Ragnarok Online: – An MMORPG that makes the end of the world look inviting.
Ragnorok, was unfortunately, my six entry into my investigation of massively multi-player online role-play games. Yes, I spelled it out as there is only one thing to say about this game: – terrible. After the highs of Tree of Savior and Dragonica a mediocre game would have been bad. This one, however, was god-awful before taking that into account. If you are considering playing this game, there are better things to do in life – still people are playing it so there must be some good in it right?
Overview
- Very hard to even get to work. Technical issues after technical issues.
- Awful user interface system
- Antiquated mouse controls – point and click.
- Hard combat I died ten times on the tutorial map before even figuring out what my quest was.
- It looks like you have a good array of character choices and you can switch between classes.
- I didn’t know what was going on. Conflicting information. Random language changes. I just got lost. Seriously I wandered around a town aimlessly for half hour…. So, confusing.
- Extremely bad lag. You skip back halfway across the map to discover you are being raped and brutalized by a random assortment of monsters, and then die.
- A rather confusing first quest where you must enter captcha data to prove you’re not a robot.
- Very low level graphics, think a slow budget level Runescape. Seriously, Runescape is better alternative.
Story
I don’t know. I am guessing it is based on Nordic mythology and is about the end of the world but I couldn’t even find the start to the story really. My game language did change to French for no reason – so maybe I was given a plot and I just didn’t understand it. Who knows?
Technical Issues
I know I usually go onto character customization – but I thought I’d break format to talk about just how hard it is to play this game. I download through, as always, and installed. Updated the client, and then it wouldn’t start due to my graphic card being pants. I paused, opened Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and to my relief I discovered my 980M GeForce is working just fine. After trawling through the forum on Steam I found a lot of people have had a similar problem and there was a quick log fix to make it work.
My next issue, however, was with screen resolution. It opened as small box in the upper corner of my screen with only part of the picture in view and no way to maximize it. Back to the forum, and there was another fix I had to do to the resolution and Steam setup. Even after fixing everything the game will appear as a white box in the upper right side of your screen that will crash and be unresponsive for a minute before launching. Be warned.
I know, it was a bad sign and I should have just gave up huh?
My next issue was that Xsplit Gamecaster would not run with this game – which is why there are no videos for this article. Even if there was it would most be me running lost around a town so it might be a good job.
So I finally get into the login screen and discover the username I choose is not working. At this point I am starting to think I have somehow downloaded my own personal circle of hell. As of yet I have met no pilgrims named Dante. I check the registration email to discover that they have changed my username. There is a steam before it, and random number after it. Would have been nice to be told at sign up, but hey-ho.
The very first quest was too see if I was a robot, I had to do basic mental arithmetic and enter the letter C into a box and press enter. To my dismay the quest giver did not recognize the letter C as correct (maybe it thought it was a number?). I was then asked to tell them how many months there are in a year and to enter the letter 2. Yes, the letter 2.
Character Customization
You have no choice in character class at first. You begin as a novice, and other than choosing your appearance you get no choice in character class at this stage.
It does open up after the tutorial, and you get to choose between a wide range of varieties of classes, some of which sound interesting and very cool.
But this was another instance as the classes in the tutorial didn’t match up totally with the classes you got to choose after it. I tried to become a swordsman, who can use all weapons bar bows and staves… but they think the number two is a letter so I’ll let that slide.
Truthfully the classes and jobs sounded very cool and unique – I’m told a swordsman used a large variety of elemental techniques through weapons instead of magic. There was also a gunslinger and ninja class that seemed fantastic from the descriptions. So, if you are more patient and tolerant than me you may discover some really unique game-play.
I found it really confusing to even become a swordsman. It was telling me that my basic level had to be 9 (I was 12) and my Class level 10 (I was 10). Confused? Yeah, me to. There is a skill called basic skill that you have to level up to 9 to unlock job classes. I never even got the chance to test him out as I got incredibly frustrate and fed up before I got anywhere near a quest or a field.
Definitely not trying out the Gunslinger class now, and I really wanted to. Love spaghetti westerns and Stephen King’s epic….. 🙁
Game-play
The controls were very antiqued with a point and click action like Baldur’s Gate. To attack enemies, you have to left click with each attack or press CTRL to continue the attack. You can only attack one enemy at a time not swarms.
To be honest with you, my combat game-play comes entirely from the tutorial map as a novice. This is because after I finally left the tutorial I could find no quests or even field/dungeon to explore. Just lots of teleportation to sprawling towns or guilds. Quests and story are not sign-posted in this game, and if you’re like me you could spend twenty minutes wandering lost before giving up. This is not a game where sign-posted quests exist. Not even sure quest do exist….
I would normally post a video for you to get a feel due to technical issues you’ll have to just rely on my power of written description. Here is my experience in text: –
The building you exit on the tutorial map obscures your character. I entered the tutorial field and was instantly killed by what I don’t know as I couldn’t see. Unfortunately, my health bar was still at half-full next to my character and I thought the game had crashed and my character had become unresponsive. Clicking frantically I was give the choice to go back to the last save point. I choose to re-spawn at the last save point, something you have to choose after every death.
The second time I got out from under the shadow of the building and got my quest, to kill a Poring. Simple, right?
I could find every other kind of enemy creature in existence, a wooden tree, a drop, a fly, a small bird, a mushroom, and a massive bug thing – but no poring. I eventually found one – after dying ten times – and discovered they looked exactly like a drop, bar being a different shade of pink….
Really? The map could have been covered in Porings and I’d have though they were Drops.
And then it was all downhill from there.
It should be said that it also has a terrible user interface. The text box has a finite amount of text, and the text box is so small you have to scroll through it to find the next button. Maddeningly, if you could resize the text box it would most probably be two or three lines you read on screen with the next button readily available. But it won’t allow you to resize it so the tiny amount of text will appear on screen at once.
Items are difficult to equip. It is hard to see what their benefit is. Quest are just confusing. It’s hard to find something something good about this game.
There were extreme issues of lag, where you would sudden jump back half-way across a map to find that the monster you were fleeing from had killed you and the escape you had been so proud of for the last minute and half was all a big fat lie.
Graphics
The graphics are on the same level as Runescape. Graphically it is low level and slightly dated. It is also Anime in style.
The scenes block your character and combat meaning you died in obscurity without even realizing it.
Community
There did seem to be a few other people going through the tutorial, but I didn’t really interact or get a sense of the community at all. Everyone was too busy looking for Porings.
Conclusion
It’s a bad game. Just avoid it. Avoid. Avoid.
Overall 1 – just bad.
Story 1 – never found it
Freedom 5 – there is a lot of character choices – but I never got to that stage. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt.
Game-play – 1 Bad controls. Confusing Quest line. Sprawling and hard to navigate towns / cities.
Graphics – 3 – Dated and Basic even for a free MMORPG.
Community ? – Unsure. Never really experience it.
