Review: Ragnarok Online 2

Hey all, Little Miss Squish here! Well, I finally have been able to play an MMO with relatively little headache from my internet, which seems to do what it wants to do, in terms of lag spikes. Some days I have great connection, other times I get small spikes of lag, conveniently in the middle of a dungeon boss fight, but that's beside the point! Right? Right. Steam recently launched Ragnarok Online 2 into its massive tome of games list and, naturally, I had to jump in.

borrowed from anjelsyndicate.org

I have a lot to say about this game, so let's get on with the review, then, shall we?

Game Basics:

Title: Ragnarok Online II (or 2, for this review)
Publisher: WarpPortal
Genre: Fantasy MMO
Website: https://warpportal.com/landing/ragnarok2/registration.aspx?ad=ro213050905 (the closest URL I could find to the homepage)
Cost: Free to Play, pay for items in shop and extra features (mounts, bankslots, etc.)

Ratings:
Graphics: 4/5
Character Customization: 4/5
Class Skills, Character Development, etc.: 4/5
Beginning/Tutorial: 2/3
Story, Quests, Content: 3/5

Graphics and Such

To be honest, I wasn't quite sure of what to think of the new game's graphics.  I was so used to the 2.5D, sprite-based animations of RO1, the predecessor to this one, that the 3D anime style feel of the game honestly threw me for a bit of a loop. That's not to say that these graphics are in any way bad. They're actually pretty decent, for MMOs.

borrowed from mmofront.com

Some of the animations are a little awkward and you see a lot of NPC models recycled, but that's to be expected in any game, I guess. Some of the more bizarre things I've experienced are, like, when I'm in the Temple of the Sea God (A high-25 level dungeon) and the fish swim through walls, disappear spontaneously, and things like that. I've also had the same issue with monsters, particularly the Horongs in the Payon Forest region, outside of the Secret Forest Temple dungeon. I will be in combat with a monster and all of a sudden, it straight up disappears. I kid you not. And yet it continues to attack me but I can't actually click it to attack back. I finally managed to find a solution by rotating my camera upward (for some reason) and then they magically appear again. It's really weird.

The one thing I definitely appreciate is that the game still holds that cute, fantasy-esque, anime-ish style from RO1, even with the 3D models. I think that WarpPortal did a good job of bringing everything from the character and monster sprites to the actual environment from 2.5D to 3D modeling. The colors are bright and crisp, the environment feels alive (even if some places aren't as populated with NPCs as they should be, like Prontera...) and the monsters look great in their new models.

The actual character aesthetics are pretty good, they're very reminiscent of RO1, which I appreciate. I don't recall if RO1 had this, but of course, equipping different gear (for the most part) changes your character's clothing, as well, which of course, I enjoy. However, most of the gear I got in-game, at least through the earlier levels, didn't really look much like acolyte or priest gear. I could see going for a hybrid of monk or priest looks through the acolyte class because you can specialize as either a monk or a priest, but honestly... I looked more like a generic "magic" class and less like an "acolyte," which I find funny, because all of the gear in-game is class-specific. It wasn't until I hit level 28 as a priest that I was able to actually get gear that looked like priest's gear. (And after gaining some level 30 legs, I now have a miniskirt. Again. sigh.)

 Because, y'know, this TOTALLY looks like an acolyte. Yep. Borrowed from the PlayPark forums.

I mean, if this game had, like, 30 classes, I could see having designs that overlap each other. Or if the game's priesthood image wasn't so heavily rooted in Christian iconography, I would be able to buy a getup like what you see above. But the game isn't like that. There are a max of 18 classes in the game and the priesthood does heavily rely on Christian motifs.

both borrowed from RO wiki

When this is your "saintess," one of the highest officials in the priesthood, I find it rather difficult to believe that the rest of the priesthood wouldn't have similar attire. No, instead, I get something that looks like it belongs to some other class. Hell, in my teen-levels, I was wandering around in pretty much the same thing from that PlayPark forum picture, and there was a magician who -also- had virtually the exact same thing as me. I think the only difference was her skirt. I know this is a rather minor issue for most people, but it bothered me a good deal (as you can see by my text-tirade). I like to look like my class. I like to have others look at me and say "oh, there goes a priest" or whatever the case may be. I like to be able to do the same for others. It just provides a nice layer of immersion for me, I guess you could say. I hope the end-game attire at least brings back the priest motifs, because I was really, really happy to finally look like the priest I was supposed to be.

