I originally didn’t want to talk about this game at all…until I actually played it, that is. Oh the irony.

It all started when I stumbled upon the Lost Saga teaser site. At first the idea intrigued me; up to 23 classes from several different game archtypes in a single game, duking it out. Fast paced action ahoy!

I got turned off slightly since it’s a room-based game (I’d like to see someone pull this off with an open-world game though), but decided to give it a shot since I got a closed beta invitation later on.

Yeah, this shocked me too. A 10 hour hero? Bummer. What’s more, they don’t even let you choose, forcing you to start off with the Shadow Assassin.

As it turns out, the player can control more than one hero. In fact, during a battle, he/she can control up to 10 different heroes, and is able to swap between them on the fly. This is where the game starts to shine.

Normally, one would probably end up creating more than one character on a single account just to get the “full experience”. But screw that. Having up to 10 characters at a time means you’ll have a lot of ways to fight your enemy.


Spectator Mode

It helps that each hero plays slightly differently. The Shadow Assassin, for instance, is able to turn invisible (though his icon may still be visible on the map), while the Knight is able to push attacking enemies away due to a passive skill. The Red Mage can aim his teleport or fireball via a ground targeting reticule, while the Infantryman uses guided aim to fire his machine gun (with rounds, and therefore requires reloading).

Each hero also levels up individually, and upon levelling up, the hero can upgrade his skills, though during the closed beta test, this wasn’t available. There wasn’t any pressure from needing to “grind” your heroes or yourself up though, since you can kick ass at any level.

Controls are frightfully simple. 1 – 10 swaps between all your characters, while A (jump), S (block), and D (attack) provide for the basic moveset. Skills are activated by pressing a combination of the three keys, visible in the screenshots in this post.

In the closed beta test, 10 characters weren’t possible since there were only 4 available for testing. Surprisingly enough, all 4 can be made available for free to you since as your rank goes up, you might get a hero free of charge as a congratulatory gift.

What happens if all your heroes run out, though? You simple take your in-game cash and hire at least one for a limited amount of time before you’re able to play a match. If you lack the funds, you’ll be given enough money to hire a hero for a couple of hours.

Of course, if you can cough up the real-life dough, you can hire one permanently.

The gameplay is surprisingly fun. I initially thought, being a room-based game, the charm of battling other players would wear off, especially since I have a nasty habit of quitting an MMO halfway through due to boredom.

It didn’t.

After my first match, I was on the edge of my seat. When I realised I could hot-swap between characters, I was like “FFFFF AWESOME”. Nothing can possibly provide the thrill of teleporting behind a camper as a Fire Mage and stabbing them in the back as a Knight.


Pretty much the only match I owned.

For the first time in a few years, I was actually enjoying a room-based online game. \( *V*)/

Death occurs in a strange way too. Once your health depletes, your clothing will start to fall off upon every hit. Since your skills are dependent on your clothing (1 piece for every skill), once you’re naked, you are so screwed. If you somehow manage not to get hit, though, you still have a fighting chance (though falling to your doom will still be fatal).

Add to the fact that players can pick up dropped pieces of clothing to mix and match their skills, and you have unpredictable gameplay right there.

Apart from the typical Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes, there are 4 game modes. I’ve only managed to test out the Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch modes though, since I forgot there was a Boss Raid mode available during the CBT.

  • Boss Raid pits several weakened players against a single overpowered human opponent. The non-boss who gets the killing blow becomes the new boss.
  • Crown Control plays like King of the Hill – the team that holds on to the crown the longest wins. Not available in the CBT.
  • Prisoner plays like Team Deathmatch, though defeated players are tied up and have to wait for rescue from their teammates. If an entire team is captured, the opposing team wins. Not available in the CBT.
  • Power Stone – not sure what this is about, though the teaser website describes it as a defense game, in which you have to defend your relic (which powers up anyone around it) from destruction by the opposing team. Not available in the CBT.

The game includes 2 more “modes”, one of which is your HQ. Here, you are free to swap between your characters to practice, or ask the NPC here (which is the only NPC you’ll find in the entire game) to inform you about your currently selected hero while letting you beat him up. Very useful for first-timers, as well as getting used to some of the later heroes.

The other is Plaza mode. It’s a glorified chatroom, really, letting you talk to other players while wandering around (or fighting each other with zero penalties). Nothing to say here, really.

The only customization available appears to be purely aesthetic. Unless you want to change your hairstyle or underpants or something, you’re probably better off saving your money for hiring more heroes.

The UI is sleek, though it’s very obvious that the menu bar at the bottom was designed based off of the Windows XP taskbar. Why they chose that when Windows 7 is around the corner is beside me. Other than that, no real issues here. Skills are the most prominent things on your screen, along with your hero’s icon.

Graphics are pretty impressive, given the 200+ MB size of the game. While I can’t say it’s realistic, the effects, though exaggerated, do help bring out the cute and cartoony side of the heroes. The framerate wasn’t choppy at all on my notebook. Very decent requirements at this time and age, in my opinion.

The only thing that sucked though was the lag. That’s it. I can’t be certain whether it’s their fault or mine since my Internet connection tends to get…unpredictable. This still became a boon for me, since I ended up not being able to kill anyone alone.

Overall, this game surprised me. If you’re bored of room-based brawlers, maybe you should give this a try. The closed beta ends today, though, and I’ll bet that once open beta comes along, more heroes will be available to play with. You’ll probably have even more fun playing with more than the 4 heroes us closed beta testers had to make do with.

  • Gameplay – 9/10
  • Graphics – 8/10
  • Newbie-friendliness – 8/10
  • Controls – 9/10

Overall – 8.5/10

Might review GhostX when the open beta test starts, too. I’ve been told it’s an awesome game as well. But for now, ciao! o/

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