Vindictus is a hub-based action MMORPG that utilizes what is arguably some of the best interactive action combat in the genre. This is an MMO that released 11 years ago and to date has retained a loyal playerbase of active players, continuing to push out content and new characters regularly enough to retain player interest.

I enjoy all types of MMOs. Action combat, tab-target combat. Anime aesthetic, middle-eastern aesthetic. Open-world, hub-based. If a game is good, I can have fun in it.
Vindictus handles being a hub-MMO well. You have a multitude of different “town hubs” to explore, all with their own seemingly unique NPCs specifically associated with not only the town, but also the story.
The narrative is quite prevalent.. I think there’s more quest text present in the game than I’ve ever seen in a Korean MMO. Traditionally, Korean titles have a very large focus on 3 things: Gameplay, graphics and the cash shop.
Their game has to look good and their game has to play well. If both of those conditions are met, players are going to want to spend money in their cash shop, purchasing cosmetics, character alteration services, and inevitably pay-to-advance and pay-to-win items.

Vindictus is much the same.

This is a game with, once again, arguably one of the better action combat systems out there. You have plenty of variety over your character in terms of what abilities you want to learn, enhance and pursue.
I wasn’t following a build personally so I kinda just.. YOLO’d it, but I’m well aware how an optimal build would’ve allowed me to excel at my class to a much greater degree.
I opted to select the new Tessa class, as I’d done a dedicated video on her announcement when Nexon revealed her. Not that there weren’t at least 10 other classes I was interested in trying.
She had an interesting fighting style. Much more.. mobile, I guess, than I would’ve expected her to be. I found myself, at times, missing the mark on my thrusts and ending up on the other side of the room. But I chalk this up to poor reflexes more than anything.
While Vindictus utilizes an action combat system, it takes it a step further by allowing players to interact with the environment around them and even the enemies in some instances.
You can pick objects up – you can pick enemy weapons up – heck, you can, at times, pick enemies themselves up and use all of the above as weapons. Blunt weapons, projectiles. The kinds of crazy things you can do in this game are unrivaled.

While I have a lot of fun messing around with the combat, it’s not the only focus of mine. And I’m sure a lot of fans of the game.
When you create your character, you’re given very little in the way of customization. Your character ends up looking very basic, very generic.
However after making it in-game you’ll learn that there’s so much more available to you. Either via the use of the cash shop – which is what I used, or via special vouchers obtainable in-game that allow you to purchase hairstyles, outfits and.. underwear.
Which, let’s be real here – when the underwear your character wears is shown underneath your outfit, it’s important to match everything up. Otherwise it throws the entire thing off. I’m sure all you fashionistas out there can relate and fully understand what I mean.
Customization is always a large part of the MMO-scene. Especially fashion. This is evident in games like Final Fantasy XIV and Guild Wars 2 where you don’t necessarily have as much variety and control over your character as you do in something like Black Desert or Blade & Soul.

Graphically, Vindictus is hit and miss for me. Some areas look absolutely stunning. Other times, you can see how dated the engine really is. At least pertaining to some of the environments.
For the most part this game looks great – it has very diverse areas. Deserts. Valleys. Ruins. Forests. Caves. Monsters specific to the environments you come across.
The characters themselves look better than the models found in most MMOs even released today – games like Astellia, Bless Unleashed, New World. I don’t know how Vindictus does it, but they continue to impress me with each and every new class they release.
Abilities don’t look overly flashy. I’m well aware some people find this to be a very large issue in games like Final Fantasy XIV – they think all of the special effects detract from the game. Skills all look and feel relatively believable. Impactful, for the most part.
Even the hubs themselves look decent enough. And given you’ll probably be spending a lot of time in there queueing for instances to run, they’d better be.

