la-tale posts

Each week we find more and more free games that do not quite fit into the freeware mold. Games that do not require a subscription fee to play, but encourage player usage of money through microtransactions or special subscription services. This is Playing For Free, a column that showcases these games.

It's interesting to note that sometimes the knock-off can exceed the original, or change things up in ways that make the knock-off more compelling than the original. Runes of Magic did this with World Of Warcraft through a bunch of intriguing changes to the gameplay, but it's not just restricted to knock-offs of mainstream commercial games. La Tale is very similar to Nexon's incredibly popular and enduring Maple Story, but it iadds many great changes to the simple side-scrolling formula. Sure, it has an uncanny resemblance to its inspiration, but it manages to be a great game on its own and hold up to Maple Story when compared side-by-side.