The Search for the Holy MMORPG: Part Five

(Continued from The Search for the Holy MMORPG: Part Four)

So after the crap that was Shadowbane, we needed something to get the taste of feces out of our mouths. In walks the beta of RF Online. Now talk about odd theme, this game is part fantasy, part sci-fi, and all anime.

Personally, I am not a huge fan of the anime style, so I was skeptical to begin with. But the screenshots did look nice, and at this point, the choices were pretty slim. So I had to signup with FilePlanet to be able to join the RF Online beta. No biggie since it was only $39.95 for the whole year, and I get tons of downloads at blazingly fast speeds.

Anyway, I installed it and started playing. First off, character creation is limited. Ok, let's move on. Next, the text in all the game dialogs is constantly wrapping in the wrong place, so it just looks messy. I chalked it up to poor localization and the fact that it is still in beta.

So far, nothing huge to make me leave. I start my first quest, a basic kill xx amount of monsters and reach level 3. Cool. I go out to the newbie zone and start killing. Hey, this is kinda fun. The game mechanics make the action feel very responsive, and the anime style graphics are actually done well.

So Darryl downloads it and tries it as well. His impression is not as positive as mine, mostly because the camera control requires you to hold down the right mouse button and drag the mouse around. A bit clunky, yes, but for Darryl, this meant more headaches.

Ultimately, I came to the conclusion that, although fun, I would get bored pretty fast. It's not quite as deep as games like EverQuest as far as character development and customization, plus the quests so far seemed very inane.

Overall conclusion: Fun action, nice graphics, not very deep.

TO BE CONTINUED...