Senior Staff Writer Chris "Pwyff" Tom flew to Taiwan to attend the Gamania Game Show. Today he's focusing on the Q&A session with CEO Albert Liu, Tiara Concerto and Core Blaze!

Tiara Concerto

Tiara Concerto is more of a traditional action MMORPG set to a musical motif. In Tiara Concerto, the land of Neurne is composed entirely of floating islands, and players must travel among these islands on large sky ships. Unfortunately, the moment you start talking about sky ships, the first problem anyone gets is… you guessed it: Sky Pirates. In this particular case, the sky pirate gang is known as the "Mayfly," and it was precisely these pirates we fought during our demo playthrough.

Visually, Tiara Concerto is reminiscent of most ultra-cute 3D MMORPGs, although I suspect the skirts are shorter in this game to highlight the various acrobatics your characters go through during combat. There are three different races in Tiara Concerto: the Humans, Elves, and the Beats, although there are no class restrictions per race. Staying true to the musical theme, classes in Tiara Concerto avoid the traditional titles, and players can choose to be a Performer, Composer, or Tuner. 

Performers are melee classes, and players will be able to choose between the Great Axe, which specializes in huge sweeping attacks, or the Great Sword, which seems to be more balanced in its defensive properties and offensive capabilities. Composers are essentially the Archers of the game, and they will be able to choose between wielding a pistol and a gunblade, or a pistol and a crossbow. The gunblade is, understandably, more melee oriented, while the crossbow is designed for long-distance warfare, but both feature some fancy combat footwork to keep them out of trouble. Finally, Tuners are the magicians of Tiara Concerto and, although we only got to try Melody Tuners, who focus on long cast times and heavy magic damage, we were told that Harmony Tuners would be weaker, but far more mobile.

In combat, Tiara Concerto was a bit laggy during play and, when too many things were happening at once, you really started to feel it in the frame stutters. Perhaps this could be attributed to the incomplete nature of Tiara Concerto (the team notes that they are about 40% through development on it, with plans to launch sometime in 2012), but the combat, as it currently stands, is just a little too enamored with its elaborate abilities, which can often "frame lock" your character as they go through the motions. As well, while I do not think I spotted this in the current build of the game, the development team says that they hope to incorporate more musical elements into Tiara Concerto by tying character movements more closely to background music. In other words, in future builds we might be flipping around the arena in perfect timing to a heavy electronic track, guns blazing. There is certainly some appeal there for me!

If Tiara Concerto really wants to make it in North America, however, it's unfortunate that by the nature of their graphics engine alone, most comparisons will be made between it and Nexon's rather successful Dragon Nest. Unfortunately, Tiara Concerto currently lacks the responsiveness that makes Dragon Nest such an entertaining game, and while I did enjoy the musical themes of the game, I hope that the Tiara Concerto development team will embrace that premise even more so that they can establish a unique niche in the action MMORPG world.

Core Blaze preview on Page 3.