The UI for this game isn't terrible. I don't normally bring up UIs because they usually aren't things I actually pay much notice to, unless they annoy me. While RO2's is clean-cut, rather out of the way, easy to read (for the most part), I also have some issues with it. The map, for example, is usually too small for me to be able to properly read different symbols. While there is a "shortcut" area on the lower left portion of the UI, where you can put things like your settings, character, dungeon finder, etc. for ease of access, you can only put 5 icons in there and the rest have to be called up through a separate portion of the UI or through keyboard shortcuts. I personally love the shortcuts but I keep ones like the dungeon finder, settings, and others that I know I use frequently in there just so I can click it and open that portion of the UI. The one cool thing about this particular UI is that you can also customize the UI's layout, in case you want different parts of it in different areas. Granted, they only have 3 preset layouts, but most gamers will be satisfied by one of them. I imagine other games have this, as well, but it's a nice feature worth noting.

Character Customization

The character creation is rather standard, for MMOs. You have a single race, you can pick your gender and class, have a few different face, eye style, and hair options, and you can customize your voice, I believe. You also pick your "profession" at this time (which differs from your class, which they call "job" in this game), which include Chef, Artisan, Blacksmith, and Alchemist. This was my first issue with the game. The original Ragnarok Online game had a "novice" job, for your level 1-10 characters. This allowed you to get familiar with the game and such. Once you hit job level 10, you could switch to your basic class--acolyte, mage, swordsman, etc--and then go from there. There were even "supernovices" and "extended first classes", which I don't honestly understand so I don't want to attempt to explain. If you wanted to craft in-game, there was a specific job (and branches) for that. Blacksmiths and alchemists forged items and cooked foods, respectively. Their basic class, merchant, allowed you to sell things like a vendor, obtain more money when you sell goods to NPCs, and other things that a merchant would learn how to do.

RO2 changes all that. Rather than starting off with your novice, you instead delve straight away into your base class--either swordsman, magician, acolyte, archer, or thief--and then once you hit 25, you decide between one of two branches for your second class, and progress through the other half of the game as such.

left from rutana.deviantart.com; right from the WarpPortal forums

This is an example of RO1 (left) and RO2 (right, plus the 4 professions on the bottom), for a comparison of the complexity of classes between the games. Note the INSANE AMOUNT OF CLASSES YOU CAN PLAY AS IN THE FIRST. You could even say "fuck the system" and become a super. fucking. novice. class. I'm not even joking. One of the classes is "supernovice." Don't ask me what they do, 'cause honestly, I never played one. And RO2 has a total of 18, once you hit 25. I personally loved the original class structure of RO1, where you grew into different classes once you picked your path. Even if all of the classes were linear in path, it was still neat to be able to see yourself progressing in your job. It made you fee like you were growing. If I'm playing a class, it's be cool to see my progression and say "Hey, I'm a master swordsman, now! I'm a rune knight!" or "I've worked so hard at being a priest, I've gone from acolyte to high priest!"

And from what I've heard (because I didn't end up getting that far in RO1, because the private server I was playing on closed), the class transition quests can be very, very painful, especially for the 3rd level of class. I had a friend who tried to get to the high priest class and said it was virtually impossible and had done the test at least 20 times before she actually completed it. I made the transition from acolyte to priest in RO2. What did I have to do? Pray to a statue and exorcise another priest in a relatively easy fight. I didn't even pay attention to the screen during the fight. So, yeah. Not much difficulty there.

All classes have the ability to craft something with one of four professions--artisan, chef, alchemist, or blacksmith--each producing rather self-explanatory things (aside from the artisan, who makes cloth and light gear as well as runes, which enhance your gear with stats). I can understand wanting to have a crafting system like every other MMO, but still... RO1 was interesting in that it wasn't like other games. Don't get me wrong. I LOVE crafting. It's a great way that I can keep myself entertained when I don't feel like doing dungeons or quests, and I love the feeling of learning new recipes. But... I was looking forward to deciding whether I wanted a blacksmith or an alchemist. Interestingly, though, the new profession structure in RO2 gives you a "guardian", which is basically a summon-able familiar (which changes in type and ability depending on what your profession is) that grows as you grow in your profession. Pretty cool. The artisan, I know, increases your haste (spell casting time) and movement speed (y'know, for fleeing), which is useful (at least the haste is) for my lil' ol' acolyte/priest. I don't know about the others.

