REVIEW: ‘Throne And Liberty’ Is Empty Calories (PC)

Throne and Liberty is the newest title published under Amazon’s push to try and find a foothold in the games industry. Developed by NCSoft, it was initially announced in 2011 as a follow-up to their 1998 MMO Lineage before multiple delays and a few name changes. The launch of Throne and Liberty is finally here, an action-driven MMORPG emphasizing guild-focused combat, animal transformations, and a weapon-based skill system. There are some admirable ideas here, but they all alchemize together to become a significant adventure experience that is damnably hollow.

Throne and Liberty starts with a handsomely animated history lesson of the game’s world and some essential lore tidbits. Then, it transitions to a camera flying at breakneck speeds over the landscape, highlighting battles and beautiful vistas. Unfortunately, this is the peak of the game’s excitement during my time with it.

After the cutscene crescendos with a title screen, the player enters the character creator. There are many options and details to choose from, although it doesn’t stand out compared with other popular Korean-developed MMOs. Then, it is on to the combat tutorial.

Combat in Throne and Liberty is pretty simple. Players don’t have classes but spend skill points on active and passive skills tied to different weapon types while having two weapons equipped at a time. The types on offer here are your standard fantasy affair. There are longswords, great swords, a bow and arrow, staves, etc. Each weapon type has a unique basic attack combo and six slots to equip active skills with cooldown timers between uses.

When in combat, players lock onto an enemy and start their auto-attack. While auto-attacking, they occasionally have to press a button to dodge an attack telegraphed by a purple circle, use their active skills, or dodge roll out of an enemy’s area-of-effect attack that is shown with a red area on the ground. The basics of the combat are standard fare in the genre at this point, and they make up a solid three-quarters of one’s gameplay time in Throne and Liberty.

However, the combat gameplay is severely hampered by a few significant issues. One that could potentially be addressed is how unreactive and clunky it all feels. Skills and even auto-attacks are frequently dropped, and it takes multiple presses to come out. This issue is particularly glaring for the parries as players will get hit with the telegraphed attacks despite hitting the parry button well within the window to do so far too often.

A perhaps more significant issue with the combat is just how basic it is. This is especially egregious due to how much time spent playing Throne and Liberty is spent in combat. Some combos can be performed with skills, but their benefits are often so minor that doing so hardly feels like they worked. While players always have two weapon types on them, there is nothing in the combat encounters to encourage players to switch between them. The combat is entirely static and mindless, amounting to little more than right-clicking to start an auto-attack and then hitting the number keys when they light up. Even combat encounters late in the main questline hardly take any brain power to complete.

Outside of combat, Throne and Liberty is universally underbaked and generic. Gear and crafting are completely uninteresting pursuits that reach no further than bigger number is better. The game’s story is so bland, and by the numbers, after reading every text box in the story, I can hardly even remember the name of the setting. The world design is so generic that I felt like I had traveled through all of it a dozen of times before in previous games. The meta systems, such as the battle pass, leveling pass, and premium store, are all filled with the same extra currencies and rate bonuses found in so many cash grabs that I can’t imagine why anyone spends money on them.

The only parts of Throne and Liberty that I was unable to test out because of being on an early review server were its guild systems and player-versus-player content. Both of those elements have been pretty heavily advertised in the game’s marketing leading up to release, so they could potentially bring an additional layer to Throne and Liberty that helps it stand out and feel work the hours of gameplay that it asks of players.

However, with what I have seen so far, I highly doubt that. With the flat depth of combat and its poor responsiveness I can’t see PvP running smoothly at all, especially not to a degree where it would be a standout feature. And with how uninteresting crafting and secondary pursuits are here, I don’t see being part of a guild as fulfilling unless you just bought some costume from the shop and want somebody to show it to.

I do not doubt that Throne and Liberty will find a niche in the MMO community that it somehow speaks to. And I’m happy for those people that they will find something to enjoy here. But I don’t think Throne and Liberty will have anything valuable for most players. Everything it does is done much better elsewhere in the genre, and the lack of any unique elements or compelling vision leaves it struggling to justify its existence, much less investing your time or money.

Throne and Liberty is available now for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S with game events and celebration packs available as well like Solisium’s Haunted Harvest.