Asda Story Graphics & Interface In-Depth Review (09/11/2009)

Most people seem to have the feeling at first glance that Asda Story is resembles Kingdom Hearts: big shoes and goofy clothing. The graphics are not ground-breaking, but are quite good for a F2P game. A shader was recently added which makes the game much shinier. If you don't like the new shiny Asda Story, which of course will cost some Asda Story Gold, you can just turn the shader off. There is also a glow effect which creates a slightly softer, more vivid environment.

The interface is quite easy mastered and is not too cluttered. Most things are changable or collapsible, but it may be in trouble to deal with on small screens. For most windows there are hotkeys which you can set. A versatile chat system has been added recently that allows you to create your own chat tabs and choose what types of chat to show in them.

Why not a full 10/10 in Asda Story? The graphics lack some options, and occasionally there are bugs. With the water reflection option turned on, at some angles your water will be black. There is no anti-aliasing option, meaning the graphics always have sharp edges. There are no quality settings for any of the graphics either, but this may not be a big deal considering the already simple graphics. That may even be a strong point for some, as the game does not require an amazing graphics card to play.

Interface-wise, the new chat system contains a very annoying bug that makes it so the chat will scroll even when someone speaks in a channel you have hidden. This almost defeats the purpose of the new chat system. One last minus I give to the interface/handling is the fact that you can only have one hotkey set shown at a time. You can have 5 hotkey sets with F1-F5, but switching between them is a hassle in battle. At higher levels you may find yourself wishing you could have extra hotkey slots by doing ALT+1-0 or CTRL+1-0 like many popular games have given us.