Throne and Liberty review-in-progress: Promising MMO still has some shapeshifting to do

Haven’t we been here before? By their very nature, MMOs thrive on popularity and retaining players to build a community, which makes Amazon Games' decision to publish multiple of them at once a curious one, spreading its bets.

Between New World, Lost Ark, the cancelled Blue Protocol and now Throne and Liberty, it’s clear Amazon sees something in MMOs - and, to its credit, each offers a little something different. Throne and Liberty is hardly revolutionary when it comes to applying genre conventions, but it’s a good-looking, action-packed offering that I’m excited to see grow.

I just hope that’s enough when it’s launching next to heavyweight expansions from World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV this year alone.

Give me liberty

Throne and Liberty’s story revolves a group of gifted, magic-imbued youngsters saved from destruction at the hands of a vengeful baddie, who then grow to take up arms. You play as one of these Starborn, and your first task is to build yourself within the game’s impressive creation suit.

There’s a whole host of presets, but you can really drill down into how you want your character to look, and I’m glad to see such flexibility after the gender-locked classes of Lost Ark. This is also your first introduction to just how impressive Throne and Liberty looks - as with other recent titles like First Descendant, there’s a sheen to things here. Characters are detailed, and while there’s a hint of uncanny valley about facial animations at times, it’s a great first impression.

Glossy cutscenes follow that before you’re dropped into a series of set pieces as you tackle an orc invasion, complete with explosions, devastation, and an introduction to your companion who is called, um, Helpie. No, I’m serious.

Helpie follows the template of overly excitable companions cut from the same cloth as Genshin Impact’s Paimon, and while I’ll admit they’re inoffensive, they’re just so incessant at times that I found myself wanting to hit mute.

Still, that minor irritation aside, the first hour or so of Throne and Liberty does a great job highlighting what to expect - a relatively threadbare plot full of magical mumbo jumbo and some genuinely fun combat.

To arms

My biggest complaint with MMOs as a genre has been the reliance on hotbar-based combat which can often make combat feel like a sequential set of steps rather than anything particularly dynamic. Lost Ark and Black Desert buck that trend (and there are others) and I’m pleased to report that Throne and Liberty’s combat follows suit.

Getting into a scrap is relatively basic in the early game (as you’d perhaps expect), but it’s fast-moving and flashy. There’s still a degree of automation, but strikes are mapped to a mouse button alongside the usual hotbar while pressing Q at the right moment will block enemy attacks ready for a quick follow-up.

That’s all aided by a relatively clutter-free UI that helps you focus on slapping enemies down as they come at you. It doesn’t hurt that weapons are interchangeable, too, breaking free from classes.

While the likes of Final Fantasy XIV will require players to level a class with each weapon to get more utility out of each, Throne and Liberty divorces the two entirely. There are no defined classes, with your combat and abilities defined by your choice of two weapons.

That allows some build diversity between wand-wielders and archers, swords and daggers. The ability to switch between them lets players move between roles in different content types, too, so they can play as a spell-flinging healer in one moment before switching to a greatsword the next.

This makes Throne and Liberty one of the more solo-friendly MMOs I’ve played, even in this pre-launch stage, and I’m excited to recruit friends. Weapons each have their own specialities and combat styles, and I found pairing the area of effect attacks of the Staff and the melee focus of the Sword a great mix of classic MMO cooldown usage and a more aggressive playstyle. I’m curious to see how all of these options translate to controllers for the planned console release.

While some MMO dungeons have an air of familiarity to them, moving from combat encounter to combat encounter, I appreciate that Throne and Liberty takes a stab at trying to introduce boss mechanics that range from the grapple hook used for traversal being used to drop liquid on a beast’s head to dunking yourself to stop from burning - and those are from the same dungeon.

I’m only around a dozen hours in at this point (and need to start again on live servers before I can score this review in earnest), but I’m keen to see if bosses grow in ambition and complexity.

True beauty

Much of the rest of the moment-to-moment gameplay in Throne and Liberty is a little less dynamic, however. Quests are often “go here, get this”, or “kill these things and collect what they drop”. It’s not the most exciting process, and gear rewards feel relatively meagre so far. I’m not sure I’ve collected an item yet, but that’s got me particularly excited, although it’s still in the early days (hours).

Thankfully, Throne and Liberty’s world is one you’ll want to explore because it might be one of the best-looking MMOs out there. Compared to the cartoonish WoW and the relatively stiff animations of FFXIV, its lengthy vistas and effects like fire and sparks feel like a huge step forward (I’m playing on an RTX 4070, for reference).

Once you’re out of the tutorial, you’ll get to explore a small coastal town and the surrounding farmland, and the map feels like it could be a real place as rolling farm fields give way to a bustling port, and you’re sent to explore an old tower on the sandy shores nearby.

One of Throne and Liberty’s biggest differentiators, at least when it comes to marketing, has been how it lets players shapeshift between forms. To that end, there are no mounts because you are the mount. Within minutes of playing, I’d earned the ability to turn into a wolf to squeeze through spaces, run at speed, and glide down from high points as an eagle.

This is all done with ease and speeds up the initially dull part of any MMO, where you spend your time moving from NPC to NPC. In fact, by the time waypoints were introduced, I’d already got into the habit of switching forms, and knowing there are more forms to unlock is certainly going to be fun.

Not quite ready to soar

While my pre-launch time with Throne and Liberty certainly has me looking forward to playing the full version, it still has placeholder dialogue, which made it tough to engross myself fully in proceedings.

Characters switching between English and Korean, sometimes mid-sentence, might not be a problem when the launch rolls around, and I’m hoping once it’s smoothed over, it’ll be a little easier to get myself engrossed in the narrative.

I will say that Throne and Liberty, as impressive to look at as it is, lacks some of the distinctiveness of NCSoft’s other MMO, Guild Wars 2. That game leant a little more on dark fantasy, and while you’ll see a Kojima-esque flying whale 10 minutes in, Throne and Liberty feels a little more Westernised in its palette of tropes. Here’s hoping it gains more of an identity after I progress further into it.

Final Thoughts

Looking for a new MMO? Throne and Liberty is an easy one to pick up and might just sway genre newcomers, too. I’m not entirely convinced it does anything too different from genre norms, but what it does, it does with a level of polish seldom seen, particularly at this early stage.

Will it challenge the heavy hitters? Right now, it’s too early to tell, but it’s off to a good start.

Reviewed on PC. Review code provided by the publisher.