Class Skills, Character Development, etc.

As I've already basically explained, the acolyte is a base class, which can then evolve to a priest or a monk. For the sake of this review, and since monks don't heal (to my knowledge, correct me if I'm wrong), I'm going to be focusing on the support skills for acolytes and priests. Yes, there are damage skills in both classes, but if you're looking to play a healer in this game, you're better off putting skill points elsewhere, unless you want to do a hybrid build. I'm assuming you want to go full support, so I'm ignoring the damage skills. I also understand that there are support-based sorcerers (from the magician tree) but I haven't actually seen any of them do support as of yet, at least not dedicated support, so they're not going to be included in this review. If you have any comments or anything on that, please feel free to let me know how they handle and such. I do intend to make a sorcerer in the future, but I'm focusing on the priest for now.

Your acolyte skills give you a basic HP buff, a HoT, 2 standard heals (AoE and single-target), as well as a resurrection spell (with an insane 50 min cooldown that can be reduced to a half hour, if you put points into it), and a few other skills.

from ragnarok2sea.blogspot.com

One of my favorite (combos, actually), is the Aqua Benedicta and Aspersio. It's a staple for priests and if you aren't using it, odds are, you're not playing well. Aqua Benedicta (AB, from herein) is interesting, in that it restores 15% of your mana and produces 3 vials of holy water. Interestingly, you don't need to be in water like you did in RO1 to use this skill (which essentially implied that you were converting plain water into blessed water). I guess you just magically leak holy water juices? I don't know. The other thing is that your holy water isn't a tangible item that goes in your inventory; instead, it sits slightly left of your character in-game as a "charge" meter of sorts, which you can see on the left in that highlighted red box.

Why do I mention this? Well, the first reason is for that 15% mana regen from AB, which is amazing. The second reason is for Aspersio, which, by itself, doesn't do anything. It's a utility skill, in that it boosts certain skills when in use. Your basic attack skill could have the next three hits be criticals, your single-target heal's next three casts could be crits, you could insta-cast your res spell and give that person full health immediately, and other effects. As a healer, it's your best friend, especially for dungeons where your party can have severe damage spikes from bosses. It's even better for fighting monsters, since as a full-support priest, you'll be doing less damage, so those three critical hits from Holy Light can really help you out on the battlefield.

from ro2guides.com

The priest's spells provide more party support and healing. You get additional single-target and AoE heals (which seem pretty boss but I haven't gotten that far to be able to use them yet), short-term (10-30 second) buffs for magic attack, haste, and defense, a defense buff, as well as a status removal spell. You also get a spell called Gloria, which, when you cast either Holy Light (for DPS) or Heal, gives 5/10/15% chance of your next Heal spell (or Holy Light spell) to be insta-cast. While this doesn't sound that exciting, I put a point in it to advance in the skill tree, and HOLY CRAP THIS THING IS SO USEFUL. While the Heal cast time is rather small, at 1 second, that's one whole second that your party will get hit while you're healing, and if someone's already really hurting... Well, I imagine they might die. This is honestly best paired with your Aspersio crit-heal, because you basically get two crit-heals back to back, if you're lucky. The 15% chance might seem small, but you'd be surprised how often it happens. It's definitely worth the investment. I'd comment on the other priest skills but I haven't gotten that far down the trees yet to be able to say for sure on the uses of the other skills. I did get the haste buff, which of course, is really useful, but that's as far as I've gotten.

Taken from WarpPortal

One interesting thing about Ragnarok Online is stat allocation. Each time you level up, you get so many points to put into various stats. The more you put into a particular stat, the more points it costs to level it up. And, of course, you get more points as you get further in the game. Again, here's where RO1 and RO2 differ. RO1 had the standard four (strength, agility, vitality, and intelligence), plus a few others: dexterity and luck. Dexerity was useful for both ranged characters and magic-casters, as it helped with casting and firing speeds as well as ranged strength. Luck increased critical rates and "perfect dodge" rates, where you dodge an attack and take 0 damage (I'm assuming).

