Pangya United Review

Pangya United has arrived on all four available servers on April 2011.

Let's think for a minute on why they choose "United" for their next title. There are a total of four Pangya servers located in Korea, Thailand, Japan, and North America known as Global servers provided for players around the world. Each server has their own amount of contents that works for their schedule. Recently, it looks like Ntreev has been focused on bringing most of the main contents to all Pangya servers close together rather than individually.

United = Incorporate, integrate, make into a whole or make part of a whole.

I do believe Ntreev has focused their time and energy to incorporate all Pangya servers to receive almost the same benefits. Not only will this give better treatments for their players, but it would also make their workload much easier. This integration will benefit all Pangya servers so it'll be easy to update major contents in the future.

That is my definition of Pangya United.

♦ The origin of Season 5 & Future Contents
On August 5, 2010, Ntreev's interview has been revealed by 4Gamer.net² to discuss about Pangya's latest developments. Asked about the game's future plans, Tae-Hun Lim (Planning Team Leader) said that they are working on releasing Pangya Season 5 in early 2011. The main attraction to this new season would be the new boss battle mode that was mentioned back in August 20, 2009.


Lim digs deeper to explain more about the new boss mode that's still in development. A group of players playing in Demon Land will be working together to drain its health points. This can be done by achieving a high score, or use a special shot to inflict damage. If all the health points has been drained successfully, a message will appear saying that you defeated the demon and everyone will receive their rewards.


As much as they wanted to provide more details about Demon Land's objective with the new boss mode, Lim couldn't provide more details at the time since the planning could be significantly changed later on. Development can change overtime though.

♦ Season Trailers


- Introducing Deep Inferno
- New Season - Season 3: Revolution
- New Character - Kaz
- Player shops
- Double Powershot
- New character animations
- Spike Shot


- More new motion items introduced
- New Season - Season 4: Delight
- New Character - Lucia
- A small hint that powershots will still go even if you miss hitting Pangya
- Introducing Lost Seaway
- Introducing Self-Design system
- Treasure system
- Showing Pirate outfits that was later released as a rare set
- New dance animation
- New My Room system

After watching these season trailers again, you can see why Pangya United couldn't generate anything close to this. I do expect a trailer of Wiz City to appear sometime this month that'll display the course and a sample of its background music. I do hope this will be the case since trailers really do make a difference to generate hype among new and a handful of old veteran players.

♦ United Changes
Not every server received the same amount of contents though. I'll only list each server's major content releases.


Transition: Season 4 > United
Release: 4-7-11
+ Special Shuffle Course
+ Caddie Upgrades
+ Rental System
+ Basic System (Newcomers)
+ Special Awards
+ Card Pack Volume 2


Transition: Season 4.5 > United
Release: 4-28-11
+ Special Shuffle Course
+ Caddie Upgrades
+ Rental System
+ Basic System (Newcomers)
+ Title System
+ Special Awards
+ Card Pack Volume 2


Transition: Season 4.9 > United
Release: 4-25-11
+ Special Shuffle Course
+ Rental System
+ Basic System (Newcomers)
+ Special Awards


Transition: Open Tournament > United
Release: 4-14-11
+ Revamped Guild System

Korea only received the new guild system design and that was it. All of the United contents was already implemented during their Open Tournament period when it launched back in December 2009. So basically, Korea had been United all this time.

Thailand server receives a few contents leftover from Open Tournament since they were in Season 4.9. So they had card pack volume 2 and caddie upgrades before they became United.

Japan and Global servers receives more treatment that does make it look like a new season. However, Global is the only server who hasn't received Natural server where it feels as you are realistically playing golf. This mode isn't in high demand and it would probably cost more money to develop more space for Natural server. Who knows.

♦ Season 5: United?
So here is the best answer I can come up with. Pangya United is Season 5 in disguise.


If it's truly Season 5, then it shouldn't be difficult to print that on their United logo. It seems to me that Ntreev doesn't consider United to be worthy of having Season 5 printed on there since many of the key components are missing. So I treat this as a title upgrade. In fact, I should be calling this Open Tournament¹ instead since most of the contents are originally from that.

Calling it "United" sounds more acceptable than "United: Season 5" or "Season 5". As for their next upgrade, I don't expect to see it anytime soon either or possibility ever.

Here are my thoughts about what they could have done to make it Season 5. If they had waited to release Nell and Wiz City at the same time along with other United contents, wouldn't you think that would be enough to call it Season 5? To me, that would be sufficient for this old game. I don't know if Ntreev had a feeling that they were long overdue for any major developments so they decided to release Nell early because of that.

Pangya has come a long way since 2004. I do feel the game's morale is growing thin and there are no signs of any major improvements. Pangya Global has come a long way despite what had happened on Albatross18³.

Regardless of what I think of its morale, if you are content with the way Pangya is currently handling, then keep those spirits up. I suppose a player like me that has ventured though many different servers before has seen too much where it spoils my satisfaction of this game. But, it's the price to pay to fully experience this fantasy golf game.

¹ Open Tournament was an exclusive season for Pangya Korea
² Interview source
³ Albatross18 closure