Talisman Online

Talisman Online Classes

Wizard: The wizard is a master of using the five elements to devastate foes. Stay in the back and deal significant damage to either one or multiple enemies.

Monk: The nigh immortal front line warrior protects teammates with strong anti-attack abilities. The monk is best up close and personal as he lacks the skills to deal with long distance enemies.

Assassin: Attack fiercely and outmaneuver to stay alive as you have a weak defense. The assassin brings the most single target damage but requires sharp thinking to control aggro.

Fairy: The dedicated healer greatly raises the effectiveness of any group. These angels also have a variety of long distance damaging spells.

Tamer: Solo players can take solace in the Tamer with her incredible ranger skills. Track and trap enemies or befriend pets. With the ability to heal herself the Tamer can overcome any obstacle.

Talisman Online Review

By, Charlie Perez

Diverse combat with an emphasis on upgrading equipment fuels the fire that is Talisman Online. Travel across a massive land filled with enemies to take down, and distinct characters to meet. Beautiful effects in combat and on characters will amaze while pleasant theme music plays in the background. Log-in and mount up, and enter the world of Talisman Online.

Don’t Tell Me What To Do

The talisman system, the game’s namesake, is rewarding but not something entirely worthy of praise. For starters, everyone starts with a weapon that reflects each class. As you use that weapon it will gain energy to be spent on upgrading it. The lack of direct correlation between use and leveling up is to encourage diversifying your weapon use—you can only level up the weapon to your own level. To avoid stagnating it’s recommended to switch to a different weapon to continue leveling. This is pushed further by the "merging" menu. Combine talismans to raise its rank, but lower its level. You can have one weapon and two accessory talismans equipped at any one time. Each talisman subtype brings a whole set of abilities to be unlocked. For example: the chain scimitar, partial to the assassin, opens up a path unique to that class. Likewise, boots increase dodge chance, and leveling up that talisman upgrades your dodge by tiers.

While certainly novel, it’s a system that has been done before and better in other game. But it is fairly unique to the MMO genre. The biggest complaint is that it locks you from upgrading a weapon until your level is increased, forcing you to forgo the system almost entirely or switching to a different weapon. Why should you feel the need to juggle multiple weapons when you like one in particular? The idea of using a weapon over and over again and having something truly powerful, a companion even, is thrown out the window because of the lock. Also, besides the weapon selection there is little choice in deciding what kind of abilities you want; nearly every class and weapon is forced into a defined combat archetype.

Wait…You Mean Monster Hunter?

Being a hero of the land never felt so much like a hired assassin. Track down static NPCs from across the land where they give you a quest to do. Sounds like an MMORPG, huh? Typically, or rather almost entirely, the quests have you go to point A and kill a bunch of enemies then return to the quest giver for currency. Rinse, lather, repeat until you have the blood of a thousand animals on your hands; have you tried to remove blood stains from something? It isn't easy, but I wouldn't know that or anything *cough.* Anyway, this is lazy and incredibly boring. Games like Guild Wars 2 can get away with a lot of search and destroy questing due to its fast and interactive combat, Talisman Online however, does not.

Luckily you have a certain feature to making moving across the landscape easier than ever. Auto-pathing. Click the quest, or NPC on a certain menu, to have your character mindlessly aim towards the direction of where you're supposed to be. This is especially necessary because everything in the world is so far spread out and your character is doing that fat guy shuffle run. C'mon man, we know you might as well be walking. Basically, it’s a gross way to make the player want a mount at all times instead of taking the extremely long travel times between quest giver and the objective.

Non-Playable and Not-Alive

The people of this land are a touch lethargic—the NPCs have an uncanny ability to stay in formation. From the tutorial area to towns all over, NPCs stand in a line and don't move. Where’s the bustling city? The mellow fisherman next to the shore? The silent hunter crouched in a bush or hardworking lumber jack? The interaction of people in the world is only at face-value. This game breaks the rule of show don't tell; there should be an old man walking slowly but deliberately to the nearby pond to ponder life for a while, or crazed children sprinting across the fields. But Talisman Online's world feels dead and empty.

The dialogue doesn't do a whole lot to make up for it either. Poor translations and a static way of speaking leads you to skip through the text to get the next quest. Along a similar note, the game lacks polish across the entire spectrum. For example, animations and movement don't feel as smooth to control as they could be. And the camera only angles so far down; that means no viewing the scenery from a cinematic angle, only looking down at the ground. For some reason a lot of games don't know what a fade is—music only plays half the time and has sharp cuts, even between similar areas.

Out-Classed

Take your pick from five different classes all with unique talismans, customization, and skills. Granted the actual customization is limited with only a few options on top of being gender locked. Combat-wise, however, the difference between everyone else is fantastic. The classes have a unique interaction with abilities. The monk, for example, must build up fighting points to use his abilities. Whereas the assassin spams abilities for increased damage. The look and feel is also varied. The monk has slow bone-cracking strikes while the assassin slings chain blades at distant enemies with grace and speed.

The abilities themselves look amazing with a heavy emphasis on special effects to make every strike feel powerful. The wizard brings down explosions from the heavens, and funnily enough the assassin resembles Kratos from the God of War series. The combat could have been faster paced but is generally not bad.

Can’t Go Wrong With Vanilla

The general look of the game, while sharp, is simply bland. Archetypal caves, fields, swamps, and towns blend together. The character/enemy modeling lands on a similar note—well done but boring to look at. The game shines, or rather glows, with its fantastic special effects. As mentioned before the effects brought a lot of life to combat and carries over to your character's look. You get a sneak peek at what’s in store when creating your character—lots of particles effects, glow, and miscellaneous effects are dazzling to look at.

But all the menus, skill icons, and other assets are as bare bones as possible. Sound effects are also bare minimum slash and hit effects you've heard a thousand times. Go ahead and turn down the effects and turn the music up. Relaxing tunes to dangerous ones give areas a lot of personality. A cavern, for example, is spooky and disconcerting while the towns are upbeat and pleasant.

Final Verdict: Fair

Talisman Online is old and creaky in some spots but well made at its core. Out-dated questing hurts this game in a way the better-than-average combat can’t make up for. Also, auto-pathing across the land isn't rewarding as there isn't anything to see, the same old environments for minutes on end simply to complete a quest is mind numbing.

Talisman Online Screenshots

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Talisman Online Videos

Talisman Online Links

Talisman Online Official Site
Talisman Online Wikipedia
Talisman Online Wikia [Database/Guides]
Talisman Online Subreddit

Talisman Online System Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 98 or Higher
CPU: PIII 800
Video Card: GForce2 Graphics Memory Over 32M
RAM: 256MB
Hard Disk Space: 600MB

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 98 or Higher
CPU: PIII 1.2G
Video Card: GForce4 Graphics Memory Over 64M
RAM: 512MB
Hard Disk Space: 600MB

Talisman Online Music & Soundtrack

Coming Soon...

Talisman Online Additional Information

Developer: Mira Game
Publisher: Mira Game

Development History / Background:

Talisman Online was developed by Chinese development company Mira Games. Mira Games was founded in the summer of 2007 and is committed to the development of English MMO's. The company has also developed similar MMORPG's such as Asura Force, Dragon Heart, and Uncharted Oceans.