RO2 dumbs this down, considerably. It takes out dexterity and luck and fudges with the other stats. Intelligence only boosts magic power now, while wisdom increases your total mana pool. Agility now increases crit rates as well as attack speed and dodge rates. It takes less skill or guesswork to make a good player. Magic based class? Spam the intelligence, along with occasional vitality and agility and you're good. Melee or ranged? Strength, agility, and vitality. I've read for healers that the wisdom stat is virtually useless, as most of your wisdom will come from your gear and cards you equip (more on that later), which is really disappointing. Basically, this is how people build full-support (aka "healing") priests:

INT > AGI > VIT

And that's about it. Talk about your cookie cutter build. I went ahead and put a handful of points (maybe 10?) in wisdom--before reading these guides--and so far, I haven't had any problems, even in difficult dungeons. Actually, having a larger mana pool has been a blessing, especially when I've had to spam heal in certain bosses. But I'll get into the dungeon experiences later. I've put a few points into agility (8), and so far, I haven't really noticed THAT much of a difference. Most of my agility comes from cards and some gear, actually. So I'm not entirely sure what to believe. And I don't think the game gives much suggestion (aside from the initial character creation screen), so I guess I'll just keep doing what works for me.

The one thing that you'll notice is that healing priests are always in demand. Unlike games like GW2, where players can all heal themselves in some form, or most other MMOs, which have multiple healing classes, RO2 relies virtually exclusively on priests for healing in dungeons and such. I'm aware that sorcerers can support and have at least one healing spell as well as a water-summon that gives mana and health regen over a period of time, but honestly, I don't think they're as effective as priests. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen sorcerers actually support in-game, but give more off-support as needed and focus on dps.

Tutorials and Things

The beginner's tutorials in the game are rather well done. They inform you of the major parts of the game and such as you would expect, through a series of quests. There are, however, a few things I wish they would explain. Like, for example, getting your mount, upgrading equipment, breaking down equipment, and the interface for party-finding (because I don't know what "party support" means when I view the member details of a party in that interface). I also didn't know that a lot of the creatures at the beginning were loot-able and gather-able (if you have the chef or artisan profession), which I would have appreciated if it were a little clearer. Most often, I had to go to outside sources to find these things out, which isn't how a game should work. If you have tutorials, be consistent, and offer a way to help players through everything, even if there's a separate section in the UI for it and you don't force it on them. But this is more of a nitpick than anything else, really.

Story, Quests, Content, etc.

The original RO1 story was basically your character trying to prevent Ragnarok, a bunch of events which basically leads to the end of the world (I know there's a lot more to it than that, so don't kill me). For RO2... I honestly stopped paying attention to quests and story after a while; it just wasn't that memorable. There's something about the Freyjanity, which is some evil organization that I think is trying to bring about all sorts of harm to the world or something, I honestly don't know. The story just wasn't compelling and you know that all of the quests are generic except for the class transfer quests.

Honestly, most of the quests in this game are a joke. In RO1, if you failed certain quests, that was it. No "abandon and try again" options were available. Hell, there wasn't even a quest log for you to remember what the hell you were doing. The quests themselves are typically gathering items or monster drops, killing enemies, and delivering items to NPCs. Nothing really exciting or memorable, honestly, so I don't have much to say on them. The quest log tells you where your quest objectives are and marks them on your map for you, making the quests even easier to complete.

The dungeons are interesting. Well, let me rephrase that. Most of the dungeons that I've seen thus far don't really have a... reason, I guess? for being around. The first real "party" dungeon is the Wolf Cave, which literally, is a giant cave, filled with wolves and their trainers, some porings, and a giant spider that needs to be set on fire. But the reason for the dungeon's existence is beyond me, aside from it existing for the sake of existing. The next dungeon is Izlude Cave (and then Temple of the Sea God). These two are actually interesting. There's a mer-species rebellion that you help to, er, "solve" (by murder, of course! :D) before the dungeon(s) start. Izlude Cave is a precursor dungeon to Temple of the Sea God. The Temple dungeon actually has you face off against the leader of the rebellion, who is attempting to summon Leviathan, the giant god of the sea who will then destroy humans and allow the merfolk to rule the oceans.

