Apocalypse Board Online: Review

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Apocalypse Board Online is not like a regular fantasy MMO. When you sign up you are asked to choose the side of either Angels or Demons. The Demons' powers are attack orientated while The Angels' powers are focused on healing.

The basic idea of the game is to develop an army using characters from your chosen side. Each player starts off with four basic characters.

The game is completely PvP orientated with no PvE battling at all. You must choose an arena and conduct a battle with another player. The winner is awarded in-game gold and experience. Gold can be used to upgrade your army and buy new members.

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The in-game graphics are quiet good for a free game. The characters are created in an Anime style, while the graphics around them are fairly basic. The NPC characters are non-interactive as 2D Anime drawings. The graphics are not terrible, but they could be improved upon. Even having a simple flash animation as a welcome from the NPC characters would make a huge difference.

The game's battle layout is like a miniature chessboard, and the battle system is turn-based. Each character is represented by a bust which you can move around the board and command. The battle system is decidedly unique and quiet interesting to take part in, but unfortunately there is rarely any other players online to battle. This actually makes the game unplayable at times because the lack of in-game battling means that you have to rely on other player in order to progress in the game.

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Yellow Gems are awarded to players randomly after a fight. Red gems are awarded to victorious players and blue gems can be obtained by making a sacrifice to the gods. Of course you can always buy gems with real money using Paypal. There is also a fourth gem that is a total rarity in the game, but it too can be bought, for a price.

Gems are used to buy items from the blacksmith, and to make characters stronger. Gems are a necessity if you want a strong army.

Anyone can start a clan. If you're powerful people will join, and you can even charge them. Starting or joining a clan effectively means you are putting your army under partial command of the clan's leader. Clans can buy certain areas of the map to increase their power. Owing an area of the world map is basically a sign of your clan's power, the only way that you can ensure that another clan will not purchase it while you have it is to try and increase its value.

Being part of a clan makes the game much more enjoyable and provides you with a lot more resources.

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The lack of an online community is the game's biggest downfall. It is rare to find more than ten members online at one time. If you find yourself being the only one in a battle arena this means that you, obviously have no one to battle, thus you have no way of levelling or doing anything else in the game.