The game is lying.

So, a long time ago, I looked around at all these dozens, hundreds of minor MMOs, most free to play but some not, most imports from overseas but some not, and wondered just who is PLAYING all these games? For mass market MMOs, you had World of Warcraft; for mid budget MMOs, you had RuneScape; for low budget kid MMOs, you had Maple Story, and not really much reason to play anything else. Why would you deliberately pick anything but the BEST MMO, right? And if you accidentally found yourself playing something that wasn’t the best — that would be a mistake.

When you think about it like that, though, you have to wonder why people are so different. What are we doing with almost seven billion people that we couldn’t do with, like, seven thousand? But every one of those seven billion people has someone that cares about them and thinks they’re special. And every game developer thinks they are making a game just as special as a person.

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I’ve been wanting to get into Pi Story for months. Yeah, it’s a 2D game in the vein of old Playstation action RPGs like ‘Legend of Mana’. Yeah, it is entirely and unashamedly old school. Yeah, the game uses so little of your computer it could be run on a pocket calculator.

I’m not sure why any of those things would be a deal breaker. I, personally, had LOADS of fun with the old PlayStation and SNES RPGs.

Pi Story is a look back to the early days of Japanese-import RPGs. The graphics are colorful. The monsters, decidedly not scary. The music, bouncy.

But this being an MMO, you need never go on any adventure alone. With its innovative Open Group system, anyone can join your group at any time — and surprisingly, a lot of people do. Once you have as many in your group as you think you’ll need, your adventure is a click away. There is no traveling in Pi Story. There is only Pi.

Pi is that mysterious substance that allows travel between the broken shards of the world. Your job, and the job of all adventurers, is to defeat the evils of all the shards and allow them to, someday, be brought back together.

Along the way, you’ll find new gear and outfits, get a room of your own that you can decorate however you wish, and in general, become a master adventurer who looks as awesome as they fight.

Like Kudos 2, this is a game very well suited to a Netbook, one of those ultra-tiny laptops, like the Asus Eee (and I love mine). An adventure only takes a few minutes, or you can just han around a quest hub and help someone out with theirs. It’s only a click and then you’re off.

I didn’t get all that far into Pi Story in the closed beta; I hope to get a lot further in now.

Pi Story is free to play, but includes a cash shop. Typical for Asian MMOs, you will eventually want to use the cash shop for the cooler outfits or perhaps a little help in the leveling — but it’s never mandatory to pay anything to play.