Video Game / La Tale

La Tale is a free-to-play MMORPG from Korea similar to Ghost Online, Wind Slayer, and Maple Story. La Tale has sidescrolling gameplay and 2D sprites on painted backgrounds. Unlike one of its predecessors, however, it did away with god-awful grinding in favor of decent quests that give more XP and are generally easier to do.

The story is about a mysterious girl named Iris who fought a great evil and vanished. Upon entering the world of La Tale, you must seek out the truth of her quest and companions via speaking with NPCs and completing various scenario dungeons.

The American version of the game is hosted by Papaya Play, while the European version was hosted by Aeria Games.

Prior to June 27, 2017, OGPlanet was the publisher of the American version of the game, before relinquishing control over to Papaya Play.

The game also received a mobile version, named Latale W. The story in this version is similar to the original, despite the scenario technically being a sequel to the original game's. However, this version was eventually closed.

As of the current season expansion of the game, there are eleven available base job classes, five of which can be upgraded to one of two master job classes. See this page for more details.

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This game provides examples of:

• Abandoned Laboratory: The Abyss Ruins and Chimera Labs instance.
• Absurdly High Level Cap: The Ascension system, unlocked after reaching level 235, is how you grow stronger even past the level cap, with passive bonuses that are applied account-wide. The maximum Ascension level is 9999. Thankfully, gaining Ascension levels is noticeably much faster than gaining experience for regular levels.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The underground sewers of Atlantis.
• Asian Fox Spirit: There are several examples, but the Gumihos are the most prominent ones.
• Atlantis: One of the towns is named Atlantis, and is fittingly, located underwater.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Mutant monsters, which are massive versions of older monsters found all over Jiendia. Naturally, they're much more dangerous than their original-sized counterparts.
• Bad Future: The questline to obtain fourth jobs reveals at the end that the Old Town is actually a future Midgard in the middle of this, which merely started with a Colony Drop and invasion of...something possibly relating to the Agasura.
• Bag of Sharing: All items stored in the bank or the Fashion Shop are shared between all characters on that account.
• Batman Can Breathe in Space: Seen in the longest tree, which tops out at around the strastosphere, and Valhalla, which takes place on (not in) an orbiting satellite as well as Xenadia, a giant pyramid...thing which also tops out in space.
• BFS: Some of the two-handed swords are larger than the characters wielding them.
• Black Mage: The Sorcerer class abandons all healing for damage.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Most of the translation is decent, but awkward. There are one or two gems like the soul urn and shield from the Mouth Peach being translated as "Mouse Pitch," as well. Fortunately, a lot of the translation errors were fixed in Season 2.
  • There's also a certain NPC who greets you with "What is up today!".
  • The "Jijel" monster was also eventually properly localized as "Giselle".
• Books That Bite: These appear as enemies in Velfa Library and its main dungeon, the Magic Book Room.
• Boring, but Practical: The Blader class line is not very flashy, but makes up for it with very long high damage combos.
• Boss Bonanza: Moon of the 16th Day, which is Aoich's main instance dungeon (If you don't count an NPC who teleports you to the Vanaheimr dungeons, which in recent versions shows much more importance).
• Boss Rush: Hardcore Coliseum, filled with previous bosses and minibosses that are both at a higher level and have special effects added to their attacks.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: For cash, you can get items that increase your XP or ely gain, increase the monster item drop rate, pick up items for you, heal you better and faster than the in-game items, along with event items to get even rarer items. etc.
  • You can even buy access to a spa which just gives you exp as you sit in it. It's not very practical in later levels though...
• Build Like an Egyptian: The Pyramid, which (obviously enough) is connected to the Desert Area in Jiendia.
  • There’s also the Amalrune Desert area and its dungeons near the Jude Capital in Eastland.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Armor and fashion items can be enchanted to make you a lot more powerful.
  • Not really the case with fashion items in the Infinity expansion anymore, where all of them give no stats whatsoever, and the only way to add stats to it is to use the rune system, and that system was also eventually removed to create the Imprint system, which are account wide benefits for 30 days.
