A Story You’ve Heard Before
The land was peaceful until Asados’s arrived to plunder the land. The gods fought valiantly but even they weren’t powerful enough to stop him, having succumbed to an endless sleep. As the chosen hero, you must do what the gods could not stop the evil Asados.
Rise of Nowlin by Dunia Games is your typical mobile RPG. You play as the chosen hero who must stop an insurmountable evil. Overall, there’s nothing original about the plot. The game localization is far from perfect. Often dialogue doesn’t quite make sense and you may have to read a line a few times before the intended meaning sinks in.
Choose Your Class
Rise of Nowlin offers players five classes to choose from. There’s the typical Warrior, Archer, and Mage classes as well as Assassin and Priest classes. Skills can be directly upgraded under the skills tab. In the Divinity tab, you can level up your character’s divinity stats. Unlike normal stats such as endurance, divinity stats have names like Honor and Mercy. Mercy affects your character’s physical defense and magic resistance while upgrading Honor adds to your magic defense and physical damage.
Other than choosing your character’s gender and class there is absolutely no character customization. For a game that advertises itself to be the greatest mobile MMORPG ever, the lack of customization is a real letdown. While you can’t customize your character, you can change your character’s outfit. However, to purchase an outfit you’ll need blue diamonds which will cost you anywhere from $0.99 to $99.99. While the game doesn’t require you to pay to play it is annoying considering the game’s lack of character customization.
Play well with Others—or Don’t
Rise of Nowlin’s selling point is it’s PvP. You can challenge other players and battle in an arena. Arena battles are fast and fluid and easily the most exciting aspect of the game. Players can also team up to tackle dungeons although it can be difficult to find other players to join you. Using the dungeon’s auto-match feature, I spent a lot of time waiting for the game to match me with other players. Unfortunately, I’m still waiting.
Few mobile MMORPGs have a decent PK system. Rise of Nowlin offers four PK modes- Justice, Rage, Guild, and Camp. Justice mode allows you to attack other players for rewards. Rage mode lets you attack different teams, and Guild mode lets you attack other guilds. Early in the game, you’ll have to decide between joining the light or dark camp. The Camp PK mode allows you to attack members of the enemy camp. I was intrigued by Rise of Nowlin’s promise of PK mode. Unfortunately, I was unable to test this out since I didn’t come across many other players.
Despite these setbacks, Rise of Nowlin isn’t a bad game. It’s just not a great one. The controls are intuitive, and the graphics are beautiful. Combat is straightforward and even though the game localization isn’t always great, it’s easy enough to follow the story. If you’re just looking for a way to pass the time Rise of Nowlin is worth a download. However, if you were hoping for the next Black Desert Mobile you’re out of luck.
Is It Hardcore?
Somewhat.
Rise of Nowlin is a solid RPG. Combat is fluid and the controls are intuitive. While the storyline is subpar and the game localization is poor at times, the game offers four modes of PK and a sweet PvP arena.
