Sword of the New World could be described as the first attempt of an Eastern developer to create something with Western flavor. In this case, K2 Network managed to publish the creation of imcGames, a game that breaks free from the “fantasy” universes and takes a more serious theme: the discovery of the new world, America.


For the ones who didn’t have the chance to read the preview, I will try to present the game at the present stage. For those who read it, most things will be already known.


As you start the game you will find yourself on a boat. The captain of the boat will also give you your first quest. Bring him rum! With no real chance to talk him out of this (imagine a boat with a drunken captain), you must find a bottle of rum and give it to him. 


Soon after, you will reach the shore and land on the first city, Port of Coimbra. After a short tutorial, you will be given the chance to create three more characters. You will be able to choose from a fighter, a wizard, a scout who is also your healer, a musketeer and an elementalist. Each class has its own attributes and these can’t be changed.


The characters you create belong to the same family so you must decide a family name for all your characters and a first name for each of them. As the luxury textiles were quite available for everyone, the costumes that you characters will wear are looking excellent. The baroque theme that lies at the heart of the game gives the characters a noble air, almost forcing you to connect with them. 


After the characters are created, you can only use three of them at a time, but you can add or exclude them as you see fit. Until now, most on the online games allowed you to control only one character. This way they believed that you will form a bond with your character. The drawback was the need to form groups in order to overcome powerful enemies. With this feature, you team will become a deadly squad.


As you plunge into the city of Reboldoeux, the inhabitants will offer you different quests but only if you have the adequate level. There will be no suicide quests given to you. For example, the baker of the city will ask you to bring him a bottle with holy water. But only if you have the required level to enter the tomb where you can find the fountain with this water. There will be plenty of quests for you; you only have to look for them in the city or outside.

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Each character has more than one stance. For example, the fighter has seventeen stances, ranging from the most defensive to the most offensive ones. Depending on what you have equipped, you can choose between several stances. Each stance becomes more powerful as you use them. As they grow stronger, you will unlock up to four special abilities which will give an edge on combat. The scout has five stances, involving both healing and daggers. If you go for healing, you will lack in damage dealt. If you choose to go for damage, you will have to be careful not dying.

To use the abilities of your characters, you will have to use the corresponding hotkey. The UI is very useful and gives you a lot of needed information. This way, you will be able to manage the fights better, with an increased chance of survival.


Because more than half of the quests involve killing certain amounts of baddies, the game comes in your help and gives you a simple solution in handling the grinding process: the orders. You have 4 combat orders and two for team formation. This way, you can tell your team to go defensive, to attack everything on site or to pick all the goods from the ground. You can issue orders for the whole team or for each member. This way, you can fight just the way you want. 


If you die, and this happens mostly if you venture alone, there is no penalty. Sort of. You won’t lose experience, no money, just time. Depending on the level of your dead character, a certain amount of time is needed until he will get back from the dead. And since the enemies travel in hordes, sometimes it will be hard to travel alone without stopping from time to time and getting rid of the enemies.


From time to time, you will have to complete some instances in order to move forward with the story. They will somehow change the story and the way things were. For example, after you manage to defeat Dios Lantem, a renegade old priest who’s hiding behind locked doors of the Al Quelt Moreza temple, you will see floating Dios who will help you exterminate some portals that spawn evil creatures. Too bad you must grind a lot in order to complete the job.
If you feel tired of killing millions of creatures, you are left with two options. PvP and crafting. 


The PvP is still in its infancy and you will have a hard time finding a challenging partner. There are arena battles, clan fights, and the struggle between the Republicans and the Royalists. But the most used mode is the family vs. family. To get into a fight with another family you don’t have to insult them, only to provoke them to a duel. If the other family agrees, you will be teleported to an arena to show who the boss is.


As for the crafters, the things are pretty simple. You don’t need a forge or a workbench, you just buy the recipe and you go with the proper recipe and the needed materials to the person who can craft the items you want.

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Gameplay: 71


Granado Espada brings the grinding to a new level. They also give you the tools to do it in an efficient way. If you like killing creature after creature, then the game is perfect for you. It will make you feel like a farmer sometimes but you’ll get over it eventually. Or not…


Graphics: 76


The Victorian style gives the game a very pretty face. The graphics are well made and the creatures (if you don’t mind the strange combinations like the leaping crocodile or the flying tiger) lend very well in the scenery. The costumes look amazing and the visual effects are perfect for this type of game.


Sound: 78


The soundtrack is a mix of classical music with modern music. Ranging from waltz to techno music, its main goal is not to be boring after a while. There is also a jukebox if you want to change the music on the fly.


Multiplayer: 77


The game is still at its beginning but the servers are doing their job. There are four servers available and no lag was experienced. At the lower levels you will encounter a lot of people but as you advance you will start to get lonely.


Hardware: 80


The game works very well even at big resolutions and no framerate drops were encountered. The game gets patched pretty often so you won’t experience any problems. Let’s hope they will keep up the good work.