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This concept is really all Silkroad has in terms of a story. You play as an adventurer, choosing several pre-made males, females and demons hoping to make their fortune on the aforementioned silk road. That is the extent of the story in Silkroad Online with the idea being that you have no pre-set destiny and are instead allowed to choose your own path on the road of riches. In doing this, SRO avoids many of the typical clich� RPG stories such as being the chosen one and/or saving the world, but foregoing a story altogether is not a proper substitute. What it lacks in story though, Silkroad makes up for in graphical presentation. Simply put, the graphics are amazing, considering the fact that this game is free. The world is completely 3D with a graphical style reminiscent of that found in Guild Wars. Character models are also excellent and feature small, clearly visible details in armour, weapons and skin.

A Thief Stands Ready To Raid Merchants

The monsters are no slouches either, being drawn from Oriental mythology, ranging from tigers and bandits to Straw men and Demon Horses. It would have been nice if there was a similar range in terms of character models as you only have around ten to fifteen models to choose from.

As for the environments, it�s a bit of a mixed bag. The cities, though there are only three, are beautifully detailed with each possessing a unique design. From the traditional Chinese City of Jangan to the marble and jewel-encrusted Arabian City of Hotan, the cities are truly something to admire. The wilderness by contrast, is somewhat stale, with bland and repeating textures making for rather dull adventuring. Ever so often though, you come across an ornate landmark that shows that the developers put at least some effort into the aesthetics of the environment. This all comes at a cost as the graphics will bring even some high end PCs to their knees; particularly when in the heavily populated cities. That�s not to say though, that by running the game on low graphics you will abolish lag. Lag in this will game be an ever-present problem with periodic spikes at random intervals and often at the most inopportune times as well as a spike whenever you enter cities. A lot of this lag has to do with the amount of players on your server.

With that said, graphics only make up half of a game�s presentation. The other half is Sound and in this department Silkroad stumbles a bit. As far as music goes, the songs are varied and well done, but limited to the intro screen and cities. When in the wilderness, you will only hear occasional and often very annoying sounds of nature such as an irritating bird cry or the repetitive clopping of your horse�s hooves. SRO does feature a robust set of sound options however, allowing you to switch on or off the many sounds of the game, ranging from nature and alarm sounds to those heard in combat.

Presentation aside, Silkroad Online revolves around combat more than anything else and most of the decisions in the game relate to it. It starts right after choosing your character�s appearance as you�re given the choice of a starting weapon between two types of swords, spears or a bow followed by choosing a type of armour. The choice only affects your starting equipment, which can be altered soon after, but none the less, this will shape your early gameplay experiences.

After creating your character you are thrown headfirst into the world of Silkroad with little help or guidance other than a bare bones introductory quest that has you running errands around the city. These errands aren�t made any easier by the click to move system which, while acceptable in a top-down MMORPG, is cumbersome at best in the fully 3D world of Silkroad Online. Add in the non-existent path finding that will have your character stuck on every lamp and hay bail they come near and a by the numbers interface and you are not off to a good start. Sadly, that errand running quest is a highpoint as far as quests go in Silkroad as they quickly become repetitive combat quests with goals such as kill X of this monster or collect X of this item from monster corpses. Also, the game isn�t shy from piling on the requirements for a quest, requesting several hundred monsters to be killed for a small reward. This amounts to a lot of monster farming/grinding (killing monsters repeatedly) to gain experience levels and a small amount of gold compared to the amount you get from killing all of those monsters.

After completing a few quests it quickly becomes apparent how unfriendly SRO is towards new players. The game gives explanations that only scratch the surface of issues and while a help guide is present, it to gives little more than an overview. It doesn�t help that the text is riddled with translation errors that make many of the instructions demand several readings to fully understand. This is particularly true in the case of quests where, upon gaining a level, several new quests are made available to you and the quest givers are displayed in a small popup. The problem is that once you read the popup it disappears permanently, meaning that if you later forget one of the quest givers (there are usually several) it�s tough luck for you. This lack of information not only applies to quests however, as it hinders many aspects of the game. Equipment traits are another example of the overall lack of information. On a piece of equipment it may state that it possesses the Immortal trait, though, it gives no mention of the fact that this means the equipment can�t be broken when performing Alchemy (a method of improving equipment by combining other items with it). If confused about where to get quests, often the simplest solution to your problem (short of looking it up on a forum) is to grind.

A Player In Berserker Mode
	"As you rack up kills, you fill a berserk meter that, when full, turns you into a demon with enhanced speed and damage. Berserk mode gives you a real sense of power as you tear through enemies with an accompanying boom to go along with your enhanced blows."