Progression is pretty straight-forward. For the most part, all you do is follow the narrative. It guides you through leveling, you’re provided gear to make leveling easier and honestly, while this is an MMO built around group-play, it isn’t necessary to reach endgame.
Depending on how experienced you are with the game, how casually you want to tackle things, and the class you opt to play as, leveling can be pretty quick. By the time I finished recording, I’d hit almost level 80.
While definitely not something to boast about, it did take me about 2 weeks of grinding about an hour or so each day.
Much of this was with a friend, who I’m not going to say carried me, but.. admittedly while Tessa looks incredible, I feel as though she’s a little.. weak. So. Not “carried,” so much as.. aided. She aided me in obtaining level 80-ish.
Again, this was pretty straight-forward and everything we needed was presented to us including limited customization vouchers.

Most of the game – from what I’d experienced was relatively easy for the first 60 or so levels. After approaching level 70 things began to get progressively more difficult.
While I never died, PaperCat, the person I was playing with did. More than once. And that’s okay, not everyone is a professional gamer for a living. But this added sense of danger, this level of difficulty made us pay much closer attention to mechanics during boss encounters.
When boss monsters could kill you in a few shots, you knew you had to step up your game.

Unfortunately we never reached max level or made it to end-game, but I feel as though the 15? 16 hours we poured into recording this was plenty to get an accurate gauge of much of the game.
I’m well aware raids at end-game are very difficult, and subsequently an entirely different experience to what we had during our time playing through it.

This game has some of the best action combat in the MMO genre, providing interactive engagement with environments, enemies and objects.

It has absolutely stunning character models and pretty solid graphics overall given this is 11 years old.

There are multiple hubs to move between, limiting the boredom you might otherwise feel sitting in the same area for hours on end.

There’s an actual narrative.

There’s plenty of customization, allowing players to create something truly unique.. and also simultaneously bizarre, at times.

The leveling experience is pretty easy, which means there’s no real need to repeat content or run irrelevent content to continue.

You can play the game with 1-hand.

Vindictus is published by Nexon.

Hub-MMOs aren’t for everyone. Fans of open-worlds will likely end up feeling very limited.

Instances can sometimes feel too.. “samey” and repetitious.

Limits imposed on customization mean that unless you have the vouchers necessary, you’ll end up looking fairly basic.

People claim the game is pay-to-win.

Very poor optimization.

You probably can’t play with your girlfriend or wife around.

Ultimately, Vindictus is a very fun MMO. Yes, it’s not your typical open-world experience, but for the type of MMO it is, it does things right.
It offers a fast, fluid combat system, a great looking world, a narrative, and so much more.

Vindictus is a game that I have a troubled history with. On the one hand, well… it’s difficult to play 1-handed.. okay that joke was in poor taste, but I know some of you were gonna make it.
Vindictus is a game I’ve always recommended to people but I’ve never really dedicated much time to, weirdly enough.
So I’ve been dedicating some time to it recently, as the new class just released and my god the devs really know what I look for in a character. Legit, I feel like she’s perfectly tailored for my specific interests.
And while this is – and I want to stress this – NOT A REVIEW OF ANY SORT, I did want to make a video with some of my thoughts thus far.
I’ll have a more dedicated video on Vindictus some time in the near future, once I’ve gotten further through the game where I don’t have to deal with people complaining I only spent “an hour in the game.”

Vindictus is admittedly one of the most entertaining hub-MMOs I’ve played in recent memory.
It isn’t an open-world MMO – if it were, I feel like this probably would’ve been what Black Desert is but for the free MMO market, as to date, I feel as though the combat in Vindictus is almost unrivaled in the MMO scene.
While we’re limited in terms of what we’re capable of doing, where we’re allowed to go and even how frequently we can engage in activities, as there is a fatigue system system in place, I found that I’m not playing nearly enough where this is necessarily an issue for me.
I can foresee it being for players that no life the game, but at the ripe old age of 31, I just don’t have the time nor the energy to dedicate to games like I used to.

Now I made it quite a bit further than I believe I ever have in this game in this play through already, and let me tell you, it’s been quite the ride.
I’ve been through 5 or 6 entire zones already, with each zone having their own unique aesthetic look and feel to them, their own style of traps, their own selection of enemies, and most importantly, their own bosses to murder for some sick loot.

