Atlus, maker of the Persona series and with a pretty long line of fun Japanese-style RPGs, is bringing their Steampunk MMO, Neo Steam, to our gear-strewn shores.
Apparently Neo Steam has been available in Asia for quite some time, but the version we’re going to be getting has new content, more localization, and just better all around. Which can only be a good thing, because the game as it stands now doesn’t look that interesting.
And here’s why.
First of all, the setting. Neo Steam is set in a world where two countries are battling over control of the precious resource, Neo Steam, which powers their battle machines. One country uses magic, the other focuses on technology.
Mistake #1. Steampunk is set in Victorian/Edwardian England. That’s, like, a RULE. I don’t see any waistcoats or bustles in the screen shots. It looks like standard fantasy fare, except with more pipes and gauges.
Don’t even start with me on China Mielville. YES, his stuff was Steampunk. NO, it didn’t take place on Earth. But he evoked the sense of Industrial Revolution Europe, and that’s all we really ask? Neo Steam evokes… Japanese F2P fantasy games.
Secondly, the entire game seems set up mostly to provide a setting and a reason for PvP. That isn’t a bad thing. Lots of people love PvP, and few do cutthroat battle like those hardcore Eastern gamers. But that’s not what I’m looking for. If I want roving death bands of high level players to continually kill me, laughing at me and performing perverse acts to my corpse while ridiculing me in broken English — I can just play Darkfall. The fact that my sword includes some knobs, a gauge and little jets of steam won’t matter that much to me.
Nah. In Steampunk, you dress too warmly, never say what you mean but you ALWAYS mean what you say, manners are precise and bad manners, uncouth. And when you invite your colleagues to your drawing room and show them your time machine, they will sip sherry and smoke cigars and discuss, in general terms, the disposition of your estate after you’re sent to Bedlam. After you subsequently disappear into the mists of time itself, they will likely admit to each other the bad manners of dematerializing without alerting the proper authorities.
THAT’S steampunk. To me, anyway.
Still, head over to Neo Steam’s web site and register for the beta because, you know, it’s STEAMPUNK!
So the combat is not turn based like the good Atlus games?
That above screen looks painful btw… PS1 graphics?
Screenshots just show standard F2P MMO-fare.
I’m not really that jazzed about it, but I’m not going to just dismiss it out of hand.
I just would have rather they’d have used the same definition of steampunk that the rest of the world appears to use — a warped and somewhat fantastical version of Industrial Revolution-era Europe, especially England. Jules Verne. HG Wells. James Blaylock. KW Jeter. Tim Powers. Y’know — steampunk!
Not some bizarre fantasy world. Technology vs Magic? But both based on Neo Steam?
That does certainly not look steampunk:ish. If that is steampunk, then even WoW could be called steampunk – there are techie gnome stuff in that game, after all.
Even City of Heroes would be more steampunk – you can do steampunk:ish outfits and you have the Nemesis army to fight – definitely steampunk-inspired.
I played this in Beta format several months ago. I never did find it all that compelling, and some design decisions outright baffled and frustrated me. I’m all for trying out new games, especially F2P ones, and I love good steampunk, but NeoSteam just didn’t do much for me. I wouldn’t say it’s bad, especially, just nothing special.
Sorry for the double post, but I’m looking forward to Gatheryn for steampunk. Whether or not it’s done well, I’m not sure, but at least someone else is trying.
Gatheryn? Huh, not heard of it.
/em heads for Google.
OMFG! Pfffft forget Neo Steam. Gatheryn is IT.
K just a couple of things to point out, I started int eh original Neo Steam run by gameworks and played it for a god time. Heres a couple of flaws with the current conception of the game.
1. It’s not supposed to be a steampunk game, it’s supposed to be a steampunk BASED game… big difference, and I am sorry if you were looking for the classic cross ties and cravats style.
2. The graphics, (though not Ps3 or 360 good) are pretty good for a F2P game that as we can see has had little popularity up until the big companies like Atlus or Gamogi have picked it up.
3. I personally loved the gameplay, it has a near perfect leveling curve, making it easy to start up and get you into the actual game. It has a large amount of enemies, quests, sidequests, and other such things so that the game doesn’t just become an annoying grindfest.
4. It isn’t NEARLY as bad on the “roving death bands of high level players to continually kill me” and you can actually avoid the enemies nation altogether by staying in your own nation instead of going to the neautral zone known as Rear Land. Your own nation isn’t allowed to kill you so if you want just a boring no risks involved hit, kill, hit, kill..etc. type game, don’t go where theres a chance to die.
I loved the game, I had many high level characters (and it didn’t take me a lifetime to get them there, though I never got to max out a character) and I’m hoping Atlus does well with it’s edits.
Cool, thanks for the hands-on about the game! I’ve joined up with Atlus Online, and I’m hoping to be able to check out the beta when it happens so I can speak about the game with a little bit of experience with it.
But yes, as you point out in your first point, I was more or less looking for something along the traditional concept of steampunk, which we’ve definitely seen from Asia before. Steamboy, for instance, was a somewhat traditional Steampunk-flavored world, as is Full Metal Alchemist, though I think that latter might be straying more into the full-on fantasy that seems to inspire Neo Steam.
I’ll definitely be giving it a shot.
Yep, the only unfortunate thing that ive found is that Atlus plans on taking awhile to get their “updated and localized” version up to date (note the quotes weren’t meant to mock I was quoting Sporkle)
and yes, ignoring my spelling and grammar issues, my first post pretty well sums up how I feel about Neo Steam, I knew almost everything i needed to about the original though, so hopefully this new version will be new enough to give me the fun of learning again.
ps1 graphics? i think, true. i would still like to try it tho. my main dilemma is the download of the ob client. approx 897mb and no torrent option, it would take a while. not to mention the instability of my dsl that forces me to restart the download over and over again. i haven’t even got thru 25% of the download yet.