RF Online Preview

Previewing a videogame is a little bit like being on the review panel at a job interview:

“So, Mr Online (may I call you R.F.?), what do you think you can bring to this role?“

So, with game previews, like any job interview, it’ll be the first impressions that invariably make up to 90% of the decision of how favourable the outcome will be. Turn up with your tie askew, your teeth and hair unbrushed, and with your breath smelling like a dragon’s after three courses of sautéed troll, and you can expect a frosty reception.

RF Online, thankfully, at least turns up for the show without a hair out of place and with breath as fresh and minty as the breeze through a Polo factory. It’s hard to find fault with the presentation. The character models have a refreshingly high polycount for an MMORPG, and though textures aren’t quite as vivid or varied as they might be, the game as a whole has a glossy, coherent look and feel. Each player faction has its own distinct style: The mystical Cora have an almost classical D&D elf-like aura; the Bellato Union have a more masculine feel than the Cora, thanks to their affinity with high technology, including Gundam-style mechs; whilst the Accretian Empire have the clinical, ruthless lines and sharp colours that you’d expect from a race of robotic Terminator-a-likes.

First impressions, then, are promising. Now, however, comes the really hard part. Can our candidate game stand up to the pressure as you pick through its CV and you start to ask those difficult, probing questions about its experience and gameplay? Is this the game you’re looking for?

RF Online (RF standing for ‘Rising Force’, incidentally), similar to the previously previewed Auto Assault, is a PvP-based MMORPG. Having three competing factions in the game is intended to provide a more dynamic and varied PvP environment, with the majority of PvP battles taking place at set times in a fixed arena (much like World of Warcraft’s Battlegrounds), with the winning faction assuming control of the arena until the next PvP contest is due to take place. The hook is that this arena is actually a resource-rich mine, the control of which allows the victorious faction to gain access to otherwise unavailable materials that can be used to create powerful upgrades for players’ weapons and armour. This naturally has long-term implications if any particular faction is able to maintain control over the mine for an extended period of time, as the resources they gain from having exclusive access to the mine will make it all the more difficult for the opposing factions to wrestle control away from the initial victors. This is clearly intended to promote team play in the PvP conflicts, so that the best co-ordinated faction, rather than the best equipped, gains control of the mine.

Regrettably, with the Beta test period now drawing to a close, I have been unable to see whether this theory does work in practice. PvP only really becomes a serious possibility with characters above and beyond Level 30, so my brief forays into PvP with characters I’d only managed to get up into the mid-teens ended in swift and ignominious death… Anecdotally, from speaking with other Beta testers, the game apparently does get better the further you climb the level ladder, yet this simply highlights questions about the game’s structure.

If at this point I told you that RF Online was already a wildly popular MMORPG in the Far East, what assumptions would you make about the game? Well, let me put it this way: RF Online, as an MMORPG, is so hardcore the Romans could have made roads out of it. Whether you consider this to be a bad thing or not is entirely down to your taste in MMORPGs. Unlike Guild Wars or World of Warcraft, where you actively have to seek out quests from NPCs, RF Online automatically assigns a single quest to you every time you gain a level. It should be noted, however, that the quest you’re given to do at Level 10, may not be possible to complete as a Level 10 character. I found that more often than not, quests would lurk around on my to-do list for three or four levels (by which time you’ve been given more quests) until my character achieved a sufficient level to be able to physically carry out the task of killing the 20 Ratmoths or 20 Arghols you’ve been asked to slaughter for some contrived reason or another.

At no point does RF Online make any pretence of hiding the fact that beyond the PvP battles, the game is based exclusively around grinding. There’s very little variety in any of the quests (‘kill 15 of this’, ‘kill 20 of that’ is about as extravagant as it gets), and the monsters you have to grind all have very specifically defined areas as to where they may be found, typically within a 100-yard square on the map, so you inevitably have all the players at or around your character level queuing up and competing to kill the same set of monsters you’re trying to kill. The game world, whilst being thematically consistent and as pretty as any you’ll see in an MMORPG this year, simply doesn’t have the atmosphere or lived-in feel of games like Guild Wars or World of Warcraft. Cities and settlements have spectacular architecture, but are utterly devoid of life. There are no civilians wandering around, just a few static vendors lurking around in their shops.

There are also a few lingering interface issues; the worst of which is a needlessly obscure method of showing whether the character level of a selected monster or NPC is above or below yours. Instead of showing the character level as a number, the text label instead shows a series of 7 circles, the more of which are highlighted, the further the enemy’s character level is beyond yours. If all the circles are grey, the enemy is at your level or below, and will not provide you with any experience. If the seventh, blue circle is lit, that means that the enemy is so far beyond your character level a single hit will probably result in instant death. Unfortunately, this isn’t adequately explained in the game manual, and you’re left to figure it out for yourself. Why couldn’t they have just used a simple number? Other interface gripes, such as text not being wrapped properly when reading quest descriptions and the like (i.e. words being split over two lines) have been addressed, but still persist in a couple of menus, though hopefully will be fixed for the retail release.

When an MMORPG is based around grinding, you’d at least hope that the combat is satisfying, because you’re going to be doing a lot of it. Unfortunately, RF Online’s combat is of the ‘press a button and let the stats sort it out’ variety. Worse, because you need to tackle enemies at least 3 levels above yours to gain experience at a decent rate to level up, there’s an almost total dependency on using health potions and potions to replenish your Force points (which are used for spells and special attacks) in combat. It’s telling that the default stack value the vendors sell potions in is 99 (normally, in an MMO, you’d buy items from vendors one at a time).

There may be people reading this preview who are thinking “What’s this guy’s problem?“, and indeed, from your point of view, the ‘flaws’ I’m listing above may not be of the slightest concern to you. RF Online is a game that’s destined to polarise the MMORPG community. Devotees of the Asheron’s Call and Lineage games will no doubt find little in the game model to fault and lap up the anime styling, but MMORPG players whose idea of fun is more akin to the experience found in Guild Wars or World of Warcraft may find little to enjoy here.

In the end, it comes down to the kind of game you’re looking for. If you can stomach the thought of having to plough through 20-30 hours of relentless level grinding before you can get to the much vaunted three faction massed-PvP element of the game, then fair play to you. However, if you’re after a more immediately accessible experience, then I doubt this is the game you’re looking for.

“Next candidate, please…“