RF Online

http://www.codemasters.com/rfonline


First thoughts, "Ah, just a prettier version of Lineage II then". I rolled a Cora "elf" ranger and shot a few arrows at some cute dinosaurs. Didn't inspire me at all. Graphics were really nice, detailed models, very sharp impressive landmarks, environment and terrain a bit bland. Since you are forced to be one of the three races and you can't mix and match them on the same account (for PvP purposes, like DAoC), I trashed the elf and rolled an Accretia "robot" ranger instead. Time to get some guns out.

The Accretian starting zone is very much more impressive, a large nexus that is not a million miles away from having been styled by the people who did the interiors for Phantasy Star Online. Only better. The Accretian robot style is very much japanese killing machine, think 'cool as fook'. The character models are very well done, so much effort going into the detail on them. However, they are all very similar, apart from a few slight modifications to the starting armour, every Accretian looks like every other Accretian out there. So you're more of a soldier pawn in a massive android army, than a deadly unique armour plated assassin.', 'Out you go from the nexus, the Accretian HQ, with your standard issue training gun and a couple of clips of ammo. Your first quest is to kill some cute dinosaurs (that could have starred in several episodes of Barney) with the laughably named the 'Flem' and in addition to frazzle some flying baubel guns known as the 'Wing'. The control mechanism is typically awkward. Holding down the Left mouse button, runs/walks you forward. The Right Mouse button and mouse movement turns you left and right. Forget using WSAD here, but fortunately you can couple directional movement with the cursor keys and rotational movement with the mouse. The interface is minimal and basic, like most other Korean MMO's. You have skills associated with your chosen profession, they seem to be set in stone, and have experience bars by the side of them. So you can choose which skills out of your skill set you want to use and level up. I dragged the fast shot ranged skill onto the quick bar, along with the aiming boost skill. You can start combat by double clicking on the target, or by selecting the target with a left click and then performing a skill on it. You can toggle auto combat on and off.

The whole zone seemed well paced out, by level 2 you'll be in amongst lots of similarly levelled monsters. The dense groups of monsters were easy to find, and the respawn rate was astonishingly fast. Good thing too, since most areas had many many people equally searching for the same things to kill. Monsters dropped weapons, armour, and hunting loot (for crafting with). Loot seemed to drop generously. Your experience seemed to raise with each shot, rather than with each kill. Every successful hit would yield some experience, both in your overall xp gain, and in your skillset (both active skills, such as the fast shot special and passive skills such as defense etc). There was a fair bit of diversity in the monsters you encountered. The quests seemed to be given to you at key times in your development, such as after you've levelled. You didn't visit a quest giver, once the quest was over, you'd be contacted and rewarded, and then given the next quest. The next quest usually being, kill 20 of th next set of monsters you're likely to stumbled upon.

You run around a fair bit, and this is controlled by your stamina bar. You toggle between the very slow walk, or the slowish run. Running uses more stamina, and subsequently you can't run for really long periods of time, unless you have stamina potions. However, most of my gameplay seemed to consist of a run, then plenty of battle, then a run to the next pocket of quest monsters, more battling. So I never really saw the stamina pool affect my play. The only time it became apparent, was when I died a long way away from the nexus and had to leg it back to the area I was in, that long a run, sapped my stamina about three quarters of the way there, so I had to pop a stamina potion to continue running.

In order to use your skills (specials) you need Force power, each special having a force cost, so you had to use them sparingly. Each fight would only allow approximately one or two specials at these low levels. The force pool grows when you level, and so you can then start to fit more specials in. Or there are force potions. Healing out of combat is slow, unless you sit down, which makes you vulnerable to attack. Health potions seemed to be essential if you wanted to keep up a constant rate of combat and not spend lots of downtime sat down regenerating. Healing potions could be used whenever you want, they didn't seem to have any associated cool down period, so when I had the money, I stacked up 99 heal potions and could more or less ensure my saftey, even when fighting quite tough mobs, as long as I could chug potions and the amount healed was bigger than the damage taken I would be ok.

I found as a gun toting ranger, my damage ability was impaired quite a bit, so I also dabbled in swords, axes etc, and started to make much faster progress. So I used my melee abilities quite heavily to finish quests and level up swiftly, and only when I started to find better guns, could I return to levelling my ranged skills. Even though I was a ranger, it seemed as if I could chose to live the life of a melee warrior almost. Dual wielding some rather nice looking swords, I was one cool robot assassin at one point. The specials have enough 'cool value' to make you want to do them again and again. Enchanced effects and really cool acrobatics were the order of the day. All japanese kill style.

There were some high level (named 'Ace') monsters kicking around even in the newbie yard, and you had to be careful not to draw their aggro. They would sometimes notice you attacking a newbie dino, and join in, pursuing you quite a way. This pursuit also meant it was easy enough for someone to train the nasty onto you. The chat channels were thick with people shouting about kill stealing. That went on all night. The game doesn't protect you from Kill stealing whatsoever. In fact with the servers and kill areas chock full of players, you had to ensure you'd do enough damage on a monster as you grabbed its attention, or someone would swoop in and hit it hard and then the kill credit would go to them. As I levelled towards 12, there was an area that was so full of players you'd end up getting one in five of the kills you'd started. That was a bit ridiculous. But I put it down to the gamut of beta players levelling at approximately the same pace as me, and hitting a monster bottleneck.

Parts of the game I didn't manage to sample where the ore collecting, and the PvP. Some determined players already had reached the level limit of 30, and had amassed a PvP force at the appropriate PvP area, and any new players who stumbled out there were being executed by them. Many heated comments about joining the wrong side etc were littered throughout the chat channels. As well as mention of the fact that sometimes PvP come down to who had more health potions. Which didn't sound encouraging.

Weapons and armour seemed to be graded according to level, with certain levels opening up new types of armour and weapons. Such as level 15 being the gateway to the launcher style guns, big heavy duty grenade and rocket launchers which seemed very popular with the robotic rangers. Some armour was tailored with certain skills in mind, such as the Accretia "launcher" armour, which had stats to boost your launcher skill. You also had yellow special weapons with boosted stats (known as the 'intense' weapons), or even purple weapons that were rare and more powerful. A bug existed with the purple ranged weapons at the time (where the stats didn't kick in, or something like that), so the general vibe was go intense weapons if you are a ranger for now.

The musical accompaniment to the whole process was rather splendid, from the wistful login page to the battle chants and emotive racial scores. In fact I liked the music so much, the mp3 score is sitting on a memstick awaiting my attention.

All in all, it was straightforward and stylish. Limited interface and very simplified quest mechanics. Cannot comment on how the PvP will pan out, but the PvE game seems only geared to making a level 30 PvP player out of you. very little in the way of story. However, since I started it at about 8pm, and didn't surface until I had a level 12 Accretian Ranger at 2am, I was embroiled in the experience, and the combat remained satisfyingly exciting.