A while back, while doing reviews for Radio SEGA, I did a small review of Spiral Knights a little while after it’s release back in it’s infant days. upon reflection and considering it’s considered to be a “MMO” game (Massivly Multiplayer Online, for those of you not in the know).

Considering that there have been several updates to the game in general, including two low-tier bosses, and more recently a Player vs Player arena type option, I felt like a link to the previous review I had once done for Radio SEGA before I take an updated look and do a re-review of how I believe, in my opinion, the game now stands.

Spiral Knights is a “Free-to-Play Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game”. Developed by Three Rings Design and published by SEGA.

A free-to-play MMO, doesn’t really appeal to me at a perspective off the bat, mainly due to the fact I will know, from experience that it will cost some monetary in-game item. But with this in mind, I hooked up with Capn Cloudchaser and The Tall Guy, and we set about discovering the wonder of what Spiral Knights had to offer.

Jumping headlong in, the character creation screen offers few choices, but enough to get a semi-unique look to get you started. So after spending a few minutes finding something that looked decent and grabbing a name, our newly created hero finds themselves thrust headlong into our tutorial level to learn how to move and attack.

Now, while the tutorial doesn’t show and tell you everything off the bat, you do learn enough to get started. Which is always good in any game. Learn by doing, and you do quite well. Get introduced to some starter enemies, and then proceed thusly into your first town. Where, by talking to some of the ever-present NPC’s you learn about your vendors and also, some lore about the game and area itself.

Your next area, is the intermission “training area” between this hub and your main hub staging areas, and the main thing this part of the tutorial teaches you is the party system. Unlike some other MMO’s, you don’t form your parties in the hub worlds and more when going to your dungeon areas. Now for your tutorial dungeon, you can complete it solo, or you can form and gather a party as you go, when you get into the “main” dungeons you can form your parties from your friends list and guild, which is what we did, and while talking over Skype had a fun time of it as well.

There are a few limitations to just constantly dungeon running though, each floor you trek in requires a cost of 10 energy. Now overly this isn’t an issue, because energy can be regained in a few ways. You can regain 1 energy every 15 minutes, and for you math buffs out there, that would make 25 hours to regain your entire energy bar. So, for something a player can generally empty in the space of 1-2 hours, takes more then a day to refill naturally, and at time of writing, I am unaware if this can happen while you are offline from the game.

You can read the rest of this review as well as many others over on the Radio SEGA forums.

Feel free to mention in the comments below about any SEGA and/or Sonic related games you’d like to see reviewed in the future!

Emerald Coast doesn’t need to advertise for positions, people just appear out of no where to fill roles we never thought were needed, handy isn’t it?

I’d like to take a moment to introduce the latest member of the EC team, Titans Creed. He will be taking on the role of reviewer in conjunction with his work on Radio SEGA, however he will not just be limiting himself to Sonic related items as has generally happened on EC in the past, but take a broader view of games and SEGA in general.

I hope you’ll all join me in welcoming Titans Creed to the team, and look out for more new staff arrivals in the near future.

It’s looking like that for the next two weeks I’m going to be too busy to do Just in Time, currently I’m moving house/changing jobs and hope to return to comics shortly, for now have the next chapter of Back to Reality.

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Have you ever wondered what Escape from the City and Wonderman would sound like if they were combined together? No? Well I don’t blame you, but the result isn’t actually that bad, see below… in fact it’s pretty good.

This seems to have been the result of an argument over on the Summer of Sonic Facebook page… yeah I really don’t want to know. For those of you who liked this, have a download link.

You want a new DtN comic? Well this is your lucky day! Catch!

Okay I’m really starting to the piss with using this to delay the next Just in Time, but you guys are loving it so here’s chapter three of Ian Robb’s Back to Reality.

Hit the jump!

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Those guys over at the Escapist have been busy and have produced another Sonic Unskippable video, this time of Sonic 06… oh god this can’t end well.

I’ll just leave this here.

Once again I have failed to get Just in Time done, never fear though have chapter two of Back to Reality instead.

As usual more after the jump.

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If you hadn’t noticed today is the first official Brony Day… ever! What’s a Brony day, well it’s a day to celebrate all things small cute and pony related… a.k.a. My Little Pony (preferably the only good series which is Friendship is Magic). Now Emerald Coast not being one to miss an opportunity like this has scowered the depths to bring you some awesome fan art from none other Ram the Dragon!

Hit the jump for the second part of this awesome art montage! (continue reading…)