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Atlantica Online is a free-to-play MMORPG from Ndoors Interactive that features a time-limited turn based combat system which in some ways is similar to Final Fantasy. The game is supported through microtransactions from the game’s Item Mall, but the items are fairly expensive in my opinion. I have played several other free-to-play games that seem to serve only as an advertisement to spend real money without actually allowing you to have fun for free, but luckily this is not the case with Atlantica Online.

You start out by picking the weapon (class), sex, and appearance options of your main character. Your main character will be the commander of a band of up to eight other mercenaries, for a total of nine characters. While running around in the world, you only see your main character. In combat, you will see all of your characters in a formation of your choosing. You have a limited amount of time (less than 30 seconds, depending on your level) to tell your characters to attack, guard (go into a defensive stance), or use some sort of magic. Combat does not have to be a solo endeavor as you can join a party with up to three other players.

The game is set in a fairly realistic map of the world, where you can go to countries like India and Italy, towns like Baghdad and Berlin. Towns are safe havens that feature markets, banks, guild offices, and travel agencies that allow you to teleport to towns you have previously visited at a cost. One of my favorite features in Atlantica Online is auto-run, which will take you to a specific town, NPC, or quest destination while leaving you free to manage your inventory, chat with friends, etc. Be careful, if you run over a monster while auto-running you will be sucked into a battle, and since battles are timed you may get killed if you are AFK.

Quests are one area of MMORPGs that I usually dislike due to the lack of variety, mainly consisting of “kill 10 of this animal” and “take this note to this character”. The bulk of the quests in Atlantica Online are just like this with some notable exceptions. There are quests that force you to use the in-game help system to find information and type the answer. Other quests force you to be social by sending an in-game mail, join a party, and add a friend.

PvP consists of several different types of combat: duels where you fight one other person, tournaments (Free League) where you take turns fighting against players of the same skill (Division), weekly tournaments that are held three times on both Saturday and Sunday, and wars. A war is fought between two nations, each nation consisting of multiple guilds. Wars are the only type of PvP that are not 1-on-1. If you lose in war, you end up dropping some of your equipment.

Atlantica Online has a depth to it that is rare in other free-to-play games. The crafting system is pretty expansive, you can join a guild, guilds can take control of towns and set tax rates at the banks and markets, and you can PvP. The game features a built-in mail system, in-game forums, and by far the best in-game help guides I have ever seen. Ndoors must have learned from their previous MMORPG games because they included things such as fixed prices in the market to control inflation and players can become artisans and teach crafting skills to others which encourages player interaction.

Being free, there only downside to trying this game is the fact that the download is a fairly massive 2GB.