4 Upcoming Anime MMORPGs You Absolutely NEED To Play In 2018 And Beyond!

With 2018 just starting, and the Anime MMORPG genre being all but a thing of the past at this point, I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at a few upcoming Anime inspired MMORPGs slated for 2018 and beyond.
Now, I’ve been a huge fan of Anime MMORPGs for the longest time.
I’m a weeb.
I enjoy Anime and I enjoy Anime MMORPGs as well. My first MMORPGs were Anime MMORPGs after all, and I spent the vast majority of my teen years playing them.
The market for Anime MMORPGs specifically is in a terrible state right now, even though Anime games in particular have been selling ridiculously well on Steam all throughout 2017.

Now I want to get excited for Anime MMORPGs again – I do. I would love to jump back into an entertaining Anime MMO I could play with my wife and our friends.
That is the sole purpose of this video: To point out a few Anime MMORPGs that I’m personally looking forward to playing this year, next year..

KurtzpPel is a 3D Anime inspired Action MMORPG that looks like a very heavily updated version of Mabinogi. It’s gorgeous, absolutely, ridiculously gorgeous.
The studio behind KurtzPel, KOG Games, are well known for 2 other popular Anime MMORPGs: Grand Chase and Elsword. Somehow, the team manages to take KurtzPel’s Anime inspired visuals to a whole new level.
Outside of Peria Chronicles, I’ve never seen such an accurate, nor visually stunning MMORPG make use of this particular graphical style.
From what we’ve learned thus far, it looks as though KurtzPel will likely be a stage-based MMORPG as opposed to an open-world MMORPG, but they have made promises to provide plenty of PvE, story, and PvP content for players to participate in.
Looking at the character creation, you’re given a lot of control over your characters body. Overall shape, height, weight, muscle. You’re both capable of making a little loli or shota character, or a large, hulking behemoth.
Unfortunately you’re not given the same control over your face that you are over your body. The facial customization is actually a letdown for me considering how much of the body you’re given access to customize.
Finally, the combat is completely action-based, and quite fast as well.
So for those of you that’re interested in combat like a mixture of Blade and Soul and Soul Worker, this will be yout thing!
Overall, with how beautiful KurtzPel looks, how much control I have over how my character looks, and the amazing looking combat, I could not be anymore excited.

Like KurtzPel, Peria Chronicles is a 3D Anime inspired fantasy MMORPG that again – is reminiscent of an up-to-date Mabinogi.
Peria Chronicles is also probably the only MMORPG I’ve seen in recent memory to actually focus on a cell shaded art style as well, which definitely caught my eye.
Touted as pretty much the ultimate social, roleplaying MMORPG ever, Peria Chronicles has set the bar incredibly high – which may or may not be in its own best interest.
See, in Peria Chronicles, you are given the opportunity to shape the very world you live in.
Similarly to Neverwinter, players are given unique creation tools to create their very own distinct areas and environments, construct towns from the very ground up, create functional quests, and the game goes so far as allowing you to even insert your very own cutscenes into the game.
So while that all sounds pretty amazing in theory – it does mean that the developers look to be aiming at having the playerbase themselves keep the game updated with content.
And while that is all well and good, if the playerbase that actively plays the game dips.. so does content.
Who’s going to be creating new towns, quests, content for the game if everyone is gone?
Now the character customization in Peria Chronicles is great.
You’re given the opportunity to reshape your height – not to the same degree as KurtzPel, but regardless – you’re also given the opportunity to customize your face with various sliders.
Which is where the character customization is superior in Peria Chronicles. You’re not just given a preset face – you can morph it to your liking.
Finally, combat in Peria Chronicles is very, very.. I’ll go ahead and say unique?
The game utilizes a card-system. A very strange card system that is difficult to explain, so rather, just watch the clip in the background and take a look for yourself.
Overall, Peria Chronicles actually has the capability to become something new and amazing – but we’ll have to see.

Arpiel is an isometric Action MMORPG with an interesting twist on the class system. Your class, and the skills associated with it are inspired by unique, animalistical counterparts.
Visually, Arpiel is a very attractive Anime inspired MMORPG. It isn’t on par with KurtzPel, Soul Worker or Peria Chronicles, but for the kind of game it is, it looks fairly well polished.
Since it is after all an isometric MMORPG – the graphics can’t be expected to be on par with the rest of the games on the list.
The character customization in Arpiel seems more or less what you’d expect from a traditional Anime MMORPG.
You have a few eye colors to choose from, a few hair colors and hair styles, and overall that is the extent of the character creator.
Which is incredibly disappointing, but it is the trend with Anime MMORPGs. The developers just don’t really care to give us much customization unfortunately, and that is always to the detriment of their game.
Now, Arpiel seems to be very reminiscent to other popular MMORPGs like Dragon Nest, Vindictus, Dungeon Fighter Online and all the other dungeon crawler-instance based dungeon MMORPGs.
And that is fine – there is a market for it after all. And in the end, it is how the game is handled that is most important.
Movement and overall combat in Arpiel is very high quality, with skills and animations having huge, cute, flashy effects and characters having different, distinct walking styles – something I always find fun to observe.
Finally, if running dungeons over and over with central “hubs” where all the players gather isn’t your thing, then this may not be the game you’re looking for.
Yes it is incredibly cute, yes it is incredibly fun. But it can definitely get tedious if you’re not interested in the genre specifically. So. Just a quite note.

Soul Worker is a 3D Action MMORPG that also features a unique cell shaded art style not commonly found in MMORPGs.
It is – in my personal opinion – the best looking, and simultaneously best playing Anime MMORPG currently released.
Coupled with the fact that it has a Quarter 1 release slated for the Western market in 2018 is a huge pull for me as well, having played the Japanese version quite extensively.
Visually, the game takes place in a post-apocalyptic world – or more appropriately, post-apocalyptic cities.
You spend the game progressing through the story, which leads you down varying sectors of destroyed cities, fighting monsters, bosses unique to each chapter you’re in, and clearing missions all to further your progress through the game.
Speaking of fighting – as I stated – the combat in Soul Worker is in my top 3 favorite combat styles in an MMORPG. The action combat in Soul Worker is absolutely top tier.
This – coming from an Anime MMORPG is quite a feat, as traditionally, I’ve found Anime MMORPGs to have slow, stale and repetitive combat.
Soul Worker’s though is a step up and absolutely beautiful – not to mention entertaining to partake in.
The character creator though.. much like the vast majority of Anime MMORPGs is incredibly limited. You have a few facial options to choose between and a few hairstyles, and that is essentially it.
Which would disappoint me if it weren’t for the fact that your character is a large focal point of the story – your character specifically – so they wanted to impose a limit to prevent vastly contrasting appearances in-game.
So – with all of that being said, Soul Worker Online is worth playing if only for the fact that it is the most visually pleasing, has some of the best action combat, and is actually story-driven.

Yes.. these are pretty much the games we have to look forward to. Granted, there are some other ones out there but none that I really find worth mentioning nor recommending.
With the Anime MMORPG market so bare these days – do you guys even play Anime MMORPGs anymore? I can list a total of, possibly.. 2 that are even active in any capacity in 2018.