Flyff, the universe and everything

Flyff or Fly for Fun (wow, how catchy...) is the brainchild of Aeonsoft and brought to you by netGames Philippines. This game makes liberal use of the F-word. That’s right, it’s FREE. No monthly payments, no game cards.

So, what exactly are you getting for free?

Where to start? Flyff’s graphics resemble something out of Alice in FractalLand with color schemes by Hello Kitty on shabu. In spite of this, the game world boasts features such as night and day, and even detailed atmospheric touches like rainfall. The music is like a techno-fied carnival calliope, appropriately sickeningly sweet and hip. The game uncomfortably segues into BGM whenever you enter into a fight or die, and like a teenager on a first date, you get the feeling the music doesn’t know quite what to do with itself once it gets started.

The game is almost a straight rip-off of ROSE Online it should be called ROSE with Wings. From the menus, the features, even down to the characters that look like rejects from Willie Wanker and the Choconut Factory, you can see that the two games have so much in common, they should be dating. The characters even start out with the same gear – a wooden sword and the shorts and haircut you wore in Grade 1.

You plod your way past Vagrant (scientific term: Newbius Doesntknowjackis) until you get to level 15, where you can choose one of three basic classes: Assist (Buffs Pahealnamanpoplis), Magician (Blastem Fireballus), and Mercenary (Beatem Toapulpus). From there, you continue the never-ending chain of kill-monster-get-experience-take-loot until level 60, at which point six more advanced occupations become available, including Ringmaster and (drum roll...) a Billposter. Yeah, right. It strikes fear into the hearts of foes, doesn’t it? "Hear me roar! I am a Billposter!" How stoned do I have to be to want a character called a Billposter!?! Wait, let’s not answer that...

Anyway, in order to get to the Fly part of Flyff, you have to accomplish a series of quests until you hit level 20. If you think these quests make life any more interesting, think again. They’re inane scavenger hunts that usually reward you with penya (pineapples – just kidding; it’s in-game money), experience points or items. Rather entertaining fare for eight- to 10-year-olds, but mind-meltingly boring for hardcore MMORPG junkies. All in all, Flyff is a redundantly endless farmfest of slaughtering cute, adorable creatures for sheer greed.

Is the farmfest worth it to get to fly? Honestly, not really. Sure, you get to see everything from up on high but you won’t get the rush of the Quidditch World Cup. Keyboard response time is as fast as a tax rebate. It uses an interface similar to the PS1 game, Vampire Hunter D. It requires you to turn clockwise or counterclockwise as you move forward. There’s a mouse interface, but it gets clunky in a hurry because it also controls camera perspective. End result: you can be moving one way while your character is looking in the opposite direction. Even when flying, you’re forced to face forward no matter which direction you’re headed.

Admittedly, it can be pretty cool surveying the scenery from the clouds and watching the peons slaving on from below. Flyff does present a fairly convincing three-dimensional world. Whereas most MMORPGs feature a landscape or maze that’s generically flat, Fyff does a commendable job of integrating a vertical and horizontal gaming world, a feature usually reserved for more advanced MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft. Cities are layered and stoutly rendered so that what lowly peasants are privy to on the ground is different from what you see in the air. There are ports where you can dock and monsters you can farm in the sky which are far more challenging than what newbies get to trudge through on the ground. 

Monsters advertise their levels to give you an idea of which NPCs to fight to maximize your point yield. Of course, this also means that if you’ve bitten off more monsters than you can chew, you’re on your own. A word of advice on leveling: go after creatures equal to your level. If you keep picking on Aiats, Burudengs and (my favorite monster name) Pukepukes past level 15, be prepared to take a day or two to reach the next level. But be warned – in this MMORPG, the one thing that doesn’t fly is time.