Published by Com2uS and developed by Aiburton, the new mobile MMORPG Zeus: The Gods of Pride has been enjoying steady popularity since its official launch on August 26. What stands out is how the developer reinforced traditional mobile MMORPG elements through various proprietary technologies, leveraging AI to enhance the convenience of auto-battle-centric MMORPG gameplay while successfully blocking bot farms.

Playing Zeus: The Gods of Pride firsthand, I noticed a meticulous level of polish that went beyond what the development team initially teased. The epic narrative progression allowed you to physically feel a staircase-like growth curve, and thanks to content that unlocks sequentially to match your pace, the game provides a fun, continuous stream of objectives to conquer.

The continent of Teia, the main stage of the game, presents a vast and unique worldview where gods, humans, and monsters coexist based on Greco-Roman mythology. The developer utilized Unreal Engine 5 to realistically implement the passage of time and weather changes, exquisitely expressing regional characteristics such as the Mediterranean-style Thebes and deserts swept by harsh sandstorms.

Upon starting the game, you choose one of four basic classes: Rogue, Warrior, Mage, or Paragon to begin the adventure. To ensure the completeness of combat actions, the gender of each class is fixed, and they will later expand into a total of eight classes through a job change system, including the artisan class specializing in economy and crafting.

As for the customisation features, the game provides various preset functions to modify hair, eyes, and body types, alongside multiple elements found in recent releases such as size, length adjustments, and colour changes. You can even adjust two-tone hairstyles and the colour and density of facial makeup, and the character you create is rendered fully in cutscenes.

Starting with the tutorial section to learn basic controls, the early progression faithfully follows the familiar grammar of existing mobile MMORPG users. It is structured around auto-movement to destinations and completing quests to reap rewards, and up to level 20, fast character growth is achieved smoothly just by following the core given missions.

However, the direction of progression changes drastically when you encounter the boss 'Harpy Queen' at Epic 48. Bosses met in the epic quests are an area difficult to resolve with mere auto-battle alone; if you neglected equipment enhancement assuming it is still the early phase and kept auto-battling, the difficulty spikes to a degree where bosses dodge most of your attacks. As if hinting that sufficient growth is required, the required monster kill counts also surge sharply right before the boss battle.

The story boss battle is composed of basic attacks and large area-of-effect patterns to give you a taste of large-scale combat formats like upcoming guild raids. Since these attacks chop away a significant amount of your health even if you meet the recommended stats, manual controls such as dodging and movement are clearly mandatory. Players who taste defeat in boss fights naturally begin exploring growth elements.

This is also the exact moment when auxiliary growth content expands in earnest. You must steadily strengthen your stats through 'Aetherion', which utilizes level-up points, 'Singwa' where you need to grow fruits, and various collections. A variety of currencies are required in this process, and these materials can be acquired as byproducts from various contents such as equipment dismantling or enhancement failures.

Repetitive auto-battling is inevitably required during the growth process, but the fatigue is surprisingly minimal. That is all thanks to the 'AI Mode' supported by Zeus: The Gods of Pride. Provided free for 12 hours a day even to non-paying users, this system handles everything from simple hunting to potion resupply and moving to hunting grounds on your behalf. If you use the paid benefits, AI mode applies for a full 24 hours, and you can even set up schedules to automatically run daily missions and dungeon tours.

This offline convenience feature organically links with the guild content known as the 'Conscription System' to assist in growth. The guild master can summon guild members who are running AI mode while offline into guild dungeons or raids to use them as party members, and participating guild members can also earn rewards according to their contribution.

In competitive games represented by mobile MMORPGs, indiscriminate player killing or hunting ground control causes considerable fatigue for users. Such elements hinder the settlement of newcomers and negatively impact the overall in-game economy and ecosystem. Zeus: The Gods of Pride applies a design that separates combat power and field environments to lower player fatigue.

Some reactions note that the advanced AI convenience features make the game feel a bit like an idle resource management game. To compensate for this, Com2uS has been sequentially adding core competitive content such as guild raids, siege warfare, and the Colosseum starting from September 2. Future evaluations will likely depend on how well the new content proves the fun of manual control and cooperation.

Zeus: The Gods of Pride is a title that focuses on upgrading graphic quality and maximizing convenience rather than drastically altering the traditional mold of mobile MMORPGs. While it might currently give an overly automated impression due to its early-growth-centric configuration, the initial planning intention of the development team to aim for an MMORPG that anyone can casually approach has been faithfully achieved.