• Continuing is Painful: When you die after level 20, you lose 3% of your XP and ely. This is a lot more painful the higher level you get, naturally.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Not only does the lava not hurt you unless you touch it, but you can sit in it and recover HP faster than you can lose it. Though, it's played straighter in the Time Attack Instance Dungeon versions in that while it still only hurts you when you touch it, it can kill you in a few hits if you're not careful.
• Critical Hit: Like most MMOs, this game places a LOT of emphasis on critical hits.
• Crutch Character: The katana skill tree of the Wanderer is considered to be this. Their damage output is absolutely insane in the early game and mid game, but they need a lot more investment to be in line with the other classes by the endgame.
• Deadly Gas: Poisonous gas reduces your HP in the Lair of the Evil Dragon. Particularly annoying when the minibosses hang out in it.
• Death Mountain: The Mountain Area in Jiendia, as well as El Anoir Mountains and the Devil's Mountain.
• Difficult, but Awesome: A few classes have a fairly technical curve to them.
  • The Wizard starts out quite weak early on, having low damage, low defenses, and having to work on two weapons (staff and elemental stone) at once, making them quite expensive. However, in the late game, they are capable of dealing some of the highest damage in the game.
    • Really, magic classes in general have to work with two weapons at the same time to keep their damage consistent, but have amazing damage potential in the endgame.
  • The Explorer also suffers from low damage and low defense early on, being heavily reliant on critical hits to deal any actual damage. With critical hits however, their DPS is almost unrivaled.
  • The Soul Breaker starts off fairly simple, but starts to pick up the difficulty curve upon promoting to the Soul Lord. Their Black Soul stance specializes in area of effect damage, but all their skills have a lengthy cast time, leaving them a sitting duck while casting, in which their low defenses don't help either. Said area of effect damage is easily the best in the entire game, so a masterful Soul Breaker player can instantly obliterate their enemies with incredible damage, while being able to weave in the skills from their other stances to increase their survivability.
• Diner Brawl: The Starry Cats instance dungeon, which has you fighting legions of monsters and slightly stronger (or weaker) versions of bosses fought in different instance dungeons.
• Draconic Humanoid: The builders of the Temple of Pluton, who appear later as enemies in two of the three Vanaheimr dungeons. There's also the Pontifexes that appear in Xenadia.
• Dude Looks Like a Lady: Tengu, Rabana, Siam, Pin, and a good chunk of the NPC cast.
  • It even spreads to the official art of the classes. The male Templar, the Minstrel, the Blade Master, and the Wind Stalker all look very feminine.
• Eagleland: There's a city called "Big Apple" that looks like the USA, specifically New York City.
  • The island the city is on looks like the USA, too.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: Fighting a 'level appropriate' boss, especially early on, is a good way to get curb stomped. That is, if you even make it to the boss in the first place.
  • Subverted in early levels in Season 2, as the bosses are easy enough to handle on your own.
• Enemy Chatter: Some of the enemies talk. Some of the stuff they say ranges from amusing to unnerving.
• Everything Fades: All monsters vanish when killed.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: Any and every enemy after the new player area IS aggressive, and WILL mob you to death. And let's not forget the variety of enemies that range from malevolent dolls to sentient, ambulatory food.
• Exclusive Enemy Equipment: Prior to the Infinity expansion, you could craft equipment based on certain enemies using a soul urn and other materials.
• Fake Longevity: Most quests can be completed three times. Each DotNuri stage has to be finished 20 times for its real prize. The Christmas event had to be completed 50 times to get its best title
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Aoich (Japan), Elfa (Egypt), Yong Gyoung (China), Belos (Russia—at least judging by the fashions offered there), City of Iron/ Big Apple (USA)
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Many of the areas are based on a story, like Jack and the Beanstalk, or Sherlock Holmes. Since they aren't all from the same country, it's pretty much inevitable. You'll also find monsters from nearly every mythology hanging out somewhere, including minotaurs (Greek), gumiho (Korean), mummies (Egyptian, sorta), and western dragons.
• Floating Continent: The aptly-named Floating Island instance dungeon, as well as the Floating City that contains the Ymir Institute dungeon.
  • Freios itself counts, with its Hub Level being named the Sky’s Ocean.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Invoke runs away when you defeat it on its first phase. However, this doesn't happen in the mobile version.
• Groin Attack: Used by the Nutcracker enemies.
• Haunted House: Foe Mansion.
• Improbable Weapon User: Bards use guitars, Sorcerers fight with orbs, Engineers fight with toolboxes, Maestros fight with conductor's batons, and Card Masters fight with...well, cards. And there's the Black Jade, which is a lantern which somehow transforms into a katana.
