By Dane Frandsen
Point and click MMORPGs, we all know that they are nothing special these days. They run the gambit from little free-to-play games with a couple hundred players to Holic Online communities with players in the millions worldwide. Every now and then, one of these games comes along that changes things up a bit, be it for good or for bad.Holic Gold doesn't really change much for the genre, but what it does do it does well.
The first thing you may notice is the games GUI. You may also notice how bland it is. The entire GUI is a single, solid color, which is not a problem in itself. What is, however, is how astonishingly boring it is. It seems as though it was simply added at the last minute, almost like it was forgotten entirely.

Graphically the game has a few issues. Environmental textures are depressingly bland, objects have no distinct features on them and lack any real aesthetic pleasures. In contrast to the games environments, however, characters are beautifully done(further weakening the environmental graphics). Each piece of armor has a distinct look to it which is reflected on your character. In terms of animations, characters are sometimes jerky, and (at times) it seems as though a frame or two were simply clipped from the animation sequences. Needless to say, such a thing gets annoying rather quickly.

Next, let’s talk sound. The games soundtrack is nothing great, a slow, though upbeat score seems to be the norm, bordering on orchestral. The sound effects are decent, though seem to often have a bit of a sync problem. It’s normally not anything terrible, but when you see your character attack and hear the sound of the weapon hitting the monster two seconds after, it can get a bit disorienting.

Now I can get on to the actual game. The game starts out like most  MMORPGs these days. You create a character, choosing your default clothing, face and hair. You're allowed to choose between five classes to start as at the moment, those being: Warrior, the usual strong-man character; Rogue, the swift damage dealer; Monk, the power house damage dealer; Mage, the magic-slinger; and Priest, the healer. Needless to say, we've all seen these classes a hundred times in these exact roles.

The gameplay is nothing to new or interesting. You point, click, and watch as your character begins to battle whatever you just clicked, with you using hotkeys to initiate skills. Early on, you'll be plowing through enemies in seconds, but they quickly start to take more time to bring down. Before long, the game's skill combo system kicks in. Each offensive skill is assigned a certain color which must be paid careful attention. When skills of certain colors are used in the correct order, combo affects may kick in. The most simplistic of which is a minor damage dealing affect, doing minor amounts of damage to enemies every so often. Affects such as these are easy for a soloing player to initate, and easier still for a party taking on larger creatures.