Throne and Liberty Review

Some games have a rocky start and bounce back, and others fade into obscurity. Then there are the ones somewhere in between. MMORPGs have always been extremely popular in East Asia, often being free-to-play with numerous pay-to-win components. More often than not, that doesn’t matter, as the gameplay remains engaging and somewhat fun, at least for the first five or so hours.

Throne and Liberty is a game that follows much of the same pattern but manages to do a little bit more. Developed by NCSOFT and produced by Amazon Game Studios, Throne and Liberty saw an initial release in Korea in December 2023. At that time, it was not well-received. Despite that, the game underwent extensive changes to make combat more efficient and accessible and tone down its pay-to-win elements. 

The game has much of the hallmarks of an average free-to-play MMORPG, with a few quirks here and there. Throne and Liberty mostly revolves around PvP elements, with some PvE still present. The game isn’t exactly class-based, but it still relies on the formula of Tank-Healer-DPS, like many MMORPGs. 

These roles have some ambiguous boundaries, and you can play around odd builds, but while the game might allow you to do that, you won’t get too far in the complex systems present in the Throne and Liberty.

Once you complete the game’s somewhat long and detailed tutorial, you will start off with a few quests. You will spawn in a small city called Kastleton. You can find some NPCs along the usual contracts, storage, merchants, and healers here.

As you progress through Throne and Liberty, you will periodically unlock parts of the game by completing certain milestones. These range from raids, bosses, and various events to PvP, PvE, and Co-Op events. These events are often limited-time, but there are always different events going on. These events are an added way to progress faster in the game, as they give you a few items. 

Throne and Liberty has a day-night cycle, wherein the enemies get progressively stronger at night, adding a neat and niche layer. This also extends into weather, as the game also has dynamic weather, which can affect certain weapons.

The main story progresses through a number of quests dubbed ‘Adventure,’ which split the story into chapters and include some side quests. There’s also another side-quest option related to the world, dubbed ‘Exploration,’ where you do certain tasks, explore the map, and get rewarded with items and such.

You can also go into ‘dungeons,’ where you dive into levels, either by yourself or in a six-man squad, and fight enemies to get certain items. These dungeons vary in difficulty, and often, you’ll find yourself stuck in one, leaving, grinding up some levels, and then coming back and repeating the process.

The final content piece is the contracts you will unlock as you go to different towns and places. These contracts will reward you with items and so on. You will naturally want to play with friends, and you do this via the guilds. 

Fans of the MMORPG genre will know exactly what guilds are, but for the uninitiated, you can create or join a guild and be a part of a team or faction. These guilds have different offerings and items you can get from the guild merchant.

You have a few main stats and more than a few specific stats like hit, evasion, and so on. As you level up, you can get more of these stats. You level up your equipment via ‘equipment enchanting,’ which upgrades them and improves their stat. You enchant these items with growth stones, which are split into color-coded types based on an item’s rarity. So, you can only use growth stones of one rarity on the weapon of the same rarity.

If you have a lot of growth stones of a certain rarity, especially lower ones, you have quite a few ways of transferring the ‘levels’ from those items/growth stones to another item of a different rarity. These vary in methods and efficiency and often take a bit of grinding.

You have access to a rune system, where you can gain runes and use hammers, also found in the game, to hammer rune synergies in your equipment. Synergies are essentially a fancy term for having your equipment in its best state.

You can access seven weapon types, each with an accompanying skill set. These are the Dagger, Sword, Sword & Shield, Longbow, Crossbow, Staff and Wand. You can choose between all of these weapons, despite your role, but some weapons just go well with certain roles. You can equip yourself with two weapons, one in the off-hand and one in the main hand. 

Your skills are split into three types. Passive Skills, Active Skills, and Defense Skills. You use books that get from quests to level these skills up, and this is the primary way you level up your weapons. Books are limited resources, so investing them in the right place is key. 

You have a large skill specialization tab, which acts as a tech tree. Here, you can select from a large array of skills, along with their upgrades. These skills are all fun and varying, allowing you to try out multiple builds. 

You also have access to Morphs and Amitois. Morphs are essentially your mounts, and they come in 4 categories based on each environment type. Amitois are, for lack of a better term, adorable pets that follow you around and collect loot for you. 

These are all of the different buffs and bonuses, and the more you get or collect, the more bonuses you get. You can go into an ‘Amitoi Realm’ and send them on expeditions to get additional items and rewards. 

Throne and Liberty has an auction house where you can sell or buy items. You will come to rely on this, regardless of your status. Either sell your leftover goods and resources for some rich player to tap and buy all of them because they can’t be bothered to grind for the resources, or you could be the aforementioned rich player doing all the buying. Naturally, the game also has heavy pay-to-win elements, with premium currency, battle-passes, and so on, that can be used to zoom through the game’s long progression.

Throne and Liberty has the usual third-person tab-target action games, much like ESO, WoW, or Final Fantasy. Your character has the usual ‘auto-attacks,’ split between light and heavy attacks. You also rely on skills with cooldowns, with most being pretty quick. The gameplay is relatively fast, and with over 10 skills, you can be selected at any time.

The neat thing about the game is that you can switch from the birds-eye third-person view to a much closer third-person shooter-type view, changing your gameplay with the hit of a button. This mode makes the game more aim-dependent as you have the option to tab-target, and it makes this more combat and action-focused.

Throne and Liberty is pretty detailed, as the places you visit and roam around have lots of life. The lore is generic, but that doesn’t detract from the experience. The cutscenes are well put together and engaging. The story itself is also pretty detailed, and the graphics are generally very good. 

Ultimately, it is still more based on PvP battles, with incredibly large battles and tens of hundreds of players. This, of course, causes lag at certain points. The progression system is long-winded and sometimes very confusing. Many upgrades are based around RNG, so you will grind a lot. The game will require you to commit a lot of hours to upgrade everything properly.

The UI is pretty neat, not too complicated, and certainly nothing bad like WoW. As mentioned before, the graphics are great, and all the cosmetics, weapons, and armor available look pretty good together. They also have the bonus of having similar themes but standing out.

Overall, Throne and Liberty are like many MMOs in terms of their grind, and newer players will usually be daunted by everything they have to keep in mind. Progression is grueling and long-term, requiring a long-term investment to get into the good parts. That or, you can look towards actual investments as the rampant microtransactions make the game a blatant pay-to-win scheme.

It’s a shame because Throne and Liberty is actually pretty fun to play, with its large battles and varying game modes. Both its PvP and PvE aspects are fun to play. It's just that to get to that point, you usually have to sink in a hundred or so hours. Regardless, the game is still engaging, fun, and fast-paced, so MMORPG fans will feel right at home.