• Item Crafting: A good portion of high level gear can only be crafted.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chests: In Season 1, they spawned, just like monsters.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Regular Coliseum weapons, which have the highest base stats out of any weapons besides their advanced counterparts, and can be upgraded up to the level cap.
  • Unfortunately, with the Infinity expansion introducing S rank types of equipment, Coliseum weapons become completely obsolete.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Advanced Coliseum weapons, which can be upgraded up to twenty times. Unfortunately, a normal coliseum weapon quickly outpaces it until it reaches about +15, and they are so difficult to upgrade the cumulative success rate for a +20 is best written in scientific notation. Unless of course, you win a Coliseum's Desire Coupon.
  • The Darkness weapons and Twilight weapons were one for Season 2, then the later expansions introduce the weapons from Odin and the Dynasty weapons, one-upped by the Elrian weapons introduced along with the Monk class.
    • Eventually, the Legion weapons obtained from Lumen were introduced. They can later be upgraded to their Awakened forms.
    • The current most powerful weapons in the game are the Hell weapons obtained from Tartaros. They require the user to both be level 235 and Ascension level 500 to wield.
• Killer Rabbit: Too many to count, but especially the Shaggies and Priring palette swaps.
• King Mook: The aptly named Goblin King and the Demon Goblin.
  • The Mutant boss monsters are also examples of these, but the majority of them (With the exception of one, which is a pure Damage-Sponge Boss) are very high-leveled and often require parties to be dealt with.
• Ladder Physics: Apparently, you can climb ladders without actually putting your feet on the rungs.
• Leaked Experience: As long as the party member is no more than 10 levels behind the other party members, he or she will always get XP from a kill even if they don't fight.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The Story Fairy's description states that they used to have an attack that lowered the amount of players, which is revealed in their Enemy Chatter to be lowering one's experience points.
  • The Agasura also used to be hunting down the game's moderators in order to achieve hacking abilities. This was changed around Season 2, though, where they're more of a straightforward antagonistic group allied with the Devil Lord.
  • Some of the scenario dialogue mentions levels, including when the player communicates with the Unknown enemies in D-Labo, which come from an alternate version of the game's universe.
• Lethal Lava Land: The Lair of the Evil Dragon/Death Dragon Nest, as well as the Volcano instance dungeon.
• Level Ate: The Cookie Garden, and its much, much higher leveled version, the Choco Garden. Eventually, an even harder version (Although with vastly different enemies) known as the Ice Cream Garden was added in the Doll Street update.
• Level Cap: The level cap was originally Level 199, before being boosted to 200, 220, and finally 235. After the Treasure Cave update, Ascension levels (read: levels after 235) were introduced, going up to Level 9999.
• Lilliputians: In a Whole-Plot Reference to Gulliver's first voyage, there's a whole level dedicated to Lilliput, complete with a war involving eggs. You are requested to beat both sides up by the locals at different points.
• Locomotive Level: The Bongolle Train in Midgard.
• The Lost Woods: Way too many to list.
• Luck Stat: An amusing example; players already know that luck increases critical rate and ely gain. Exactly how much it increases it, or if there is a cap, is still a subject of debate.
• Magic Knight: The Phantom Mage, the subclass of the Wizard, utilizes both Strength and Magic for their damage. This makes them benefit from ''all'' stats.
• Mascot Mook: The prirings, who were so popular that they were added as a pet.
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: The most common type of quest, bar none. Annoyingly, quests to kill X Monster A always comes before the 20 Bear Asses quest for Monster A. That is, after you've sold the Vendor Trash you're supposed to collect. It's toned down in Season 2 and the later expansions.
• Monster Arena: The Monster Tower in the Big Apple, as well as the Coliseum and its higher-leveled variant (Which is a Peninsula of Power Leveling for many high-leveled players), the Sky Coliseum.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The 14th and final Legend quest finally reveals just how Iris vanished from the world. To defeat the Demon King, the goddess Seres granted Iris all of her power, effectively turning her into the new Seres. However, this act would result in the world losing Seres' protection, and releasing all the other evils that were contained. Out of guilt of this knowledge, Iris disappeared somewhere far, far away, with her only known whereabouts being in an "Eastern Continent", later revealed to be Lumen.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Certain items or skills give you immunity to physical or magical damage. The subclasses in particular get one that gives both.
