Not satisfied with his daily intake of cuteness, Chris "Pwyff" Tom decided to check out Seal Online; an MMORPG that lives up to its name in cuddly graphics. But is that all there is?
After playing a few games that have held me enamoured by their cuteness factor alone, a reader requested that I try out an MMORPG called Seal Online, a game that looks to be in the baby panda spectrum of the national cute meter. Being a bit irked by North American 'cuteness' standards in their character creation (seriously SWG, your Wookies look like tree carvings) I decided that trying out a game on the power of its cuteness couldn't possibly lead to a bad experience.
In fact, I won't really say that Seal Online Cegel was a bad gaming experience, per se, but I will note that this game is just quite... shallow. More on that later. Seal Online was developed by YNK Partners Inc and was published twice in North America, the first time by Grigon Entertainment, which made a website, announced their publishing intentions, and then disappeared. The game is now published by YNK Interactive and is actually only about a year and a half old. In this regard, Seal Online promises to be kept up fairly well in events and updates for at least the next year or two, especially considering the fact that it appears to be self-published by its developers (YNK Partners and YNK Interactive). Only veterans of the Korean MMORPG port can attest to just how annoying it is to know that the North American version of your game is ten 'content expansions' behind because the Korean developers seem to hate the North American publishers.
Unfortunately, where Seal Online Cegel does not seem to feel very 'updated' is in their game mechanics - as this thing plays a lot like Ragnarok Online turned 3D. The problem is, obviously, that Ragnarok Online is about 5 years older than Seal Online. There are a total of six classes available in Seal Online - the Knight (tank), the Warrior (dps), the Mage, the Priest, the Jester (aka Thief), and the Craftsman. Players have the option of starting out as a 'Beginner' and then changing their class at level 10. After that, the game offers players the opportunity to diversify their class with another class change at... level 150. Some observers may note that level 150 is not that high in a game like Seal Online, but I can assure you that it's a fairly long haul to hit that century and a half. In this regard, then, players will unfortunately find themselves progressing with equipment and skills, but will have to work quite hard to experience that coveted class change more than once.
