An MMORPG that targets the younger (and less serious) gaming audience, Gamescampus delivers Asda Story Gold to the world. But will the seemingly button-mashed game title and the cutesy anime-looking characters inspire gamers to try out this world?

Much Asda About Nothing
When you look at MMO ads, you'll find Asda Story Gold quite the compelling game to try out. "Find your soulmate" sounds like you're delving into a social or casual game in a different timeframe. On second glance, Asda Story Gold is that game that falls short of its ROSE predecessor and copies several World of Warcraft systems. Much like some random programmer just put in a lot of junk to make a treasure out of it.

Topsy-Turvy
Asda Story Gold is set in a dream world called "Omnibus World." The world is said to be constructed out of the people's imagination and dreams, with Tillia serving as their god of creation and Lumper as the god of destruction. Eventually, the people lost their will to construct their world, and thus started the world's demise. A being of nothingness called Nihil emerged, wanting to destroy the world of Omnibus. Thus the two gods joined forces to stop this being. Nihil, being nonexistent, created his representative named Omnidecron to do the dirty work for him. Eventually, Nihil was vanquished, leaving Omnidecron and his Decron Army ravaging the world of Omnibus.

In a nutshell, that's how Asda Story goes (according to their website, as far as I can understand it). But as far as plot is concerned, it's actually non-existent in the game. Your quests are as simple as gathering quest items, killing random monsters, and/or delivering stuff from NPC A to NPC B. Eventually, the quests end and you're forced to do the dreaded grindfest until the next level to unlock the next set of quests. As your levels go higher, the quests will eventually lead you to the different maps appropriate to your levels. But that's it, the compelling plot doesn't sink in to you.

Me Asda Game Sees It
Graphics in Asda are not something to boast about. It's best describe as a below-average attempt at creating a captivating 3D world apt for it's cartoony motif. The game's visuals offers cartoon-inspired monotonous areas, filled the with same type of boulder, tree, fence and grass in every 3 maps or so. The terrain is littered with colored polygons or pixels clumped together to form a picture. Grass is just a spray-painted color in game, and the water is a stagnant piece of flat texture lacking depth and movement. The NPCs lack variation, and their models are usually repaints of another NPC from the previous town or map (save for a few NPCs perhaps). The monsters aren't helping boost the game's morale as well. You'll end up killing the same cat, crab, or duck model repaints with obvious name changes (Patchlinks Cat, Patchlinks Gang, Red-eye Patchlinks to name a few cats) up until your late level 20s-30s.