RATINGS:
Pros: The MMO sticks to a familiar formula, which results in a quite decent look and play.
Cons: Not much distinct features in comparision to other MMORPGs, everything probably aims at appealing players of the original Ragnarok.
Gameplay: 7
Graphics: 7
Sound: 7
Overall: 7
We dedicated some of our time to check out Ragnarok Online II: Advent of Valkyrie, successor to the original fantasy MMORPG Ragnarok Online developed by the Asian developing team Gravity. Inspired by Norse/ Viking mythology, the game’s main story revolves around Freyja, an adversary goddess, and her band of good-for-nothings. We decided it was time to have a first glimpse into the MMO to get to know what it has to offer.
Signing up and registering was rather simple; however, we had some issues when trying to download the client from the title’s official webpage and were therefore relieved to find the option for downloading a reasonably sized client via Steam that allowed us to quickly enter the game.
Upon stepping into Ragnarok Online II, we were presented with a rather simple character creation process, allowing us to pick from 5 distinct human race classes or another elven-like "Noel" race class. The entirety of classes cover all the major roles expected in an role-playing MMO and players are moreover able to evolve into one of 2 available subclasses upon reaching level 25.
Players can then decide for their personal profession and directly pull jobs into their character class. If this early decision may be revised in the later course of the game is an aspect we didn’t get to know. There are a few pre-fabricated appearance options players are able to sift through in order to pick a different face, hair style or eye colour and shape and they also get to choose their character’s voice and name.
An attractive aspect with the character creation is the opportunity to start with a level 50 character, which is allowed only once though. This enables players to immediately select a specialisation. During our playtest, we opted for the Acolyte class and the Monk subclass to see how we would get on, which eventually didn’t turn out to be the best decision we could have made.
We didn’t get much guidance when heading into the game but can’t say if this was due to starting out with a level 50 character. However, as the Gravity team didn’t seem to reinvent the genre, we were able to quickly figure out what we had to do and where to go by hitting some buttons to open various menus.
For there didn’t seem to be any quests available in that area, we just started to indiscriminately attack, not having the impression of being able to make use of our level 50 skills though (for we had spend 50 talent points to upgrade our character players typically obtain via the normal levelling process). This was seemingly due to the fact that we were in need of a fist weapon, which we didn’t possess nor were able to buy from the starting area NPCs (their weapons are apparently only for level 25+ monks). Allowing players the opportunity to create a level 50 character and still letting them start out in the newbie area without any gear or money seemed pretty counter-intuitive to us.
We mainly tried to avoid those tough sluggish combat situations with only our basic attack at hand and this way discovered a fine card collecting feature that enables players to gather cards that are randomly dropped from the monsters they kill. However, we’re not quite sure if this is just to have a neat collection of cards or if there actually is an incorporated card game. We seemingly couldn’t take on any quest within the starting area (there were a few available in the zone though), but discovered the so-called "Khara" system that allowed us to complete tasks that functioned in a similar way as quests would and rewarded us with EXP, loot and titles, therefore in a way resembling an achievement system.
In regard to its graphics, Ragnarok Online II isn’t too shabby, although perhaps a bit dated and rather reminiscent of an MMO from the last decade. It yet looks quite nice, though it reminded us a bit too much of WoW due to its outsized environments and items.
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