• No Export for You: All updates come to Korea first, Japan second, and out in English only many, many months later. Played straight with every Japan only collaboration.
• Noob Cave: Subverted with the Belos Underground. While its entrance exists inside the First Town, woe betide any new players who DO venture into it...
  • Not anymore in Season 2 though, where it has been transferred to Elias. It's also very difficult to get killed there unless you run in naked and let the monsters kill you.
• Nostalgia Level: The time attack instances use extra powerful versions of previous monsters, with recolored bosses.
  • The Weekly Challenges for Level 235 players also tend to contain these, this time with you facing incredibly buffed mooks from before, or even entirely new ones, sometimes with a gimmick or two thrown in.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Besides shoes and gloves, usually the only thing you'll be putting on your armor is Strength or Magic.
  • Gloves can be enchanted with critical hit damage. If somebody has the resources to enchant a pair of gloves so that their critical hits do, let's say, 90% more damage than usual, the owner of said gloves becomes a force to be reckoned with. Especially if the owner of these gloves is an Explorer, whose main strength is their high luck and critical hit rate.
  • Stamina has been toned down to the point where it's a better idea to stack more Strength or Magic instead in the Infinity Expansion.
• Our Fairies Are Different
• Palette Swap: Many enemies are reused with only minor changes, although their stats can vary greatly. For example, one variant of an enemy can only have a few hundred HP, but their stronger variant has hit points in the billions.
• Palmtree Panic: Orca Beach, as well as Treasure Beach.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling: Spooky Village, Tiger Temple, and Coliseum. Spooky Village in particular has no items or quests besides a rare drop from its boss.
  • The Infinity expansion reworks Fairy Forest, Bakery Street, the Behemoth Stomach, and Lilliput into this.
  • While they were somewhat nerfed in the Infinity expansion with the introduction of quests that give huge EXP, they are still quite viable for leveling up.
  • The Chunsik Castle, Big Tube, and Starry Cats Restaurant are the most common places for endgame leveling to 200.
  • Most recently, the previous areas mentioned (outside of Big Tube, Starry Cats, and the Coliseum) were relocated into various locations with their level ranges changed, and their EXP payouts were greatly nerfed. Monster Tower now serves as the primary area for grinding to 200. The pre-200 Chunsik Land areas were also revamped so that you no longer needed to kill a large amount of monsters or the area's randomly spawning miniboss to progress to the next area. Instead, all of the areas are available in Chunsik Land's hub (being tailored towards Level 190-200 players).
  • In the mobile version, there is the EXP dungeon that has you fighting waves of enemies. Behemoth is also available with the same idea in Elfa and Ves fields, but you'll need to have enough crafting materials and pray RNGesus is with you to make it a frequent source of EXP.
• Platform Hell: The DotNuri mini-game, which is fashioned aesthetically after the original Super Mario Bros. It does, however, give very good rewards to those who beat it. One of their rewards is an extra skill point. It was eventually patched to no longer give rewards, instead being something that the players can do for fun.
• Player Party: Required to enter some dungeons, though as of Season 2, you can enter instance dungeons by yourself now.
• Player Versus Player: The Fight Arena is where this tends to take place, but it is also possible to challenge other players to a duel, regardless of location.
• Port Town: Elfa
• Prehistoria: The Saurus Fields, which are accessed through the Jungle in Ves.
• Prestige Class: The earlier classes have two at level 50 (while more recent ones have only one path). Prior to Season 2, the required level was 80. The second prestige class is unlocked at level 100 (formerly 140), and the final one is unlocked at 170.
• Purely Aesthetic Gender: Both genders can do any class with no stat differences. There are two areas of the game where only males or females can enter, but they have no plot or quest relevant events within.
• Randomly Drops: The soul urns are the worst offender. So rare you can farm a monster for days and kill thousands and still not get one. They became easier to obtain in Season 2, but were removed outright in the Infinity expansion, after introducing a simplified crafting system.
• Recurring Boss: Hyunmu shows up in the Shangri-La instance, as part of the BossRush, three times in Xenadia, and once more as a time attack instance boss. Many instance bosses tend to show up again in higher level instances.
• Remixed Level: The Illusion Mist Swamp, where one segment is a copy of Belos with no NPCs, and another uses design elements from the Link Between Time.

