When it comes to mobile MMORPGs, I’ve come to expect a number of things. Now, they aren’t bad either in isolation or put together, but there is something about Tree of Savior M that didn’t click with me. I tried out the Korean closed beta test which concluded 21 December 2021.

PRESENTATION

It being a Korean closed beta, the voices and menus were all Korean, meaning I understood nothing. Characters are rendered in these chibi sprites, similarly to Ragnarok Online. Choose between the male and female sprites, and your starting class of Swordsman, Wizard, Archer, Cleric and Scout. The customization options are pretty decent, for what is a simple style.

A character’s sprite art for dialogue may have quite significant Live2D flourish, while some are limited to blinking. It wasn’t entirely voiced in the beta, which is pretty understandable. The game does have this more “old school” look, and I definitely am partial to “simpler” graphics.

The starting area is your fairly standard fantasy beginner stuff, which I feel I should recognize. Having not played the original game, all I can think of is that “it looks neat”. The UI should be much easier to navigate if I actually understand it.

GAMEPLAY

The general gameplay loop is really simple: get your quests, be it for the main story or side stuff, and talk to NPCs, kill monsters or gather bear asses, whichever it is. Typical for mobile games – not simply MMOs – you can tap on an active quest, and you will travel automatically to the destination. Any monsters you need to kill will be marked with a flag, for example. You get to turn on “auto-battle” pretty quickly, which kinda kills the magic of exploring an MMORPG, doesn’t it? Tap on your skills to use them, and movement is done with the virtual joystick.

You have basic attacks, then your various job skills you can cast by using MP, which then goes on cooldown. Larger monsters – namely, bosses – will telegraph their area of attack in red, so that you can move out of the way. I find it hilarious that my AI companion will move out of the way, but auto battle does not move me. I just let it be, just chug those damn potions.

In your journey, you can have a little home to decorate. I didn’t explore it too much, but yeah, make the house a home. I notice that there are resources that you can gather on the overworld as well, for the ol’ crafting system. You can be accompanied by a “pet” of sorts, and the AI companion that I mentioned. You only get one of each to start.

The “pet” has their own levels, and you can raise affection with them. They give passive buffs from what I can tell, though mine went on cooldown for whatever reason after I disconnected at some point. The AI companion is like a party member, with their own jobs and skills you can train.

GACHA

Due to the language barrier, I wasn’t sure if there was a table showing the overall draw rates. As you can see, the individual ones are pretty low, with the rarities increasing from R to SR to UR. Any duplicates you obtain will automatically be converted into the relevant shards for the unit you obtained.

A 10+1 draw will consume 10 respective currency, guaranteeing at least 1 SR for the +1. Any of them can “flip” to a higher rarity, and you’ll get an exclamation when that happens, and intro cutscene for a UR.

You can gacha for both the “pets” and your AI party members. It’s nice that they don’t share a pool so that you can focus on what you need, but also monetizing both aspects do feel kinda bad. Fortunately, as bad as the rates are, there is a guarantee system at 150 draws. How much currency you can get outside of the closed beta will remain to be seen.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

What can I say? I bounced off this game hard, perhaps partially due to the language barrier. The starting sequence isn’t enough to capture me and help it stand out from the other mobile MMORPGs out there, and I have no nostalgia attached to this game.

We’ll see how it goes whenever the game launches. If you’d like more updates on the game, check out the game’s naver forums here.