Tree of Savior - Sharing Steve

62 hours and 130 Levels (on my main character) into Tree of Savior I can say that I'm probably enjoying the game a little too much by now. It combines some of my favourite elements from Ragnarok Online and - fuck you, I'm totally going there - Path of Exile.
You may strongly disagree with the latter, to which I say that you know nothing.

The part I'm comparing to PoE is, of course, character development. My main character is a mounted knight, who rides into battle with a nasty charge attack and impales baddies with his lance. He then proceeds to slam the impaled monster into other monsters (i.e. hitting a motherfucker with another motherfucker), while the victim remains attached to the lance. Then there's a quick weapon swap to dual one-handed weapons, chopping up the leftovers while the mount turns into a battle pet, dealing its share of the damage. I'll wait here while you name another MMO where you get to do all that on a single character.

And what an awesome mount it is! Also, someone's itchy, I think.

Tree of Savior calls these Mount/Battle Pet creatures companions. They gain levels and can be trained to tank for you or deal a lot of damage. And all of your characters get to share them. The other night I felt like trying a new character, so I rolled an archer and took my level 67 companion with him. I didn't really have to do anything, because my pet murdered all the bad guys for me. What's better, I can level up the archer to become a beastmaster of sorts, who makes the companion perform all sorts of special attacks, making him even more powerful. It's pretty amazing stuff, really.

And while I was already at it I decided to create a cleric. I don't usually play healers in MMOs, because I simply don't like (healing) people. But they're ridiculously fun to play in ToS. Casting the basic heal spell creates a bunch of magical healing fields on the ground. If you or a party member steps on them they'll restore your health. However, if a baddie steps on one, they'll deal massive amounts of damage. I've spent the rest of the day "healing" monsters until they exploded into tiny pieces. Which they literally do.

All your characters share a room and their pets.

I'm currently playing my Cleric like some sort of murder-tank, who wipes out entire dungeon floors with ground-targeted healing magic. I've added some lightning-flavoured elemental spells to the mix and I have yet to encounter a boss who survives for even ten seconds. Sure, it seems a bit broken and overpowered, but in a game, which is designed for people to gain some 450 or so levels, what's a few boss-oneshots in the mid 20s?

I'll slap a few paladin levels in there for good measure (they get to convert enemies into allies after all), as well as a dash of voodoo to summon hordes of zombies. That's a crazy, massive amount of fun abilities and skills and a really enjoyable play style. For comparison, Claire's cleric is aiming to become a shape-shifting druid in the long run, able to transform into any plant, beast or monster she chooses to become. Getting that perfect character does require a bit of planning ahead with a skill simulator, but it's not the huge pain in the ass a certain other game wants to be.

I love Path of Exile, but this is fucking stupid.

Playing multiple characters provides certain benefits on top of the shared companions. The relative strength of your characters will raise your team level, which results in passive bonuses. Completing collections hidden throughout the game provides stat-boosts, which are shared between all characters. There's also a shared stash, which lets you trade items between characters if you're a premium member. And at the time of this entry it's impossible to actually dump a few pennies into said premium membership, which sucks. Apparently, non-premium players also don't get to sell more than a single item on the marketplace (read: auction house) at a time, which sucks even harder.

Apart from that, I don't feel like I'm overly limited as a free player. I'd throw my money at them if they let me. According to the website, they're working on implementing payment options within the month. Let's just hope they won't go over the top. Because with games like Warframe and Path of Exile being perfectly enjoyable for free, ToS can't afford to rip people off.