I've been excited about Chrono Odyssey for a couple of years now. An MMO with action combat and time-based game mechanics set in a fantasy/future/alien world feels like something I could lose many, many hours to. (I've still got a World of Warcraft subscription, so I feel qualified to say that.)

The concept art released in 2023 made me more excited and I've been using this one as my lock screen ever since. Plus, it serves as a cue for me check on progress and see if I'll ever be able to play it.

This weekend, I got my chance. The first Closed Beta Test was live all weekend and I carved out 93 minutes from a fairly busy weekend to dive into the world of Setera.

I was met with graphics jank, unfinished world areas, and a very dazzling invisible wall. And I really liked it. It felt like playing the WoW beta—not at a story level, but at an open world level—where everything was new and big and still a bit broken when you pushed on it.

After getting the video settings as dialed in a possible (I'm on a 3080 Ti), I just had to live with pop-in, missing textures, and strange view distance rendering. What I got in return was a character who could double-jump and grapple up and into places they were not supposed to go. I loved wall-walking in WoW until they kill it in Patch 1.9 (in 2006!). Ever since then, I find exploring places I'm not supposed to go in an online game often more fun than the actual game. If Chrono Odyssey has more of these places to explore, I'll be delighted to double-jump and grapple my way to them.

Oh, and I'll probably try to level and kill stuff too so I can cover up my character's very white legs.