My quest for a great F2P game: Part One – “City of Steam”

They say you get what you pay for, and in the realm of free to play online games, I’ve gathered that much of this is true.  Still, there are some gems out there that shine like diamonds in a boggy mass of poo, just calling to people to come and pick it up.  Games like “League of Legends” come to mind when I think of, “Successful Free to Play Games”.  

Unfortunately, “City of Steam” isn’t really one of these gems.  

I really WANT to like this game, and considering I really haven’t devoted much time to it yet and it’s only a couple of days into open beta, I may still be somehow amazed by something while playing it.  Highly doubtful, though.

“City of Steam” is a game in a steampunk universe with demons that crawl out of towers landing from space.  Right… 

But, because I like steampunk, and I’m trying to find a wider variety of games to play in the F2P universe, I created an account.  The character creation page is somewhat dull, with very few choices to make your character “unique”.  All in all, you’ll still look like everyone else.  

It is nice that you get experience, gold, and items during the tutorial, which make it worthwhile to play, but I found myself just flying through the dialog boxes.  After a couple of interactions, I completely lost interest in what was actually going on, and just wanted the next quest in my log.  It doesn’t matter if you read the quest or not, because you can just click on it and it takes you directly where you need to be (which, quite frankly, I find handy, but non immersive).  

The dungeons are very Diablo-esque in nature, with the player being able to pop in an instanced version of the dungeon to complete missions, and timed runs (which are actually kind of cool, and probably the highest point I’ve found so far in this game).  Speaking of dungeons, there are a lot (A LOT) of dungeons.  From what I’ve heard, around 80 or so.

There’s also a transmuter, which takes these special coins that you get during gameplay.  It’s kind of confusing at first, but basically it works like Texas Hold’em and Press Your Luck mashed together to earn money and prizes.  Some of the items you get, though, expire in a matter of hours, so you have to pick and choose what kind of prize outcome you’re looking for.

Overall, though, this game feels like some sort of cross between “Crystal Saga“, “Sword of the New World“, and “Torchlight“, all of which are good games in their own right, but which probably shouldn’t mix together.  Game play is average, controls are easy, and artwork is mediocre.  For being a mostly average game with a slight punch up because of the timed dungeon runs, I’d give this game a 3.5/5 and suggest that you don’t quit all your other games just for this one.