MapleStory takes on the MMORPG market an unique way. Mixing colorful 2D graphics, free gaming, and MMORPG gameplay, this might be a game you will want to try if you have never played an online RPG. With millions of subscribers in North America alone, it has become one of the most popular free online games available.

When you first launch this game, you will notice a small nice feature this game has that many developers should look into adding on to their games: an auto-patcher. The auto-patcher automatically downloads and installs any patches or updates the game may have had so your game is always up to date when you play it. Along with the auto-patcher, you will notice a small box load up that is called GameGuard. GameGuard is MapleStory's anti-hacking tool. It prevents users from loading the game with hacks and greatly reduces the number of hackers in the game.

After loading the game, you are greeted with a nice colorful interface asking you to login to the game along with a Guest Login button. The guest login button allows you to try out the game without registering an account and if you like it, you can keep the character you make by registering an account online afterwards. If you already have an account, you can proceed to the regular login and enter in your username, password, and PIN. By having both a password and PIN, your chances of having your account stolen is greatly reduced. After logging in, you can select the server you choose to play on, this is where the first flaw of MapleStory comes into play. You can not transfer characters among servers and you can not chat with other players in different servers. Once you select a server, you create a character or select a character you have already made, and start playing.

Character creation in this game is very simple. The game does have character customization at the start, but there are not a lot of options and you are limited to a few choices. You can choose whether or not you want the character to be a boy or a girl so you can choose which gender to play as. The stats for new character is chosen by random. You can constantly try changing the stats to match your needs, but it may take many tries to get the exact stats you want since it goes by random. This can be very frustrating if you want to get certain stats to match your class well and are not getting the right ones. If you are unsure about which class you want to be when you are creating a character, you do not have to worry. Everyone starts their character out as a Beginner until the reach level 10 (level 8 if they wish to be a Magician), which is when you can make your choice to be either a Magician, Warrior, Bowman, or a Thief.

All of the classes greatly differ from each other. The Magician class is strictly range attacks where you attack with magic and spells. The nice part about the Magician class is they have high MP (Magic Points), are strongest at lower levels, and have a teleportation skill. The downside about them however is they get weak at later levels, have very low HP (Hit Points) and low defense. If being a Magician is not your style of playing, you can choose to be a Warrior which has high HP, strong melee attacks, and have great defense. The problem with the Warrior class is they can be slow and they do not have any ranged attacks. Another class you can be is the Bowman class. The Bowman class uses ranged attacks, have high accuracy, and average speed. They also have low HP and a wide range of damage that can be dealt, so there are times where you will do barely any damage at all. The Thief class is the last class you can choose from. If you are unsure whether you want to perform ranged attacks or melee attacks, the thief class is probably the way to go since they can perform both. The thieves have the best avoidability, decent accuracy, average MP and low HP.

As you play the game, you increase your characters abilities every time you level up. When you level up, you are given 5 stat points which you can add towards your character's strength, luck, intelligence, dexterity, HP and MP. You are also given 3 skill points which you use to increase your character's skills which can increase your damage, give you new attacks and more. Skills range everywhere from helping out your defense to increasing the number of monsters you can attack.

Another way you can increase your character's strength, defense, and other stats is through the wide range of gear that is offered. This improves the character customization in the game by offering you a wide variety of helmets, weapons, shoes, armor, and more. You can also forge weapons, which isn't done much at lower levels, but is needed at higher levels as that is the only way to get certain weapons.

If you are looking for a game with tons of quests, this might be your kind of game. MapleStory offers over a hundred quests for you to perform, however many of these quests are repetitive as most of them require you to just kill a bunch of monsters, pick up items, and bring them back to the Non Playable Character (NPC) that gave you the quest. After you complete each quest, you are usually given an award, whether it's an item, or experience to help you level up.

Leveling up in this game takes forever, it starts out at a decent pace, but as you start getting to higher levels like 30 or so, it will take days to level up. In order to level up, you have to either kill monsters, perform quests, or join in on Party Quests which is simply a round based quest you complete with a group of players. Party Quests are usually hard to get into as each channel (19 or 20 channels in a server) allows only one group at a time, and groups may take anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour. Leveling up eventually gets frustrating at the amount of time it takes, and you tend to feel the repetitive gameplay of beating up the same monsters over and over again.

In most MMORPGs, leveling up usually becomes worth it because you can battle other players and explore new areas. MapleStory does have a huge world with a wide variety of monsters so you do get to explore new areas, but it is lacking any sort of player vs player gameplay. In the end, this does not really make it easy to determine who is the best player out there.

To increase teamwork in the game, MapleStory allows you to create guilds. However, teamwork is the only thing guilds let you really do. There is not a lot you can do with the guilds besides come up with a name, add friends to it, and battle monsters together, which is basically the same thing as a regular party. Since the game does not have any player vs player gameplay, that means there is no guild vs guild gameplay either which makes guilds even more like regular parties in the game.

MapleStory also has a small feature in which two characters can get married. Now if you are a for gay marriages, you may be a bit angry with Nexon as they do not allow same-sex marriages in the game. Marriages also don't really have much of a point to them except you are allowed to battle exclusive monsters in the Amoria dungeon.

In order to keep the game up to date, Nexon releases frequent patches and updates to the game. These updates normally add new weapons, quests, and maybe a new area to explore. Usually with these updates comes an event which Nexon holds where gamers get in-game gifts and play in various games. These events makes the game more like a community and increases interaction among players.

If you are the kind of player who does feel like spending a few bucks on free games. This game does have a "Cash Shop" where you can buy various outfits for your character, change the character's hairstyle, along with enhancing your gameplay by giving 2X experience cards. If you don't feel like spending money, you still get nearly all of the gameplay without spending a dime.

An annoying part about MapleStory isn't actually in the game itself, but when you close the game. Whenever you close the game, a small ad about the game pops up on your screen and you have to close it. While this doesn't take much to do, it does get tedious having to close it every time you wish to quit the game.

The most unique part about MapleStory is its colorful 2D graphics. The game is rich with color and its low system requirements makes it possible to play on any computer. However, the game lacks many critical system options like screen resolution but does allow you to adjust the quality of the graphics. The sound in the game is also pretty pleasing and calm.

Overall, MapleStory is fairly nice game, it has colorful graphics, a huge world, and lots of quests, but it does have its flaws. Repetitive gameplay, lack of player vs player combat, and the extremely long length of leveling up does bring down the game a lot as you start to feel pretty bored easily. However, the game is still worth a try as it runs on most computers and still has its positives.