Throne and Liberty Review – Guild Up and Go

Throne and Liberty Review

Decades after games like Everquest and World of Warcraft began to define the MMORPG genre, developers are still birthing new ones, hoping to siphon enough players from some other game to theirs. There are at least a few types of MMORPG fans. One group consists of dedicated players who form strong, years-long ties to a guild or group of friends and a specific game. For those folks, the PvP experience is key. At the other extreme are solo players who look to an MMORPG for what’s essentially a never-ending open-world PvE game. It’s rare that any MMORPG successfully meets the demands of both groups. NCSoft’s Throne and Liberty — which started life as a sequel to Lineage II —  is the latest contender.

Throne and Liberty was released in the Asian market in 2023. Amazon Games is publishing it in the West, with a release date of October 1. It checks a lot of familiar Korean MMO boxes: free-to-play, pay-to-win, and heavily focused on multiplayer PvP. Players looking for a rich solo experience or lavish PvE content won’t be entirely disappointed, but Throne and Liberty might not hold their attention for long.

One Chance to Make a First Impression

In lots of ways, Throne and Liberty starts off strong, with exciting cinematics and music. The narrative seems like an aggregate of fantasy story tropes with absolutely random sounding names: Solsium (your homeland) and Kazar the Wraith of Conquest (the big bad). Your task is to collect fragments of the magical Star of Sylaveth. For a game that asks you to invest hundreds of hours in its world, I wish that the story started on a firmer, more comprehensible foundation.

Opening cinematics give way to a relatively deep character creator that is not nearly as cringe (skeezy) as in some Korean MMOs. There are no classes. Instead, Throne and Liberty bases character development on their choice of weapons. Players have a choice of two: Crossbow, Dagger, Greatsword, Longbow, Staff, Sword & Shield, and Wand. Each obviously have a deep set of upgradable skills and a big part of the system’s fun is making two distinct builds around each. The recent Soulslike Enotria does something similar with its mask system. I found myself most often using a Greatsword and Staff. The spells fired more slowly than with the wand, but did more damage.

Next, our character is sent out into the world to follow the glowing breadcrumb trail from quest to quest. Very early on you realize that one of Throne and Liberty’s mechanics is a literal game changer. Your character can morph into several different animal forms for rapid land traversal, another set for air, and a third group for swimming. To be clear, this is mostly just rapid sprinting in the guise of magic transformation, but still, kind of fun.

World View

The quests themselves are not especially remarkable in terms of design, but they do a great job of encouraging the player to take in the sights and participate in a variety of tasks and events. Of course, almost every quest results in combat of one type or another. Whether ranged or melee, magic or blade, attacks are of the auto-combat variety. Where Throne and Liberty differs is the inclusion of real-time defensive moves like blocks and parries. It doesn’t turn the game into a real-time ARPG but it helps to keep the player more engaged.

Outside the main story quest and sidequests, the solo player has some additional content to explore in the form of world events and dungeons. There are massive battles around World Bosses that turn from PvE events to free-for-alls pitting players against the boss and each other. There’s a tower dungeon that likewise turns from PvE in the daytime to PvP at night, which certainly means death to a single player. In summary, outside of the main, not incredibly inspired quest/campaign, solo players will find Throne and Liberty progressively less rewarding. However, for guilds and groups of friends, the main quest is just the appetizer to a very full meal.

Amazing Performance

Throne and Liberty manages to be, and remain, visually impressive throughout. The world is colorful and detailed, the variety of biomes, monsters, and animals impressive and the whole thing runs exceptionally well. Battles with dozens or even hundreds of players somehow don’t technically fall apart. High production values extend to the game’s sometimes soaring music and perfectly decent voice acting. Ok, the little cutesy Helpie character is incredibly annoying, no matter what form they come in.

Throne and Liberty is a free-to-play game, with two currencies. Sollant is the in-game currency that’s earned by questing and combat, and you use it for skill and weapon upgrades and buying consumables. Lucent is the premium currency purchased with real-world money. You can spend it in the cash shop on cosmetics and some basic fast-track packages. You can also buy and use Lucent in the auction house, paying for higher-level gear or upgrade mats that would take many hours to earn in-game. It’s less like pay-to-win than someone paying for a Fast Pass at Disneyland. Everyone goes on the same ride eventually, only some people get there a lot faster. It’s easy to conceive of guilds using the system to become as competitive as quickly as possible.

Long Term Prognosis

I really enjoy Throne and Liberty’s colorful world, detailed environments, and engaging combat. Though the story is pretty uninspired, the game is technically polished and that alone is worthy of praise. But as a primarily solo player, the game isn’t for me in the long run. That’s not really a criticism, because being built for groups isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. That was true back at the dawn of MMORPGs and sometimes it’s still true. I think Throne and Liberty has a lot of promise to succeed at launch and grow beyond it.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***