Maplestory M – 2020 First Impressions and Thoughts

I’m a huge fan of Maplestory. I’ve been playing this game on and off for almost a decade now. So when I heard that there was a mobile incarnation of the game – Maplestory M – I was ecstatic.
I know, I know. I’m a little late on this one but you know what? Being late has given them plenty of time to release a lot of new classes, new dungeons, push out tons of content to consume. So in that sense.. this was the perfect route to take, right?

As this is a Maplestory MMO you can bet there are a ton of different classes to choose between. However, since their latest update just went live, and they released the new Demon Slayer class to accompany that, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to take them for a test run.
Seems only fitting, right?
So, I proceeded to make my character, was greeted by a story specific to my class – which Maplestory has always done, something I find makes replaying other classes significantly more enjoyable of an experience, and then proceeded to jump right into the familiar world of Maplestory.
Do note, that when creating my character I did opt to create a burning character, which provided me the ability to obtain 2 additional levels per level up. This allowed me to reach – what level am I currently? Over level 50 by now without too much difficulty.
Although you’re limited to a single burning character per account, so you’ll have to choose wisely.

There are so many things to do, so many ways to level in Maplestory M. Daily Dungeons, Elite Dungeons, Mini Dungeons.
I levelled to level 50 through questing and farming monsters out within the world, but I wanted to tackle the Story Exploration – as Maplestory has always had an incredibly entertaining, light-hearted story.
There are a variety of stories to run through, but at my level I only had access to the Ellinel Fairy Academy, which if you’ve played the PC MMO you’ll be all too familiar with.
Each Episode has its own set of rules, requiring you to defeat x monsters within x time limit, find x amount of items around the zone or even complete this ridiculously difficult jumping puzzle, which I may or may not have had a lot of trouble with.

Like seriously. Just take a moment here and look at how much trouble I had with this.
Missed the jump. Missed it again. See? I’m terrible at jumping puzzles, and this one isn’t even difficult! Eventually I made it, sure, but look at the amount of times I failed this… don’t judge me.

Combat in the game was actually a lotta fun. We could bind several abilities to our ability wheel and they were very impactful.
Skills looked great and felt great to use. I could easily rocket myself horizontally, and at times hit enemies vertically with AoEs which made grinding pretty easy. Thankfully the Demon Slayer had quite a few different AoE abilities and if you know me… I’m the type of person that pulls everything together and mows them all down simultaneously.

Which, admittedly, lead to this happening… more than once. But hey! I’m still getting the hang of the controls, here. C’mon!

Overall, I had an absolute blast playing through the game.
Seeing other players running around the towns and zones I was in, seeing so many familiar areas, models, classes and characters. This was a nostalgia trip if I’ve ever seen one.
This is an MMORPG that actually feels like one. Not the typical recycled content you’d expect – but something that actually looks and feels like you’re playing the main Maplestory game on your phone. And flying through the air on my Demon Slayer, unleashing havoc both above and beneath me was an absolute thrill!

Once again, If you’re interested in trying the game out, then I recommend clicking that link in the description and pinned comment below!