I’m actually nearing a point in the main story that I recall bouncing off of when I first was playing BandS more casually. I mostly recall this because I got to the scene where my character first uses the Dragon Pulses to windwalk, which featured some of the cooler cinematography from the Blade and Soul NEO Classic Divine Gems game’s engine and easily one of this MMO’s finest pieces of music. So as you can tell, smashing the “F” key to get through the cutscenes and get into the combat has been the modus operandi, and it’s been very successful in reinvigorating my time in-game.

So then that kind of begs the question once more of what NEO is really bringing to the table for those who have been here before. More and more this game is feeling like the best option for those who have never played BandS at all instead of some way to relive the game.

Most of that comes from the fact that gearing up and improving skills continues to feel streamlined, which is most definitely a good thing considering what I recall about the gearing system in this MMORPG. I don’t think I’ve really dug in to all of the hard granular details here, but the UI surrounding gear, soul shards, and accessories just feels… better. Or at least an improvement over the original.

I’ll also point out that a lot of my time in game has indeed been solo as I run through the figurative and sometimes literal tunnels of the game’s leveling path. The only time that I really interacted with others was when one of the side quests commanded me to kill a zone boss. And I’m using the term “interaction” very lightly here; it was less like a coordinated effort and more like a curb stomping of some poor frog creature.

Still, I am having a pretty good time thanks to the Assassin. And I’m glad that I’m starting to enter new-to-me territory in the cheap BnS NEO Divine Gems game’s move through the levels. But then that does prsent a problem for this column in that I’m not really sure what poll choices to offer. This was an expected outcome, of course – it’s the issue that I often run in to when themepark MMOs are the month’s game – but this one feels particularly gnarly. Especially since there are two more weeks left in this month to push through.