And let me tell you, these dungeons were FRIGGIN HARD as an acolyte and beginning priest. Even as a seasoned healer, I had a bizarrely hard time with them. And they weren't even end-game dungeons, they were for players up to level 30! I've played end-game WoW dungeons that weren't that hard! The last two bosses for Temple of the Sea God were painful, especially if you have players who don't know what they're doing. From what I heard, dungeons only got harder as they went along. I've been on one run of the Secret Forest Tomb (the next dungeon) and had very little problems with it, so I'm not sure if it's just bad party formations or if people just aren't good at dungeons in general. It could also be that I had better gear, more skills, and other things. I'm not sure. It's funny, because before doing these dungeons specifically, I was telling my boyfriend that this game was ridiculously easy, and that I didn't even need to look at the screen to play well (solo, that is. I always focus in dungeons). And then I played through these dungeons and said to myself "Welp, this game proved me wrong." But I did so in a pleased way, because honestly, I wasn't thrilled with this game until I hit these dungeons. I was getting bored. But these dungeons gave me enough of a challenge that it kept me invested in the game. I wanted to get better at these two dungeons because I pride myself on being a good healer, and if the others only got harder, you can bet that I'd want to give them a shot, too.

Another unique feature is the card system. I know that it was revamped from RO1, but honestly, I don't know much about RO1's card system to compare it. But how it works in RO2 is it's basically an extra drop system. All monsters--bosses and rare monsters included--have a chance of dropping their card, which has extra stats on it. Some come in a set, and when you equip the full set, you get bonuses. Some cards are rare than others, particularly the ones from elite/rare monsters and bosses. There's a section in the character UI that allows you to equip cards, at 1 per 10 levels. So, at the max level of 50 currently, you can equip 5 total cards by the end of the game. You can also combine cards for bonus stats--taking 5 cards to make 1-- but this doesn't always work, so be careful.

There is also a title system, which provides small stat boosts depending on the title. They're obtained in various ways, typically through the Khara system, for crafting or for completing certain dungeons, among others. The Khara system is essentially an achievement system. You get Khara points when you level up and when you complete certain Khara quests. They differ like normal quests, from obtaining and using certain items, to hunting certain monsters, obtaining titles, and other things. Some cost Khara points to "challenge" or to start the quest, while some don't.

Ending Thoughts

I had mixed feelings about this game, initially. If this game was a standalone game, not associated with RO1, I would probably enjoy it more. But... RO1 did so many things in an interesting manner and did things so well and this game... Has its problems. It really does. I know that it was only released a handful of months ago and that hopefully the game will develop and become better but at the same time... Man, I kept saying to myself "RO1 did this so much better" to all sorts of things, or "man, RO2 takes a lot of the thinking out..."

Should you give this game a shot? Sure, why not. But if you've played the original before, don't think this game will be anywhere near as good as RO1. It just isn't. But, as a game by itself, it's not bad. There's quite a bit to do, depending on what you're interested in, from dungeons, to PvP, to crafting and collecting, there is a variety of things that the game offers. I don't know how the end-game content is, so I can't talk about it, but I'm getting there. I'm curious to see how it ends, myself, so I'll definitely be following through with it. If it's good, I'll probably write a follow up review, for those that are curious about how the ending of this game goes.

Well... That's all I have to say about this, really. There's other things I can talk about, like unions, guilds, and the like, but I figured this information is more relevant for those who want to know about the basics of the game and what to expect for healers (well, priests, specifically). Have any questions, comments, thoughts, etc.? Feel free to comment below, send me an email, or leave a message on facebook or twitter. Want to suggest a game to play or something you'd like to see? Feel free to do so! Getting feedback of any sort is great.

As for what I'll play next... I'm not sure! :) I'll be playing this through the end for my priest, to say the least, and I want to try out the sorcerer, too. I've been told LoL is something I'd be interested in, so I'll look into playing that next. Thanks for reading! I hope that y'all enjoyed this! Keep an eye out for my next review, whenever that may be. :)