I know hub-MMOs aren’t for everyone. It can feel as though at times you’re just sitting around running small instances with no clear direction. Trust me, I can totally relate. I feel that way at endgame in MMOs when all you do is queue for dungeons or raids.
You just get to experience what is traditional MMO endgame for the entire leveling process in Vindictus. But at the very least, the dungeons you get to run aren’t bad and provide you with the added benefit of learning your character.

And you get some pretty amazing views in the game – for real, if anyone says this game is ugly, show them the incredible environments, the stunning aesthetics, and most importantly… the plot – yup, there’s an actual ton of narrative in Vindictus.
Granted, and I know I’ll get some flack for this, but I did skip the majority of it. I mean c’mon guys, who here actually plays MMOs for their story? Right, nobody. Unless you’re playing something like Final Fantasy XIV or Star Wars the Old Republic.

Now if you’re still with me, then you’ve actually stuck around longer than I thought you would have, so well done.
I can relate, as I’ve stuck with Vindictus longer than I thought I would have as well. And yes, if I’m being entirely honest with you all, the character models are definitely a part of that.
I like aesthetically appealing games, and even more so characters in said games. And if you take a look at the characters in Vindictus.. my god. There. Are. So. God. Damn. Many. And they all look so incredible. Like, they were ripped from a catalogue of super models.
Instead of “Victoria’s Secret” we can call them “Vindictus’ Secret” except… you know, since everyone plays them, they’re a really.. poorly kept secret, I guess. I dunno. It sounded better in my head.
But seriously, regardless of how Vindictus is doing in terms of population, regardless of how pay to win the game is, can we just appreciate what makes the game worth playing for the majority of us?

The combat. Seriously, being able to engage enemies with the type of combat Vindictus has is what has kept the vast majority of the playerbase around. This, to date, provides players with some of the best action combat in the genre and I cannot stress enough how much other MMOs need to take a look at this and improve upon it.
Being able to interact with the environment, being capable of picking up enemies and body slamming them – heck, even using enemies as weapons to launch at other enemies as projectiles is just the most ridiculously over the top thing I’ve ever seen.
And the fact that you have environmental traps, you can impale enemies, like… as I mentioned earlier, if Vindictus were an open-world MMO as opposed to a hub-MMO, this would’ve been the king of the free MMO genre. Easily. Absolutely no competition.

If only I had more money to spend on outfits. Because there are more outfits than I have dollar bills to throw at.

I’ve had an unexpected amount of fun playing through Vindictus, and honestly, I have every intention of continuing this to get as far as I possibly can in the next week so I can get a slightly more complete look at the game before doing a “What is Vindictus” video in the next week or two.

So if you weren’t already aware, Vindictus has a brand new character, “Lethor,” and she’s an absolutely destructive force packed into a tiny, not really all that intimidating package. And you know what? We’re going to be covering her today.

Now Lethor is a female fighter – the game’s 16th playable character. Yup, there have been 16 characters released over the course of the title’s life. She’s a martial artist that utilizes her body to push out immense amounts of damage, kicking, punching, flipping around like a ninja. No joke.

Vindictus is a free-to-play MMORPG with some of the best action combat found in the genre, allowing you to learn dozens of different abilities and combo them together to create devastating attack-chains.
It has 16 different playable characters to choose between and play as in-game, and allows for players to customize quite a bit of their character, both in the character creator and with outfits obtained in-game.
There is a plethora of different instances to run, each having their own aesthetic look and feel, there are a variety of different large, powerful bosses to engage.

And right now, the game has several unique packages for sale to help you progress through your journey. The Cool Summer Rookie Package, Summer Style Package, AP Package and Growth Package. They each contain their own unique goodies!

Alternate Title: Mabinogi Heroes
Developer: devCAT
Publisher: Nexon
Type: MMORPG
Model: Free-to-play
Platform: PC
PvP: Arenas, Siege Matches, Duels
PvE: Dungeons, Raids