Hello.

This time, the keyword is real life, and the topic is the realistic elements you can find in games.

Since MapleStory is fundamentally built on a fantasy setting, most towns and features are quite far removed from reality, but among them, the well-known Kerning City blends in realistic elements especially well, so it is one I personally like.

What I find especially interesting is that, if you think about the apartments and high-rise buildings visible in the background, it feels as though people must be living out ordinary daily lives there as well.

On the other hand, there is content that draws on real-world elements even more directly than Kerning City, and that is Friends Story.

Friends Story, a setting based outright on the real world

Friends Story is content that first appeared all the way back in 2014, and its defining feature is that the area is based entirely on the real world. By Maple World standards, it counts as a different world, so it is referred to as another dimension.

The content itself is somewhat separate from level and spec progression, and since it is also placed near the story section in the Guide, after being used for the release of Kinesis, the Seoul-born class added in 2015, it remained fairly quiet without drawing much attention for a long time; however, with last year's Kinesis remaster and this 23rd anniversary event's collaboration with Lotte World, it has been used again on an event map, which has made its presence stand out more clearly.

You can get there through the Guide or through the house in Henesys where the wardrobe has fallen over, and once you cross into the other world, you can see a range of real-world-style backgrounds and props. It is put together in a fairly neat and charming way.

Police station

Pedestrian overpass and bus

Cafe

Uniform shop and ice cream shop

Old-fashioned street stall

Abandoned building

School

Bus stop and the places you can reach by bus

Even quest-related contact is handled through a smartphone.

Main story and chapter clear rewards

This content is structured around following the main story of each chapter from beginning to end. Since it is a parallel world version of Maple World, the characters who appear are based on Maple World characters in both appearance and personality, and because the content was released quite a long time ago, it also includes trends and motifs that were popular at the time. There are some mixed opinions on things like the presentation style, but you can clearly see how much effort went into it overall, so if you like these characters, I think it is content you can play through quite enjoyably.

If you skip the story, each chapter is said to take around 20 to 30 minutes, and since this is story-driven content, it is natural to wonder what the point is if you are going to skip it anyway. The reason is that repeated clears come with rewards and achievements, and that is why some people have kept records for that kind of run.

Excluding the prologue, it consists of 6 chapters in total, and the description and rewards for each are as follows.

The characters featured in this episode, Magnus and Hilla, were used again in this 23rd anniversary event.

As for the badge, there is apparently a system for it, but naturally it is not actually used at present.

For this chapter, once you clear it, the person you speak with determines which pair you can choose, and you can then receive one matching set of the medal and chair rewards shown below. The medals also do not really matter for stats, but they can still be used for appearance.

School uniforms you can buy with Silver Needles

The Silver Needles you can get from the chapter completion rewards above are obtained by clearing the dungeons that become available after finishing each chapter, and these can be used at the uniform shop shown earlier. The available looks are as follows.

These are not cash items; to be precise, what you receive is a skin-change coupon that can be anviled onto an overall. So under the current setup, where bosses and grinding generally require wearing separate top and bottom pieces rather than an overall, it is worth keeping in mind that they do not seem very practical to wear in combat.

• Ordinary Uniform / Fresh Uniform / Stylish Uniform / Natural Uniform / Neat Uniform

• If You're a Guy, Pink & Because You're a Girl, Pink Uniform / Free Youth Uniform / Always Cheerful Uniform

• Luxury Uniform Full of Excitement / Luxury Uniform Full of Confidence / Luxury Uniform Full of Sensibility

• Premium Uniform with Fluttering Flower Petals

Thank you for reading.