Lost Saga was the first game I downloaded from OG planet, the Free2Play portal I’m using to reexamine the genre. It’s not an MMO, but a Super Smash Brothers style arena combat game. I’d call it just a Net game, and it seems fun in short bursts. This isn’t an indepth review, but just a quick sketch of it.
The story…well I have no idea. I don’t even think there is any cutscenes. The game just dumps you into a lobby for a basic tutorial. The game itself has a nice control scheme. A to jump, S to block, D to attack. Pressing 2 or more of those keys at the same time uses a special attack. You control a character based on an archetype, like ninja, pirate, mage, or machinegunner, and their specials vary based on that: the nurse can heal, the pirate throws bombs. Characters gain experience and money in each fight, which can be used to unlock new heroes.
Gameplay is diverse. I limited myself to the team arenas, but they also had deathmatch, boss fights, and a few other modes I wasn’t to clear on. Arenas are pretty basic: imagine a 3-d version of a SSb stage with no interaction. In the team-based mode each kill gave a % to your team: get 100% and you win. Win or lose they also have SSB style after-battle bonuses which can give more money or exp.
The cash shop seems sedate. The only transaction I saw browsing through it was buying female gender for your characters. It cost 96 astros,which is the OG planet cash shop currency. Given that they don’t actually list conversion rate right away on the site, I had to google it. It seems you get 150 for ten bucks, which makes it about 7.50 ish. I didn’t browse the shop in depth, but if that is the only cost it’s well worth it.
The graphics are like a budget Gamecube game: simple and bright. Population seemed small, maybe 100-200 people playing.
It’s okay for a game. The fighting is functional but you aren’t going to be playing it over other games. I think it’s good in the sense that if you get bored of a regular MMO, on the same site you can play a more basic co-op game. However it didn’t hook me to keep playing in long bursts: the fighting is too basic, and the controls cry out for a gamepad. If it had more of an involved cash shop, it wouldn’t be worth the time, but in my brief play it seemed like you used the ingame currency to play and rent hero characters, and you got that at the end of every fight.
So, not bad.
MMO misanthrope 
Wait, you have to *buy* female…ness? Is that a mechanical thing (say, to unlock female-only characters) or a purely cosmetic thing?
…either way, it’s very curious in our “politically correct” world today. I don’t mind it, but I do find myself wondering what the thought behind it was.
It’s purely cosmetic as far as I could see. I didn’t see any female toons at all in the time I played. Even the “nurse” character is male. No idea why.