Stories of people being sucked into another world either from book, television, or video games. Plenty of people enjoy that concept. What about the stories where you willingly enter another world? #ME starts out with the video where new portals have opened up all over the world, and you find one to step through. This is where you then create your character.
Character Creation
Character creation is very simplistic. There are three choices for hair, eyes, outfit, shoes, phone, and phone ringtone. The hair options are, short, medium, or long pony with twelve colors to choose from. There are three for the eyes which are the shape of the eyelashes and eye shape. You then have the option to two tone your eye, or go for one simple color, of which you have twelve options. Next is the outfits of which you get three different colors to choose from. Two are for the top, and the third is the pants or leggings. Then you have the shoes; loose sneakers, high healed boots, or running shoes. You pick three colors for the shoes, two for the shoe itself, and the last for the color shoe laces.
The last part of the initial character creation process is not that great. The height slider for the character doesn’t change much from the lowest to the highest. Since the difference is so minor, the choice doesn’t matter.
The developers certainly could do better work with this, or outright eliminate this process.
Left is lowest height, Right is tallest.
Now we move to the phone selection. The three to choose are simple, modern, and metallic. You don’t see the phone much, it is unclear if the choice here has an impact later down the line.
Lastly is the ringtone. The tone plays whenever an NPC calls your phone. Choose carefully, unless you play with the sound off, which is not recommended.
Once the creation is done, you hit Go Live, and your in the new world, Astell!
Art, Graphics, Loading Screens
As you can see from images so far, the art is incredible for a Mobile phone game. You just have to love the loading screens too. The large variety of the loading screens is impressive, as well as the artwork. They use the art concepts for all the NPC’s, plus images of characters gathered as loading screens with little quotes from the character(s) involved.
It is clear a lot of work went into the design of the game and it really paid off. The graphics are awesome. The art isn’t the only thing that’s impressive, the game mechanics are also amazing.
Game Mechanics
First and foremost, you need internet to play and not mobile network either. You have to be connected to your home internet. Without stable connection, or you have chosen the Free Travel Area, you will experience a lot of crashes from the game. If you are too far from the router, it can lag the game and make it act weird. This can cause you to repeat conversations or actions.
It took me two days to get through the conversations and tasks for the tutorial and a little past using weak connection and Free Travel Area. When I changed the server to Pennsylvania, where I live, I was able to get back where I was with a new character within two hours. Compare that to the six or seven it took me with poor connection and several crashes later.
I have not tried another state server to see if the game prefers you to pick the closest server, or if any state server would do. Even with the right Server and good connection, the game can still see some crashes, but they become so few its worth the time. The game frequently saves so you will only have to repeat the initial conversation or action.
This game does allow you to take pictures in game, gain skill levels in several classes, or just chill in a virtual world with friends. Want to be a content creator? Model? Astell allows all of that including being a Gardener, Angler, or even a Rune Knight.
If you noticed, some of the classes are marked as unregistered. This is because you have to unlock the classes. The main ones you unlock via story are Content Creator, Model, Gardener, and Rune Knight. Once you have found the NPC that deals with that particular class, you will then have to register in order to start gaining levels. This is done by signing the paper presented to your avatar. After you sign, submit it via your phone and then follow that character’s content.
There are also Titles that you can obtain that everyone on the server can see. You obtain Titles by playing, unlocking certain stories, and by receiving certain key words. So far special events are not used to get Titles. This could become a thing later but only time will tell. Titles do travel across servers so if you do create a new avatar in another server, all the titles obtained from your first server carry over.
The next thing I want to cover in this section is Fashion. The character creation gives so few options for style, but once you unlock Fashion it opens up a door of several options you can purchase with in game credits. You may need to save up for some options but it is very much achievable.
Lastly is the Game’s UI. The UI is easy to navigate and easy on the eyes. Everything you need to make character changes, view quests, or progress is only one tap, or a few taps, away. At the bottom of the screen, you can find your server chat where you can share photos, emote, or send messages. Below the chat is the newsfeed. The games story can be found here. Community is beside the newsfeed, which is where all your private messages are, friends list, and where you go to create or join crew’s.
The center icon at the bottom is where you can find the class information, sign up for the others. This is also where you can find job requests, your titles inventory, etc. There is a lot to find here. To the right of this icon is where you can change your appearance in Fashion and the shopping. Right above shopping is in game mail. You can collect items that NPC’s sent, here. Above that you can find all the challenges and mini games. Next is the brochure where you can get items from certain tasks that grant in game currency.
At the Top right of the game you can find the current quest to play, and the mini map. clicking on the map opens up the town map where you can click to send your avatar there. The map also shows where NPC’s are located if you want to meet them.
Author’s Thoughts
#ME is very different from most Mobile games. Its a nice game to just relax and play. Aside from the crashes, it is an excellent game, plenty of content, and more to come. I do think they should cut out the height for the character as it doesn’t make a big enough difference. The tutorial is not easy to know if your out of it. Definitely once you finish the Rune knight quest, it seems like one is out of the tutorial.
The game seems to promise to do quests with friends, but as I do not have friends in the game so far I can not confirm this. The other bonus is that there are no random ads. Most Mobile games I have played have ads very frequently. #ME has had no ads the several hours I’ve played. Ads only pop up when you watch an ad to receive an item. This is a huge bonus to me.
I’d give the game an 8/10. It could be higher once they fix the crashing issue. Its definitely an MMO mobile game, great graphics for a phone game. It can be marked a close ten, when the crashes are fixed. I do Highly recommend the game.
Mom of three, enjoy videogames, board games and phone games. I typically am playing Simulation games or FPS games.
