review I’m not going to use the word “playing” in respect to my engagement with V4. In fact I don’t really like using the word engagement because it implies more interactivity than I have been experiencing. I was present when V4 was running on my computer and that’s pretty much the extent of my involvement. It’s like the father’s role in a live birth, I’m mostly there to provide ice and emotional support.
In reality I booted the game up the other day and have watched as someone controls my character. It’s like a Twitch stream except I own the account and what I’m doing is totally couth with the developer.
V4 is a mobile MMO and that means accepting a lot of things that many of my readers will reject off the bat. Bad controls? Check. Mostly automated, shallow gameplay? Yes. An intrusive cash shop? Double check. A system focused on RNG meant to promote the cash shop at higher levels? Triple check. PVP to “encourage” competitive whales to spend lots of money powering their character? Check, check, check, and check.
Just about everything in V4 runs by default on auto mode. Your character moves from area to area on their own, will kill enemies on their own, run through dialogue on their own, and advance quests on their own. The only thing you need to do is accept the quest and turn it in, and fiddle with some interfaces from time to time. I’ve had a lot of moments writing this review where I completely forgot the game was still running in the background.
I have a vague understanding of what’s going on in the story but what little I know tells me I’m not missing much. Really most of my attention is toward the heaps of prezzies that the game throws at you for filling up various progress meters and being online to fulfill certain timers. There are some characters who are good and we’re fighting some monsters that are bad. There are also some good monsters. I think the bad monsters want to steal our technology for heaving breasts that swirl while a person is standing still, like spinning rims but for chesticles. I don’t know.
The automated nature of V4 makes just about everything you do meaningless and without impact unless your main goal in playing games is to watch your stat numbers get higher so you can watch your character deal bigger numbers to bigger enemies. My character at level 20 is still running around mostly one-shotting random mobs in a grassy area compared to when my level 10 character was running around mostly one-shotting random mobs in a different grassy area. Not only am I watching my character futz around for hours on end but not even having a challenging time doing it.
The game throws potions and buff foods at me unnecessarily since my character never has any problem laying waste to the creatures strewn before me. Thankfully I don’t even have to worry about healing up since potions are auto-used.
The voice actors in V4 are reminiscent of games from the early 1990’s in that Nexon either used their programmers or hired people off of craigslist for the cost of whoever would work for exposure and maybe a free lunch. Not a fancy lunch. A small platter of burgers from McDonald’s and not the premium stuff like Big Macs unless they had a coupon. Bad fake accents pepper unenthusiastic and poorly balanced audio. I haven’t heard voice acting so deadpan since the last time I recorded a Youtube video.
In fact I’m willing to bet in most cases that the voice actors weren’t brought into a studio but asked to record from home with the audio cleaned up in post.
The best example of the egregious cash shop is in the currency promotions. There are three “best” currency packages on the store that offer Red Gems for relatively cheaper prices. Don’t worry about predatory practices because Nexon has a solution. Players are limited to buying only $620 worth of discount “best” package Red Gems per month.
Inside the cash shop is everything you’d expect. Gacha mounts, gacha pets, daily product packs, weekly product packs, growth packs, pay to win gear, bundles of currencies, bundles of materials. The rarest pet/mount summons sit at .015% which is pathetic enough but then you get into the demon stone chests where the rarest materials are sitting at .0003%. I’m not making that up, Nexon is very open about the fact that none of the systems are to your benefit.
V4 is one of those games that if you play it casually you’ll never have the incentive to spend a dime on the game, partially because you will have absolutely no feeling of attachment toward your character and will likely get bored long before the game starts pushing you toward the cash shop. I’ve always said that the Achilles heel of games like this is because they are so shallow in terms of engagement that you never feel the incentive to actually spend money. I’m level 25 and I don’t even remember what my character’s class name is. Her name is Omali or some variation, because all of my characters are named that.
Unless you’re one of those dorks whose need to feel like a winner on the internet is high enough that you’ll spend thousands of dollars growing your character to be the best at a shallow mobile title. The industry has a term for you, that term is “whale” and you are going to be treated like a king here. The top tier pet is literally labeled “greedy,” and the top loyalty tier is for $200 spent.
It’s especially hard justifying this when services like PlayStation Now and Xbox Game Pass exist which cost $10 per month and offer exponentially better value from exponentially more invested creators whose vision for their product can at least be argued to be somewhat artistic in nature instead of a cynical dive to gather up as much of the money pinata as they can before their sinking ship completely submerges. I’m sure V4 will do just fine as a few hundred whales is all it takes to bring a massive profit on a game developed on a Little Caesars budget.
Someone will certainly wonder why I am being so harsh toward a Nexon property when I talk about their games a lot. I like Nexon. I consider them to be one of the more ethical companies in the free to play space and they’ve improved a lot as a business from the Nexon you are likely more familiar with from 10+ years ago. I can commend Nexon for the fact that they are generally pretty open about their monetization strategies, as unfair and predatory as they may be, at least the average person knows or should know what they are getting into.
I can’t imagine anyone is reading this impressions piece that didn’t already have preconceived notions of whether they would play or hate this game. It’s a PC port of a game developed with mobile devices in mind. It’s not like this game is going to be a shock to anyone who sees it.
On second thought, there’s a fluffy chunky boy called potato that you can get as a pet? Forget everything I’ve said up to this point, V4 is game of the year every year.
MMO Fallout 