Ragnarok Online

"Boredom online."

Developed by a Korean company called Gravity Corporation, Ragnarok Online is a MORPG (Massive Online Role Playing Game), it is the first one I have ever played, and probably the last one. Playing online was far from what I was expecting, instead of the involving and addictive experience I was hoping to find, the only thing I ended with was a terrible sensation of frustration.

Graphics 10/10:
The graphics are lovely, the characters designs are very nice and interesting. The characters are designed in 2D while the backgrounds are in 3D, and both are very well done.

Something that bugs me off A LOT are those revolting drawings during the loading screens, for god’s sake who the hell draw that!, a big photo of Margaret Tacher in underwear could have been much nicer than those disgusting pieces of trash, yuk.

Overall more than good the graphics are nice, very, very nice, the backgrounds are a bit empty sometimes, but this is kind of obvious as we are talking about an online game, because in order to make the game faster the less crap on the screen the better.

Music 9/10:
Then music is also very , very nice, this was one of the biggest surprises I can’t give it a bigger rating though because while very nice is not really memorable, but it is excellent anyway.

Gameplay 4/10
Once you start playing you will surprised because of the nice look of the game, but after a couple of hours you start to ask yourself “ and now what?”, and that is the problem, once you have found a sword, gained a few experience levels, killed some pink blobs frogs and grasshoppers, picked some carrots and berries, there is nothing else to do, nothing.

There is nothing else to do, if you try to talk to someone they will just happily ignore you or they will answer with a nice “get lost you “!%”%$& punk”. It seems that main goal of the game is just level up like a moron to acquire a class (swordsman, mage, and a lot more crap…) in order to be able become a higher class and then I don’t know what the hell. What is the point of being a Knight is there is nothing new to do once you are one of them?. Oh wait, yes, there are some new things to do if you reach certain levels, things like having your own pet or one of those big Dodo-like birds that can he ride like a horse, think that is fun?, well, I don’t think so, because you’ll still be bored doing nothing only the this time mounted over a big bird.
Ok I’ll be fair, yes, there is a nice amount of things to do, but the 95 per cent are just useless crap, yes you’ll feel more important after having obtained one of these birds or any other stupid accessory like a new hat, or a shield, or after having killed an special monster, but after the next five minutes the boredom will be back, so?

And what is worst, if you try to mess around a bit because you are dead bored you will probably get banned, ok!, thank you for preventing me to have some fun, but isn’t this thing supposed to be entertaining?, damn.

If you take a friend then maybe you can add twenty more minutes of fun, or what is that same, until both of you realize that now there are two morons doing nothing instead of only one, because yes you can kill time talking, but there is a thing called “Messenger” which lets you do the same and in a much more easy and comfortable way, and you don’t have to download a 300 megabytes program to do so.

Another thing that really pisses me off are those ridiculous hats people wears, like bunny ears, horrible masks, hats from the time of the Wall Street Stock Exchange disaster in 1929, or even a hat that simulates, mmm let’s say “excrements”, why would I want to wear that?, damn, seeing that makes me want to kick their butts very badly, and that is another thing I dislike, people can’t fight among themselves, that would be absolutely cool, because for example if someone gets nuts and starts to kill people in a town then all the people would start to chase that poor jerk, that would be great, and then if you are walking in a solitary place and saw some moron alone you can kill him and steal their treasure, then that guy would start to look for you to try to have revenge, now THAT would be great... but NO, you can’t do that, it is like if the people from Gravity wanted to make the game boring on porpoise removing all the interesting stuff they found. I know that could be a mess, and completely unfair to beginners, but there are easy solutions, not being able to kill people of a first town so that people can get used to game is a neat idea for example.

The enemies you’ll have to deal with are stupid, what is the point of killing a lovely looking rabbit that the only thing he wants is to eat peacefully under a tree?, then we have little birds, frogs… later we’ll find wolves and evil rotten willows, but in general the enemies suck, there aren’t any bloodthirsty hordes of sadistic ogres, where is the fun then?

In terms of controls the game works pretty good, with move our character with the mouse, then we have the possibility to assign hot keys to simplify doing some tasks like acceding to our inventory, rest, etc. The menus are very intuitive and it is very easy to buy sell, starting a conversation, obtaining information about your items, etc.

I’m off:
That’s right, I’m off, and I guess I will never play an online rpg any more, you see, once I read about online gaming I got really interested with the idea of talking with people, joining forces to go on side quests, and things like that, but won’t find that in this game.
Well, at least I haven’t paid a single penny for this horrendously tedious experience.

”My lack of vocabulary and grammatical errors (if there’s any) are because I’m not from an English speaking country, sorry about that.”

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/08/04