Caravan Story - Personal Review of the Game.

            

Continuing from where I left with Genshin Impact, another game I recently played (and could like gamers to avoid) is Caravan Story.

Caravan Stories is another game which I came across recently on Playstation 4. It was a free game (and it still is) and after my experience with Genshin Impact, I was quite cautious about another free "RPG". From what I have read from Wikipedia, this game had been around since 2017 for smartphone (Android System) before being exported to Playstation system. It seems a lot of game which started off in smartphones are finding their way to Playstation system as we speak, maybe indicating that the market for traditional Roleplaying games (RPG) are somewhat lacking with larger companies emphasising more on First Person Shooters, 3rd Person perspective or Action based games.

This game was produced by a Japanese company called Aiming (No, seriously that it the company's name) and the game producer is Satoshi Takayashiki (nope, never heard of him) who started his career with game "Dragon Ball" in 1994 (never played it).

Source : https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/CARAVAN_STORIES

The gameplay itself is a bit confusing at first. The controls needs some adjusting to as this game seems to be using features which are not commonly used by Playstation players. Then I realized (as I was writing this) that this game was originally made for smartphone and handheld devices. You use the Left joystick to move the characters, uses L2 and R2 for enemy selection (which I use most of the time) and L1 and R1 for "other selection". 

It took me a while to jumble the gameplay of this confusing game for awhile. I could only control the main character during the battle (I can use other character's attacks by quick-selecting them, use shortcut key and then jump to the next character as the first character does its special moves, attacks, heals etc). Once the main character dies or become incapacitated, your control switch to other available characters. Over all, the game behave a lot like traditional RPG as far as characters and battles are concern. As a long time fan of RPG games, I have not problem with those features and how this game behaves.

But frankly speaking, it is the caravan part which makes things look a lot like something out of Clash of Clans game. The game advertised itself as an MMO RPG (that's RolePlaying Online game - something like Elder Scroll Online I'm currently playing for over four years now. I think I will write about it next, maybe). The game looks and feels like a regular RPG but the developing facilities within the Caravan take a very long long time, similar to what you could experience from a Clash of Clans (CoC) game or even Metal Gear Solid 5 : the Phantom Pain (another game I'm familiar with). In short, this game does not feel like an MMO RPG.

Don't get me wrong. This game is a lot better (at least in my opinion) to Genshin Impact which feels "empty" somehow. The characters in Caravan Stories are well-designed and has a nice background stories to them. The characters you will get through purchase or online transaction are good characters which you can use straightaway. Best of all, the game does not force you to buy anything which is required to proceed through the story-line. I had finished the Elf story-line and was continuing the Human story-line before new games dropped to my lap. However, the game does feel a bit repetitive after a while which will force the gamers to push themselves forward.

The best complain I do have about this game is the leveling system and the enemy ranking. The leveling system is very very tedious and slow and forces you to save and use items to grain Experience (Exp) Points to level up faster. This forces people who are used to regular type of leveling up to get items for levels instead of grinding away as we usually do with regular RPGs. This is one feature which separate it from regular MMO RPG where you still have to rely on grinding to level up and to obtain better weapons, stats and familiarity with your character(s). Basically this game takes the fun away from leveling up and grinding which we often associate with RPG games.

As for monsters ranking, I have a headache trying to understand it. In this game, there seems to be only two type of ranks for all form of monsters - one is low-level monsters and another is the high-level monsters. The low level monsters will always be lower than you in term of levels, which makes them easier to kill but unsuitable to hunt down because they provide very little "returns" in form of money, Experience points (EXP) and loots (which are the primary reason why RPG players grind in the first place). 

The higher level monsters are always above your levels, can easily squash you like a bug and fighting them could be a greater waste of time than what you gain in return. Sure, you can level up faster IF you win but there is a big IF right there. If you survive the initial encounter, you still need a powerful group of people with the right stats to make a dent. Assuming you can make a dent, you must have adequate items to support your characters in battle. And even if you made the kill and level up, your "return" should be adequate enough to compensate you for the time, resources and afford you put into fighting the monster. If none of this fits your "return", then you could likely to feel cheated and wasted your time with such monster. That is what happening in this game regarding the high level monsters there which seems to be a waste of pixel space. 

The game has four races to pick from - humans, Elf, Dark Elves, Dwarves. I finished my first run-through the game as an Elf and was playing my 2nd play-through as a human being. While the basic story maybe different here, the overall story is similar which makes this game somewhat repetitive. Add the above features and this game quickly becomes a repetitive game which has very little to offer to the gamers as initialize to push forward for prolong time of gaming. 

In conclusion, Caravan Stories are better (in my opinion) to Genshin Impact but its repetitiveness makes the game lacking in interest to play for prolong period of time. To this day, the longest game I have played (and still playing) is Elder Scroll Online (for the past four years) and that game kept the gamers interesting by releasing new sub-stories in form of DLCs. 

It is possible that Caravan Stories could have been improved in similar manner if they had expanded the story in the similar manner, allowing each race to have different story instead of the same thing in repetition.