Last week, the week of game pitches, I walked in late and, to my surprise, saw a game very similar to Ragnarok Online being played. I must say, the video looked awesome. After that class, I went back and immediately downloaded it, though it did take a while. After fiddling with everything (installing English patches and stuff), I tried it out. It played like a normal fighting game except with sidescrolling. I loved the facial expressions and such. When I first started playing, it was enjoyable, but one huge problem was that I wasn't really sure what I was doing. I didn't know how to use any special moves. There was no explanation in the game whatsoever. This may be due to the fact it had to be fan translated. The first level was not too bad and was pretty simple. The second level became much more difficult, but after determining the boss strategies, I was able to pass it. The difficulties began to increase by a lot, and it became somewhat frustrating having to do the whole level over again. Even leveling up did not seem to do too much. Overall this was a fun game, but it got really repetitive on the harder levels. I haven’t tried out every class yet, but I may get around to it.
Later on, I invited some friends over and we played 3 player. It was a lot of fun to have a coop game, and I believe that more companies should make these types of games. There aren’t too many coop games out there anymore. The same problems as single player occurred again, with an even bigger frustration. Everyone shared lives. In single player, you could die three times, but in multiplayer, your team could only die three times in total. This made the later levels even more difficult, especially if one of the teammates was not as good as the others.
While this game can be somewhat casual, the later levels really require you to learn your class and the monster fighting mechanics. For those who just want a fun game, they may want to stay away from this game. However, it is nice to revisit the world of Ragnarok Online in a different perspective.
