If you haven’t quit to go play something else by this point in the game, you can just go play another game while this one plays with itself. That’s where the mind-numbing bulk of this game comes in – grinding to your next level in order to get more quests. You won’t know if your character is alive or dead until you tab back in. Except that after about level 14, quests will not be enough to push you to the next level. The quests are an eye-bleeding atrocity that needs to be there to help levels move along. Quest text goes to the end of the box and then starts on the next line and it doesn’t give a crap if it’s in the middle of a word or not. Beyond that, I really can’t understand why they don’t have text-wrapping technology. That’s fine, but for the love of all that is holy, can someone please explain why the scroll that makes me run faster is a scroll of scud? Yes, of course the word fits, but that has to be the worst of all possible choices to tell a player that they’ll move along swiftly. Let me say that I get that this is a Korean made game and that they may not have had the budget for proper localization. Now that the gratuitous sexual material that makes the game “adult” is out of the way, we can look at the quest system. Good thing the merchants pay top coin for used demon panties.
Great, now my bag is full of panties from dead succubi. For a quick example of just how low the game gets, when you kill a sayakah (think succubus complete with whip), not only do you leave them completely topless on the ground, there’s a good chance that you’ll loot their underwear. Don’t worry though, enemies also suffer from armor damage and you’ll have plenty of large-breasted NPC creatures to beat up. Level 20 and higher armor on female characters will completely bare their chests at this point. By the time it’s reduced to 70%, your armor is completely shredded. After losing about 10% of the durability in your body slot armor, it will start to show wear in the form of a few missing chunks. Like any good (read bad) anime girls, your characters fall prey to the game’s armor damage system. Skimpy armor wasn’t nearly enough though. You had better like the look of the armor since you’ll spend the first 20 levels in palette swapped versions of the same design. All female characters have outrageous breasts that are barely covered and enjoy wearing as little clothing as possible. The game is designed to showcase virtual T&A as much as possible.
Let’s just put the main selling factor of the game out here right now. If only they had access to a word processor. The most redeeming quality of Kabod is that it managed to consistently surprise me with the depths of its awfulness. Unlike SWTOR, which charges for the privilege of hiding helmet graphics, Kabod Online lets you hide all of your armor if you wish to feel that scuzzy. It does, however, excel in the field of hiding armor. It lacks aspects that might be considered fundamental to modern MMORPGs like an auction house or even the ability to change key bindings. The music (which I muted after a few sessions) sounds like something out of an old SNES fantasy game. The game is so bad that you’re not actually expected to really spend time playing it while you play it, but I’ll get to more on that later. However, its antiquated graphics, bad localization, terrible quest stories, and lamentable gameplay have left it festering in the darkest corners of the net where only those seeking out F2P games that they’ve never heard of are likely to find it. The game was in beta in 2010 and has had plenty of time to find its footing among gamers tired of the mainstream MMORPG scene. Kabod Online is a F2P MMORPG that comes to us from Korea and is apparently meant to be an “adult” MMO. Have an uncomfortable laugh at my experience and consider the matter good and done. Even the game’s designers know that it’s not fun and have made appropriate arrangements. I do not, in any way, suggest that you spend time on this game. Kabod manages to hit the very lowest point of gaming and then gets out a shovel to see how much farther down it can go.
Kabod Online has got to be one of the most hilariously bad examples of the genre I have ever come across.
I play a pretty good amount of free to play MMORPGs and I have a pretty good idea of what I like and what I think works. I’m sure it had its fans, but I stand by my statements that it was mediocre on its best days. Update: Kabod Online is no longer, well… online.