When you first set out to become "the hero" who saves the land from the Twelve Demons (the mystical background story can be found here) you do so empty- handed. But being a master martial artist, you can still kick some major butt. As the game acknowledges, every combat action looks like it was ripped straight from a hilariously dubbed Saturday afternoon chop-socky flick (like Shaolin Deadly Kicks). You know - the ones we love to hate yet can't help but watch with glee.

In addition to your primary skills, you will also be able to acquire movement and attack skills. Movement Skills will allow players to move with incredible speeds, fly over buildings, or walk on air (ala Ang Lee's masterpiece Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon or the more recent Jet Li movie Hero, both of which are incredibly similar to the game). Attack Skills are creative, "big effect" special attacks that just aren't a form of damage, but allow for an "artistic expression that personifies their animal form." According to the game's PR, these skills will allow players to "experience the acrobatic world of martial arts with great embodiments of realistic visuals." I will say that the combat moves are gorgeous to behold, although I wasn't able to enjoy the movement skills before the beta session ended.

Hero comes with a Reward System as well. After every 50 kills you receive a Lot (short for lottery). It's graphically represented as a barrel with different sticks in them. When you "start" the lottery the sticks move around as if someone were shaking the barrel. When you "stop" it you get a random prize. Sometimes it'll be additional items, money or experience. Other times you'll get absolutely nada. It's a very cool touch (I'm easy to please apparently). Along this same idea, and I'm not sure if this is a permanent feature or just something for beta - it only happened to me once, but I received a GM Test (I can't remember if that was the actual name of it though). It was a simple math test, which I surprisingly got right (since math and I don't get along), but I received a nice piece of loot for answering it correctly. Hopefully this feature will make it into the final game.

As you make your way across the bright and beautifully rendered landscape (albeit not extraordinarily detailed - much more detailed then World of Warcraft, but not as much as Guild Wars), exploring the various zones and beating up on shadowy evil-doers and nasty animals - you obtain items in the form of armor, weapons and other odds and ends that you'll be able to strengthen and upgrade via the easy to use and very deep crafting system. No matter how low an item's level is you can upgrade it by taking it to a blacksmith and having it Strengthened. If you're lucky enough to find a rare item (like a diamond or some such mineral), take that to the smithy and have him add that to your weapon or armor. Item Strengthening has eight levels. Items are also class and gender specific, endowed with certain Strength or Dexterity requirements in order to use them. Furthermore, you can dismantle an item by breaking it down to its core contents in order to combine it with different items. The Abstracting Systems allows you to degrade an already upgraded item and extract it's core components.

Hero comes complete with an elaborate Pet System. Mountable and non-mountable Pets can either be purchased through an NPC or by taming wild animals using the Hunter skills. Non-mountable pets (like wolves) help by fighting and defending in battle. Mountable pets (like horses) can't attack, but you can while riding them. Plus, they can carry you over longer distances. A very neat feature is the loyalty level. If an owner lets a pet get hungry, its loyalty decreases! If its loyalty hits zero it will run away never to return. I wasn't able to obtain a pet (they are mucho expensive), but based on what I saw of them I can't wait to get one during the next go around!

Some other "odds and ends":

* Game Tips continuously run in the chat window area - immensely helpful!

* Right now the translations from Korean to English isn't all that great and there's some dialogue (both written and spoken) that makes absolutely no sense.

* Server stability was magnificent! They only crashed once - briefly. A very good sign!

With all that said... this is still early beta, which accounts for the problems. On the flipside, given the current state of the game - things are looking marvelous! You can bet your heroic, kung-fu fighting butt that I'll be playing again as soon as Open Beta starts on June 30! A pricing model hasn't been announced for Hero Online yet, so stay tuned to GameDaily for all the latest info on what looks to be a most intriguing addition the massive multiplayer landscape!