Every so often I'll run into an MMO that, despite being made well, fails in its attempts to capture my attention in LaTale.                

On an equal note, however, there are other MMOs that appear to be rather shallow and antiquated, but I find myself drawn to them like a moth to a candle flame. The game that I am speaking of today, called 'Latale Ely,' actually falls more into the latter category than the former, but you shouldn't let that dissuade you from trying the game out yourself.

I first started playing Latale Ely a short while ago, when I was on the lookout to devour any 2D style game I could find that was Free to Play. In the end, after having burned through a few of these 2D side-scrollers, I have finally come to two conclusions about this genre:

one, they are all very similar in nature, and two, I found that I actually like them. In this way, La Tale was no exception, and I found Latale Ely that I enjoyed my time in this game - even if I did know that I would get very bored with this in about a week's time.

I'll backtrack a bit: Latale Ely was developed by Korea-based company, 'Actoz Soft,' and has been out in South Korea since 2006. It was only in late July, 2008, however, that North Americans got to see this side-scrolling game under publishers OGPlanet.

Players start the game with the ability to pick from a short range of custom cute physical features before they are whisked away to bizarre tutorial grounds, where the player is taught about the game by… Power Ranger lookalikes.

To be fair here, actually, I would say that one strong feature about Latale Ely has to be some of the funny things their NPCs say (and the funny looking NPCs) when giving information and quests. It's refreshing to play a game where the chuckles stem from things that the designers intended, rather than discovering badly translated "Engrish" phrases.

Outside of their humour, however, La Tale's tale is ultimately one of grind. Players have the ability to choose between one of four different classes, the Latale Ely standard Warrior, the Wizard, the 'Explorer' and the Latale Ely Engineers. Each of these classes can move up into one of two class upgrades at level 80, allowing the player the opportunity to specialize their character even more.