At its core, Silkroad Online is centered on the killing of monsters over and over (grinding) and it�s a precursor to every other activity in the game. Whether you want to make money, fight other players or just explore the map, all require many hours of killing the same monsters again and again to do so. Right off the bat, if you have a dislike of large amount of monster grinding, this not the game for you as you will spend most of your time doing it. Worse still if you die you will loose experience and can actually drop in level, which proves to be infinitely frustrating. To combat this SRO features auto potion system to administer potions after your health or magic points fall below a certain level which is a life saver during lag spikes. Additionally, a robust party matcher works to quickly find parties that share your goals anywhere on the server. A couple of one-use experience enhancements are given to you off the start as well, but they won�t get you more than few levels before they wear off. As far as the combat goes, SRO does have a few innovations to make the combat and gaining of levels a little bit less monotonous. Sadly it only lasts for a minute and than your back to old-fashioned grinding, but it certainly is an exciting minute. Additionally, several skills add a bit of flare to combat; though most of them require a considerable amount of grinding to obtain. This is partly due to the unique experience system Silkroad uses. Simply put, Silkroad Online has a lot of different forms of experience with the two most important ones being Experience points and Skill points. Experience points are straight forward as they�re gained as you do quests and kill monsters and increase your overall strength as well as allow you to use higher end equipment. Skill points on the other hand, affect the amount and strength of your skills and are gained separately from experience points. Additionally, they effect your overall mastery of a weapon type (spear, sword, bow) and magic (fire, lightning, ice, healing). What�s interesting however, is that if you choose not to put skill points into your mastery level and instead hoard them or place them into improving individual skills, you will actually reduce the rate at which you gain Experience points but increase the rate at which you gain skill points. While this does give you the potential to improve your skills considerably at a lower level, it requires even more grinding so it is usually only used by the truly dedicated.

Other forms of experience include guild experience, which gives more options to guild members as it�s amassed, and profession experience, which makes you better at one of the three professions in SRO. These three professions, obtainable at level 20, are the Merchant, Thief and Hunter. Once at 20, you are able to buy equipment that will turn you into anyone one of the three professions, though you can switch between them as much as you want. Each profession is unique and offers the potential for large amounts of profit, but are connected to the other two. Merchants purchase goods from a special NPC in one city and than transport the goods on a caravan to another city and sell it to the corresponding merchant there. Along the way, they can be attacked by monsters as well as thieves who can kill the merchant�s caravan and take the dropped goods to resell them. Hunters exist to protect the merchants, offering out bodyguard services to merchants wishing make the dangerous trip between any of the three cities. Overall, the professions work fairly well, mainly due to the community being quite supportive as Hunters will often help out new merchants on their trip for free and will guard the gates of the cities to scare protect merchants as they near the city. Thieves likewise will work together to take down merchants and split the profit. The only major problem with the professions is that it comes back to monster grinding again. To even obtain a profession you must get to level 20 which requires many hours of play. From there, to be effective (particularly as a Thief or a Hunter) you need to grind for several levels more to ensure that you can take on your adversaries.

If you would rather forgo the Player vs. Player profession system altogether, you can still make money selling items you obtained from killing monsters (grinding again). Selling your items is a simple process as you can either trade directly with other players or you can set up a stall and sell your goods from there. A stall can be set up virtually anywhere (I don�t recommend monster infested areas though) and can have dialog placed over it. People then walk up and buy the goods placed there for your pre-set price. There are a few problems with selling from a stall however, the first being that you aren�t the only one with a stall. Cities are clogged with stalls to the point where movement is hindered due to the inability to not click some part of the city thanks to a stall being in the way. Additionally, there are so many stalls selling things (usually at grossly inflated prices) that unless you can find a way to stand out, you will be unable to sell your goods. To solve such problems, an Item Mall is present in Silkroad that allows you to by aesthetic upgrades for your stall as well as a host of other items. The catch is that a currency called Silk is required to purchase them. To get Silk, you must send real money to Joymax in exchange for the virtual Silk. The money likely goes towards supporting and keeping SRO free and is an interesting way for fans to both show support and be rewarded. Joymax did a good job of ensuring that the items make life easier for the players without giving them a huge advantage. You will find no super equipment available in the item mall; instead things such as Experience enhancements, pets and teleportation scrolls are the orders of the day and work to make game play a little bit easier for players who support Silkroad.

Overall, how much you enjoy Silkroad Online is based directly on how well you can handle long periods of grinding. Despite having several innovations including a robust, player run economy and a Player vs. Player profession system also based on profit, all which require large amounts of grinding to get anywhere with, the economy works to sell equipment and supplies that lets you grind more effectively and the professions themselves require a high level of experience to make any money at. That said, the game is free and you will be hard pressed to find a free MMORPG with higher production values so it may be worth your time to check it out. If however, you place any value on story or have an aversion to spending many, many hours grinding away through the same monsters again and again stay well away as this isn�t the game for you. If you can manage to get through the grinding though, there is some fun to be had as you get into the higher levels including large profits from your preferred profession as well as the ability to fight in wars between player made guilds.