Like several latest massively-multiplayer role-playing games coming from Asia such as Blade and Soul or Twin Saga, Maplestory Mesos has beautiful graphics, an overwrought narrative about rescuing the world from evil, and different classes to perform with. Familiar characters are redrawn to be enticing and cute in three dimensions. The sequel also takes away the original game's gender-locked classes and limited choice of looks from the character creation page. (If you opted to play a demon slayer in the first, you'd have to spend real money or searching to get a beauty voucher if you wanted to take out the character's natural gray skin and reddish eyes.) I opted to make a warrior-type Berserker, a dude who has a pretty angry and aggressive backstory, but I was able to customize his look to be feminine and use pink curls and multicolored eyes.

The game highlights customization and individuality over conventional defaults. It's an obsession with asking if you would like to screenshot any component of the game, and it automatically saves screenshots in a specified folder into your PC. Perhaps the biggest sign of the game's ambitions is that you get your own house. I never noticed this while playing the first game, but older Maplers are essentially nomads. MapleStory 2 fixes this problem by giving you a big old home so you can craft your own little corner of this game.

Regardless of the change to 3D, MapleStory 2 smartly retains key elements of this game and storytelling that made the original so distinctive. The storyline has evolved and added dozens of new characters, but the core of the narrative is still the same: it is the evil Dark Mage versus the beautiful goddess. Some less-welcome elements of the first are nevertheless invisibly, like the famously glitchy Nexon game launcher.

However, once you're in the sport, a lot can be forgiven, given how it's the community that really makes the experience enjoyable. In its heart Maplestory2 Mesos is an online destination for friends to gather, similar to Club Penguin or even Neopets. I unexpectedly met my current boyfriend of nearly 3 years through MapleStory when an idle summer drew us both back into the game, and have met several Maple buddies in real life from throughout the country. We keep in contact, even though none of us play with the older game. The folks of MapleStory 2 seem nice enough for today. When I died and got pinned by a tombstone, I typed in chat for help, and someone really walked and revived me before telling me he hadn't helped me earlier because he thought I was an non-playable character as a result of my own suspiciously easy username.