Hmm… I’ve seen this somewhere…
Holic Online without a doubt drew a lot of its inspiration from other successful MMORPGs; the first one that comes to mind is World of Warcraft (WoW). Like WoW, players can link items to each other in the chat box and quests in Holic can be tracked on the right portion of the screen. I’ve noticed that the item linking feature is slowly becoming a ‘norm’ in the free to play MMORPG realm, as games like Runes of Magic and 4Story already have similar features, but Holic Gold was one of the first few games to copy this feature from World of Warcraft. There’s nothing wrong with games copying features from each other, as it really only helps in the creation of a better product for us gamers.

Double the grind! Double the fun!
Another interesting aspect of Holic Gold is the game’s ‘class revolving’ system. The game lets you choose two classes and grants you the ability to switch between them at anytime, but the only drawback here is that when you choose your secondary class, that class will start at level 1, so you’ll need to level it up all over again, at least if you want the benefits of being able to switch between classes. There’s nothing wrong with only playing a single class, but sometimes it’s strategic at times to have the ability to switch to another class.

I Love the map!
Holic Gold has hands down the best map I’ve seen in any free MMORPG. I know the “map” feature isn’t exactly the most important feature in a game, but having a functional detailed map definitely enhances the gameplay. Holic’s map clearly outlines all the NPCs, monsters, available quests and finished quests in the area along with a feature to leave custom markers on the map which are incredibly useful for marking good hunting spots. With so many free MMORPGs competing for players, there’s no reason other games can’t duplicate the level of detail of Holic Gold map.

What the… Player made dungeons?!
One extremely unique feature of Holic Gold is the game’s “User Created Dungeons”, or UCD for short. If you ever get bored of running through all of the game’s normal dungeons, the game actually lets you create your own dungeons. You don’t exactly get to design the entire dungeon, but you can choose the difficulty, appearance and monster placement. Before anyone starts thinking that they can just create a dungeon full of XP Pinyatas, let me first tell you that it costs a bit of coin in the game to make your own dungeon and if the monsters you place in the dungeon are too low level, you won’t gain experience from them. Currently, there really isn’t that much you can actually customize in the UCDs, but there is definitely a lot of potential here.

Final Verdict: Good
Although Holic Gold doesn’t reinvent the MMORPG Genre, it’s still a fun game. The only real drawback to the game is that the game’s PvP system hasn’t really been developed yet and moving with the mouse causes a bit of lag in the game.