Official link: http://www.swordofthenewworld.com Info:
Sword of the New World: Granado Espada was developed by Hakkyu Kim, CEO of imcGAMES and creator of Ragnarok Online. In Korea, Sword of the New World not only won the award for Best Graphics but also captured the 2006 Presidential Award for Game of the Year. K2 Network now brings this amazing game to the West, and its localized version will feature an enhanced storyline, a more robust character creation process, better pacing, AI optimization, a more intuitive control system, hundreds of new quests and many other game enrichments. Set on a mysterious, dangerous continent with a story inspired by Europe’s exploration and conquest of America, Sword of the New World is destined to dominate the world of MMORPGs by virtue of its groundbreaking design features, fast-paced gameplay and amazing graphics.
Gameplay:
I have to say, Sword of the New World is one of the most innovative MMORPG’s I have seen this year. You are able to control up to 3 separate characters rather than the conventional single character and also, there is the ability to save multiple different characters in ones barracks. Of course this has its advantages and its disadvantages. As for advantages, by having 3 separate characters, a player will be able to literally play the game without partying as you technically already are in a party. Of course the bonus you would receive when you party would be much greater and so would the rewards from that. As you get to choose which characters you would like to take on your journey, each character is given its own unique traits and attributes which allow the player to choose a combination of 3 characters to their liking. On top of this, each character type is given a variety of stances which give variance in the skills that are immediately accessible to them. This allows players endless of combinations on how to create the ideal party. Within the barracks, the player is able to start off with the choice of recruiting 4 characters into their family from a choice of 5 in both genders. The barracks can be increased in size and the variety of characters that can be recruited into your family will change as you do quests. The disadvantages to these are that with a pre-set party, this will further discourage players to go out and actively party with others. Also, by being able to have so many unique characters, it is very difficult to level all of them equally and you’ll find yourself quickly leaving them behind even with the help of the EXP cards which are rewarded from certain quests.
Controls:
Sword of the New World’s controls are placed similarly to a real time strategy game which means that they have focused most of the hotkeys on the letters on the keyboard which can be very annoying at times of need. Such as when you need to tell your party member that you need to be healed, you will have to go out of your way to do so. It also is an annoyance in the opposite manner as when you are chatting with someone and suddenly an aggressive monster spawns on you, you must get out of chat to start using your hotkeys again. If you ignore the chatting issue, the hotkeys for Sword of the New World are all cleverly placed in comfortable locations for your convenience. Once you get the hang of individually controlling all 3 characters with the help of hotkeys, the game will become very enjoyable and challenging.
Graphics:
The graphics are gorgeous even though I am playing on a laptop. The only issues I have is that there are graphic overloads in town, especially in the district which contains all the NPC’s that sell items. This is partly due to the fact that each player is given 3 characters at most and majority of the players will be using all 3. Anyways, the scenery is very detailed and beautiful. It is actually quite romantic with many sites to see. There are also very cryptic and deep dungeons full of spider webs and torches and many other sites to see. Literally many of the maps have been created with sight seeing in mind, as there are spots where you can easily view a very beautiful portion of the map.
Sound:
Sword of the New World contains a very comprehensive and innovative soundtrack. This includes their famed baroque-trance music, which oddly fit very well with the time period that it is placed in and literally completes and brings life to each of the maps. There are sound effects for every attack and movement. The NPC’s may not speak, but they do make grunts and shouts during battle. Overall, there are no repetitive sounds, and the music may take awhile to get used to for some places but is actually very addictive and you may hear yourself humming the tunes.
SotNW - PVP Video Sword Of The New World gameplay trailer 
Linear Mode