• Schizo Tech: Guns exist alongside swords and spears. It only gets worse once you see the mechas and space elevator.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Vintor, who has little to do with the main storyline. He's only encountered in the Legend quest storyline... and it's to fetch an Icecap as part of a test.
• The Shangri-La: Appears as the second instance dungeon in the game, appearing near Yong Gyoung.
• Shifting Sand Land: The desert outside of Aoich, complete with a pyramid.
• Shout-Out: The DotNuri minigame is a shoutout to Super Mario Bros., and the Bakery Street is one big shoutout to Sherlock Holmes.
• Smash Mook: A player version; the Blader subclass has no other abilities other than focusing their energy into a certain organ (read: buffs) and slashing.
• Space Elevator: The fairly high level Bifrost map. At least it's called a space elevator, though you have to climb it the hard way.
• Spam Attack: Card Masters and Monks specialize in this trope to a T.
• Spikes of Doom: In Season 1, every map that doesn't have a worse trap will have at least one spike trap on it. Who is building spike traps in the middle of forests, anyway?
• Status Buff: All classes have access to one, but the Bard line specializes in this far more than the rest.
• Stance System: The Soul Breaker gains two upon becoming a Soul Reaver, and gains a third one upon becoming a Soul Lord.
  • Red Soul: Uses most of the original Soul Breaker skills, and specializes in high damage while moving quickly.
  • Blue Soul: Focuses more on support, crowd control, and damage mitigation, but they are no slouches in combat either thanks to their enhanced basic attacks.
  • Black Soul: Specializes in massive area-of-effect damage potential, but all skills have a lengthy cast time beforehand.
• Stone Wall: The Knight class. Guardians forgo most of their defense for attack power, and Templars become even better tanks, being able to solo bosses, as long as the player's patience lasts.
• Spell My Name With An S: The aforementioned Mouse Pitch/Mouth Peach
  • Also, isn't the Javawalk supposed to be spelled Jabberwock?
    • Both of these were fixed in Season 2.

• Sword of Plot Advancement: You receive Durendal in your fourth scenario quest. The only thing it can actually hurt is the Ocean King, and that's after he's already beaten.
• To Hell and Back: Episode 5 is called Hel's Door. Hmm...
• Tomorrowland: Steel City, Atlantis, and Midgard are all far more advanced than the rest of the world. Atlantis actually sells their technology for food, since it is rather hard to farm on the bottom of the ocean.
  • Played with in concerns to Asgard, which is by far the most advanced area seen so far. The NPCs mention, however that the technology is rather antiquated compared to what they've seen before.
• 20 Bear Asses: At least half the quests fall under this. Annoyingly, the quest for the item will often pop up after you just did a quest that involved killing X number of those enemies and ''already sold the item. Although quests are made a bit more straightforward in the Infinity expansion.
• Unbreakable Weapons: No matter what you do to them they won't break... except when you try to enchant or upgrade them. Then they can break and be lost forever. Apparently enchanting a sword is much harder on it than smashing crates or killing armored foes with it.
  • Averted with the Monk's weapon, as you only ever have one that can be upgraded, so they will never break even when enchanting them.

• Womb Level: The Behemoth's Stomach, which also has sentient germs and blood cells as monsters.

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