City of Steam – first impressions of a browser MMORPG

There are most likely far more MMORPGs on the market today than I could possibly have even heard of. Some of them are good and some of them are bad while yet more are abysmally brain scarring. So what makes City of Steam worth turning my critical gaze upon? You don’t have to download a thing to play it. City of Steam is a 3D MMORPG that is played entirely in your web browser. That’s pretty remarkable in my experience (though please do leave a comment if you know of others), but is it a good game? That’s going to be pretty dependent on who’s playing, but I’ll give you a run down on my first impressions.

What it does

I believe I can… hover.

City of Steam is a free to play MMORPG that delivers a 3D experience directly through your browser without the need to download a thing. It’s being developed by Mechanist Games and published by Reality Squared Games. So it’s got the sorts of elements you would probably expect – leveling, equipment that uses the now standard rarity color scheme, mounts, guilds, and the like all with a steampunk theme. However, all of the combat up until you hit the Iron Wastes happens in instanced dungeons and many quests (at least early in the game) are completed solo. Thus, the MMO part of the game seems to generally happen in perfectly peaceful common areas where you pick up your quests and go shopping.

The story is pretty decent steampunk fare for those that dig that sort of thing. A giant spire falls from the sky and begins spewing forth the unnatural brood within it. This awakens the long dormant giant robot guardian of the city that immediately launches a counterattack against the spire. Things go sideways and you need to fight your way to the rail station to catch a steam powered rail-hauler and flee to the city of Nexus to start your new life.

Gritty and mechanical

First, I’m absolutely amazed by the quality of graphics that can be achieved in a browser game. Sure, it’s not as crisp and detailed as other MMORPGs that require several gigabytes of hard drive space, but it ain’t shabby. Everything is mechanically enhanced to give it that steampunk aesthetic that I am only somewhat familiar with personally. Of course every environment is steam filled, but they’re also rather vibrant. There’s a lot more environmental variation in the dungeons than I would have expected and I’m only in the first area of the game.

One of the features that anyone playing City of Steam for a while is going to be interested in is the transmuter. It’s basically a big machine with seven slots on it that are randomized when you expend a transmutation orb. Symbols in each slot can be locked down and you can spend another orb to spin the unlocked slots again and repeat. There’s a heat mechanic to it that prevents you from doing this endlessly, but the more matching symbols you get, the better your reward. You can get cosmetic items (which do have stat bonuses), vehicles, pets, and jetpacks that are all temporary items which expire after a set period.

Awesome… but how does it play?

Mechanized skeletons? Who does that?

It handles like a target and hotkey style MMORPG. Admittedly, I’ve only played an arcanist so far, but it’s been pretty effective. The other available classes are warder (melee fighter) and gunner (ranged dps). There’s an option for switching between dual wielding, two handed weapon, or weapon and shield in combat even as a magic user. Plus you get to do the whole talent tree thing to choose powers as you level.

So while characters are pretty cool and interesting, I was personally less enthralled by the quests and dungeons. I get that it’s limited by being a browser game and I shouldn’t expect a lot dynamic content or anything, but kill everything in sight is getting a little old for quests. Then there’s the limited inventory space (presumably you’ll pay for more) that gets badly filled by separate stacks of the same item because some are character bound while others are not. The enemies encountered in the dungeon are sufficiently varied, so that’s a plus. However, even at low levels I’m starting to feel a bit of a grind. I haven’t jumped into the pvp part of the game because I generally don’t enjoy that aspect of games and wouldn’t have any well informed insights to share.

My recommendation: it’s certainly worth a look

Even though I’m not particularly enthralled with the kind of grindy feel I’m getting from the dungeons, there are a lot of cool things to check out in City of Steam. At the very least, it’s worth seeing just what a browser based MMORPG is capable of when a company really decides to take on something this ambitious. And of course, it’s still just in open beta with promises that May 31st will bring a new level cap, new races, new events, new content, and new systems. It’s hard to say exactly where this game is going to go, but I know I’ll keep checking back in to watch it change and progress.