Three Rings' nostalgic dungeon crawling hack 'n' slash MMO has captivated Senior Staff Writer Chris "Pwyff" Tom with its catchy tunes and vibrantly unique graphics.

In our ever-evolving industry of video games and MMORPGs, nostalgia can be a dangerous thing. It's easy to don those rose-colored glasses when looking back at some of our favorite games, but beneath all of those fond recollections, there are probably a few buried memories of frustratingly archaic game mechanics that we've all conveniently forgotten. Sometimes I'll hear a player complain about how leveling up in modern MMORPGs is getting too easy, but I doubt that many of us would jump at the chance to spend an entire day fighting the same monster to get 10% closer to our next level, only to lose half of that to an untimely death when a roommate accidentally unplugs the internet router.

If, however, our sense of nostalgia is tapped correctly, it is possible to rekindle those fond memories of dungeon crawling, sword-swinging goodness that engenders a fuzzy feeling in the hearts of most game fans while also moving the genre forward with a new bag of tricks. In a nutshell, this is the aim of Spiral Knights, a free-to-play old-school hack 'n' slash MMO that's being described as something of a mash-up between Zelda: A Link to the Past and the classic online RPG for the Dreamcast, Phantasy Star Online. Now, with Spiral Knights' official launch kicking off today, I decided to set my rosy recollections aside to see how developer Three Rings managed to bring some classic concepts into our present day.

For those of you who aren't very familiar with the afore-mentioned games, the core of Spiral Knights' game play is fairly simple in its execution. As a Spiral Knight, your people have crashed on a foreign planet, damaging their ship in the process. Of course, with no skyward options available, the knights decide that moving down is just as good, and so they begin digging into the earth, mining the minerals necessary to dig deeper while also gathering materials to craft stronger equipment. In other words, we've got a classic dungeon crawler in the making. Combat in Spiral Knights consists of moving on-screen with the keyboard, while aiming and using your weapon is handled by your mouse.

For player growth, Spiral Knights eschews the normal player level mechanics of most RPGs, and instead focuses almost all player growth on your equipment. Not only can players craft hundreds of different pieces of equipment to choose from, but each piece of equipment can also be leveled up through regular use by collecting "heat" (a fancy term for equipment experience) from levels. Initially, I was under the impression that all players would simply wear the same armor and use the same weapons appropriate to their progress, but Spiral Knights boasts a fairly impressive array of customization for players.

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