When I first sat down to write a review of Hello Kitty Online (HKO), I wasn’t expecting much at all from an MMO that was aimed at a decidedly young age group. After playing it, however, I was definitely surprised with the level of detail that went into this game. It has everything that you’d expect from a high-quality MMO: a very detailed crafting system, a form of limited combat in order to get crafting material, and leveling up your character in both general level and various collection skills, including Planting, Gathering, Woodcutting, & Mining. There are also crafting skills (Forging, Carpentry, Cooking and Tailoring), individual player houses, and more.
Installing the game and character creation
HKO has extremely low system requirements, so almost anyone who has a fairly recent PC with an internet connection can play the game. Once you start the download for the client, you can start a character creator and then enter a Flash-based browser game that mimics the real game to get you familiar with the controls before you jump into the game itself. The character creation itself is fairly limited, but you can select your gender, hair style, and color. You are limited to only 5 or 6 selections of hair styles and colors, but it’s enough choice for someone of this game’s target age group to be happy. The only thing that I was disappointed in here is that you were not able to select a server in which to create your character, so if you already had friends in the world, I am not sure you’d be able to select the same world they were in so you could play together.
HKO: Combat de-volved
The combat system in this game is much like a standard game: click on a creature, and you and it enter combat until one of you is out of hit points. Since this game is geared towards children, you won’t find weapons like guns, swords, axes, etc., but rather things like magic wands, brooms, fly swatters, umbrellas, microphone stands, and other rather benign objects. Also, when you defeat a creature in combat, it doesn’t die, but is instead knocked out and falls asleep for a short time. The wild creatures are nothing more than things to be farmed for resources that you use for crafting. If you are lucky, one of the things that a creature can drop is its “Creature Card;” this allows you to keep that creature as a pet that will follow you around (but, as of yet, won’t do anything but look cute). This reminded me very much of Pokémon.
Collecting skills
There are four main collecting skills in the game: Planting, Gathering, Woodcutting, & Mining. Each of these skills increase as you perform these actions more. As you increase your level in these skills, you can get tools that increase your success at getting rare items from the skill. The Planting skill deals with how successful you are at planting crops, which are the main source of income in the game (more on farming later). The Gathering skill is used to gather your crops on your farm, as well as picking flowers. Woodcutting is as it sounds: chopping down trees to get various types of wood used in crafting. Mining is used to gather materials for forging.
Crafting skills
Crafting in HKO is based on collecting recipes. You can get recipes from quest rewards, or by buying them from the various vendors. Once you have a recipe for a specific item, all you have to do it select the recipe and hit the create button. You will receive a message in the chat window if you do not have the proper items to complete the crafting. The crafting skills are Forging, Carpentry, Cooking and Tailoring. Forging is the creation of tools or weapons, Carpentry is creating furniture to put in your house, Cooking is making food that replenishes your health or energy (or both), and Tailoring is creating new clothing items.
Farming
Farming in MMOs usually means going out and killing creatures for raw materials. While that is something that you do a lot of in HKO, you actually have a real farm in the game where you can grow crops and then harvest them for use in crafting or sales for money. While on your farm, there is an icon on the left of your screen that represents how many “days” have passed; a day will usually take only a few minutes to pass in its entirety. When you first go to your farm, it is rather small and half the squares have rocks in them, making them unsuitable for planting new crops. The first thing you need to do is to put fertilizer on a plantable square, then put a seed in the ground and water it. After you’ve done that, the plant will sprout out of the ground; in a day it will get bigger, and eventually start to sprout. Depending on your skill in gathering, you can either gather wilted leaves, caterpillars, or the actual fruit or vegetable you have grown. The higher your gather skill, the more likely you are to gather the crop rather than the useless withered leaves or caterpillars. You need to water your crops every day, or they will eventually die and have to be replanted. The time for this to happen seems to be around 24 hours, so you have to check back on your farm regularly. Thankfully, the basic farming materials are fairly cheap, so you can replant without much worry if you have to. As mentioned earlier, harvesting crops and selling them to vendors is by far the easiest way to make money in the game.
Housing
Eventually, after progressing far enough into the game, you are given a land deed and can build a house on your farm. The land deed can either be purchased from an NPC (non-player character) or won as a Quest Reward. There are many different types of houses, and each requires a large amount of resources to complete. You have to be a fairly high-level player to even make it to the town that has an NPC that sells deeds, so don’t expect to create a new character and then start working on your house.
Apparently "kitty" is a forbidden word
Social aspects of HKO
Again, as HKO is geared to a younger audience, the focus of the game is on cooperation and teamwork with other players while working together to accomplish your goals—whether that is questing, gathering materials for your house, or others. You can create a guild and invite other people to it in order to help each other out throughout the game. If you click on any player, you also have the option of adding them to your friends list, inviting them to your guild, or even sending them an email (to their SanrioTown.com email only). One major MMO standard that is absent from this game is PvP (Player versus Player) content. As I said, the focus is on help and cooperation between players, so PvP is clearly contrary to this idea. The age group for this game is definitely ages 7-13 or so, and it shows in the chat that goes on in the game. The first indication I had of this was within the first few minutes after I loaded my character: I was asked by a few female avatars if I wanted to be their in-game boyfriend.
Conclusion
I was pleasantly surprised by the quality and detail in this game. This MMO is definitely geared towards younger children, and I’d have no problem as a parent allowing my child to play this game if they were interested. The game runs on basically any modern system, and would be fun for young children who might watch their older siblings (or parents) playing more adult-themed MMOs. It does require a lot of reading, so if your child isn’t reading yet, it will at least require you to sit and read with them. It is a great introduction to MMOs for children that enjoy Hello Kitty, and if they are familiar with the Hello Kitty World, they would definitely enjoy wandering around this environment and interacting with the characters that populate it. Hello Kitty symbols are everywhere, from signposts to lakes shaped like HK and others; you never really forget that you are in the Hello Kitty World. In addition to a few imaginary towns, there are also real world towns of London, Paris, Bejing, Tokyo, and New York (with their own Hello Kitty stamp on famous landmarks). Overall, I think this game would be great for young children.
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