I have no idea if Steam will say at all if I've played Maplestory but I promise you all I have put a lot of time into this game and absolutely loved every minute. Unfortunately Maplestory just became completely uninteresting since I've tried to relive it. And it makes me really sad. Maplestory originally had the classes we all see in every MMO (no matter how hard other MMO's try to make it different) and of course also like every MMO it started off simple. One big difference of course was the fact that it was a 2D sidescrolling MMOPRG and it's done so beautifully. You can make different faces at people depending on how you feel which was really fun before the cliche "lol" and "lmao" texts we all now universally know. Getting weapons was also a little more unique since most MMO's just milk weapons. Now a lot of MMORPG's have bows with unlimited arrows and guns with unlimited bullets. Maplestory made you buy arrows and throwing stars/shuriken if you wanted to be a ranged class. And Mesos (Maplestory currency) was hard to come by at low levels making it even more challenging since you had to actually ask for money from time to time.

When I originally loved this amazing piece of gaming art you had to use a taxi to get to different cities (which you still do at least) and use flying boats to get to different continents. This was a huge deal because it allowed you to just settle down for a short time and actually talk to people; and listen to music along the way. Now this is not the case. There were no overpowered and annoyingly voice acted 'Hero' classes that literally kill everything in their paths with ease. You really had to work to get more powerful back then and you also needed to manually know what your stats needed to be for your class. Maplestory added more powerful classes over time but they were never 'Hero' status. Yes they got more powerful due to their unique skills compared to the default classes; however you still needed to start off as a default class and work your way into the more unique class you selected and leveling was still just as hard for you as the rest.

The music is still the same Maplestory anime music I know and love. I just wish it could be heard with the game I knew and loved. For all you new players out there reading this review it'll mean close to nothing probably. To shorten what I just said: Maplestory used to be a surprisingly vast game filled with lots of social opportunity and hours upon hours of questing and leveling. It's a shell of its former self now. This does not mean I say it's a bad game. It's still good and worth the try. But unfortunately you have missed the golden age that was Maplestory. It's all milked down and I can't recommend it in its state now. What used to take a couple weeks to a month takes less than a day now. Bosses that originally required a full team can easily be defeated solo and the monsters that were originally intimidating and powerful are powerless. The challenge is gone. I will miss you Maplestory.