I've never understood immigration. Sure, I suppose I'm glad my Dutch ancestors came over on a boat one day, but it was the rage and the thing to do. Today, however, one of the biggest political debates right now is regarding that of illegal immigration, and things about building fences to keep people out. With that segue in place, in Sword of the New World you and your family find yourself on your own immigration, and maybe it's just me, but if I saw all these monsters in my new homeland, I think I would turn around and go back. That said, it sure does make for a good time of monster killing, and heck, you'll never be alone again.

The big thing about Sword of the New World (SOTNW from now on) is that you don't only control one character at a time like you do in many MMORPGs, but rather you'll always be able to have up to three on a field at once, with you being able to take as much control of them as you want, or let them fend for themselves while you focus on one "major" character. You'll start by creating your first four family members, who all share the last name of your choosing, and you will define their first names as well. From here you'll also pick sex, and then the most important part of this early step – their classes.

Characters in SOTNW are divided into one of several classes: Fighter, Wizard, Scout, Musketeer, and Elementalist. Character classes work mostly like you'd expect, with the fighters being used for close combat as tanks, wizards and scouts and elementalists being nukers, and such and such. Though you could maybe get through with dabbling in only one class, such as a team of three fighters, you'd probably be better off mixing and matching to make a more well-rounded unit. For my first family members, I created a fighter, an elementalist, and a musketeer. I chose the fighter for the higher HP and defense for when the monsters got a little too close for comfort; a musketeer to shoot at enemies off in the distance and before they closed in; and I chose the elementalist so I had some magic on my team. I've stuck with this team, and other than some moments where they died because I attempted something too early considering their levels or else got too surrounded, I've found my team to be pretty solid and all-around pretty good. After choosing your class, you'll also be able to go through several costume types, picking which style of clothes you want your characters to wear, from the buttoned up naval like outfits to the fancy and puffy Marie Antoinette styled gowns.

A little tutorial area onboard your ship bringing you to your new homeland introduces the controls of the game, which take on a more Diablo vibe than that of many MMORPGs, which have you directly controlling your character with the camera centered directly behind them. With SOTNW, however, you'll be able to rotate the camera around from a top down perspective, fairly high or relatively low to the action depending on where you center it. Controls are also controlled by mouse click, so to go somewhere you'll just left click the mouse and off your characters go to wherever you directed them.

Given that you can control three characters at once, it can be a bit daunting to manage them all individually, so chances are probably pretty high you'll manage them as one, singular moving entity. In this case, you can set your team to respond as a whole, which means wherever and whatever your lead character is doing, the other two will follow. With the group movement in play, it's easy to click on a monster for all your characters to focus their fire power on, or do other movements, which by the holding down of one or two extra keys, will have your character go to a point and fight every enemy that stands in their way, or either gather all the dropped items. The "move and fight all" controls are the easiest and most hands-off of the bunch, as you don't have to pinpoint any given enemy…attacking just happens. However, though the "move and fight all" is easy, it can lead to more fighting than you wanted, because there are so many monsters on the field and re-spawning so quickly, you'll constantly be fighting every little monster that comes your way; the fighting is usually pretty quick early on, so at least you won't be fighting that long.

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