The lost city of Atlantis is still lost - will you be the one to find it?"

Turn based battle – my favourite style of battle, has been on the decline for a few years now. In reality it hasn't really been the popular choice since the days of the SNES, but some games still employed the system and in most cases successfully. Take the juggernaught Final Fantasy Series, who until recently have always used an imaginative turn-based battle system, and thanks to it has retained a loyal fan base for over 20 years. This was up until FFXII (Final Fantasy 12); in FFXII they decided to change the fighting system from turn based to a new kind of action system. For some, this was a refreshing new look at a perhaps dated system, for others like myself this prevented them from playing the game for much more than a few days.
At the time I was devastated, I never expected the FF series to change from turn-based battles, in every addition to the series they changed characters, magic's, worlds, styles and systems, but they never changed the from turn based battles. Why now? Well, eventually I found that a proper turn-based system just wasn't good enough anymore and they wanted something new, and by 'pushing the boundaries' they had discovered this magnificent new system that well, for some turned out to be not all that magnificent.

The reason I dwell on this so is because until Atlantica I had honestly begun to think that good turn-based battle systems had possible been lost forever, and I hope that by chance, another reader that feels the same may come to read this, and finally receive the reward he or she deserves, as I have now. Atlantica Gold is a new, fully 3D, open world persistent MMO, and it's completely turn based – and guess what, it's amazing.

Fellow MMOsite reviewer Aroych recently completed an amazing preview of Atlantica Online Gold (read it here) that covered the characters, classes, and features of the game in more depth. I would urge anyone reading this to read the preview first, as I will be covering different aspects of the game in this review. Now that I've had a chance to have some hands on time with Atlantis, I'm going to be telling you a little more about exactly what to expect when you get in there. This may also be a good time to mention that Atlantis is currently in a Closed Beta Testing Phase, and will be available for free play from the 18th July until the 28th July. Beta Keys can be obtained through various sites with links available from the Atlantica Gold Homepage.