I felt like I may not have given Tarisland a fair shot with my Friday night post, the title of which was supposed to be humorous… and then it blew up and is my most viewed post for June, doubling the view count of the next post on the list, all for somewhat less than 30 minutes of play time.
So I decided on Saturday night to go back and give it a closer look. I hadn’t even made it to level 2, so aside from not liking right-click to move, I hadn’t really established anything about the game.
Available for your displeasure
First I had to get over the whole movement scheme of the game. My thought was that, as a title that is increasingly being branded as a mobile title with a PC port, I should maybe try it on mobile. So I got out my 9th Gen 64GB iPad, a model that was discontinued just last month, to give it a go.
And it sort of worked. I got the app downloaded from the App Store and was able to log in with my account, so it is all the same server structure. I couldn’t remember if cross-play was a feature, but it looks like it is.
That same video intro plays here as well
I even got into the world with my initial character… however it stubbornly refused to move him around the landscape. This was worse that right-click move.
I don’t know if you can’t cross-play characters, but it was not having it with Wilhelm the paladin. So I made a fresh character, a barbarian, who are fierce looking cat people, because of course cat people in an Asian MMORPG, named Stormlord.
Welcome Stormlord
I seem to get whatever name I try first… not sure if that is a good sign.
Anyway, with the new character I was able to move. Quite easily, honestly, once I found the on-screen joystick control. It takes a bit of getting used to… or did for me, but I am also not much of a mobile gamer. For me the ideal title on a tablet is a board game converted to digital. Something like Ticket to Ride is perfect on the iPad, if for no other reason than the cats won’t jump on the board and start smacking the pieces around.
So I got that going and was able to do the initial bit of combat and even got through the simulated boss fight.
Okay Janet, we’ll do it your way
That went as expected, though that was also where the tablet movement scheme started to show its edges. Handling the camera and your movement and combat while holding a tablet… well, that might be a bit beyond me at my age. But I got through it and into the start of the game… and things stopped.
There was a memory problem and the game was telling me it couldn’t download anything despite there being a good 15GB of free space left on the iPad.
Eventually after powering the iPad off and booting it up again… have you tried turning off then back on remains the staple of IT responses for a reason… I was able to get logged back in where I waited for the game to download its stuff.
Filling up my iPad with one MMO
Also, it says on there that I should get a reward for doing that, but I never saw one show up.
That got me past the memory issue and into the game proper where I was able to start off on the first few quests and… again, I feel like I need an extra hand to manage this on a tablet. But I got through the quests to the big reveal where you stand and admire the view of Tarisland.
Welcome to Taris Land or something
All of which made me think that I ought to go back to the PC version and buckle down a bit to get further than I did. So off I went down that path again, but this time around with a bit of planning. But that is for the next post. I am going to get at least three posts out of my time in Tarisland.
I will say that, control difficulties aside, which once again are just a “me” thing, the game on the iPad is the same as the one on the PC. So cross platform success! Yay! Now, is it worth bringing a mobile title to PC?
The Ancient Gaming Noob 