RuneScape

"Runescape, fun, for awhile, but always a good thing to play"

Intro:
Runescape...A MMORPG with tons of players, active communitys, many skills and things to do. If you read about it, read the guides, the skills, the news, the guy rambling about it in some crazed coma, youll know the basics, so im not gonna get into the basics to much. I also recommend you do not get discouraged for playing the game runescape by reading my review, this is just my opinion, it would have been wildy differnt a few months ago.

Game play: 5/10
Its a basic click and play MMORPG (click on a rock to mine it, click on a monster to fight it, click on the ground to walk, click on door to open etc.)
Nothin to special about the gameplay, it can get pretty repetitive at times,but if you get bored of training a skill, you can go pking(Player-Killing, if you didn't know), mess around with the other players, straight up RPG.Slay monsters, do quests, train skills, join guilds when your skill is high enough, interact with your fellow players, make money, buy items, its all for fun, you can not beat this game, you dont stop playing it. There are endless things to do, with all the skills there are.
Onto the fighting...Fighting is pretty damn cool in my opinion, im going to go into the details of fighting for this part.

Fighting....Paper,scissors,rock, with deadly weapons
Range beats mage
mage beats melee
melee beats range

Melee
Melee fighting is basic, point, click, watch,claim reward. But how you do it is another story, weapons, armor,ammulets and such effect your stats, for exaple an enchanted ruby ammulet will increase your strength and let you hit harder on the monster you are fighting when you are wearing it, other ammulets and rings have differnt effects.
You can use prayer while you melee to help strengthen your atk, def, str, protect from melee atks, protect from range, protect from magic.Armor is what its all about if your a melee fighter, melee armor a.k.a metalic armor is set up in several parts ex. Bronze legs, Bronze chain (or) Bronze platemail, bronze Medium(or) Bronze large helmet. That would be a set of full bronze armor,(note there are many many more kinds of armor) it would protect you from melee, and range a bit, the better the type of armor the better it is at defending against these, all metalic armor has a weakness to magic, you cant cast it to well if your wearing metallic armor and your hit harder if your wearing metalic armor. You also cant shoot arrows to welll while wearing this armor, imagine holding a little bow while weighed down my 73 kg of heavy armor, the broad side of the barn will live another day if you try to. Also the type of weapon, depends the wait between swings, not the type of metal, the type of weapon, for example, a dagger, will swing ALOT faster with ALOT slower waiting between swings then a 2 handed sword. Also while fighting melee you may find it neccesary to eat food, which will heal your health.And when you fight you have the ability to choose what kind of exp the exp you get off the monster goes to (Controlled -divides the exp among def str and atk and hp.Aggresive - adds the exp to str and hp, its the same with the 2 other ones, def and atk)

Range
Personaly i hate this skill, but in the update its catching on rapidly.Basicly you have your bow, its made up of different kinds of wood, normal,oak,yew etc. The better the wood the better the bow, the more it hits, (you can also use cross bows, but theres only one kind, and the ammos odd). Then you have your arrows, in members (which you pay 5$ a month for) you can make these, in f2p you can buy these, they have tips of metal at the end of them (ex. bronze arrow, iron arrow, steel arrows etc.) The better the arrow, the harder the hit, you dont wear metalic armor while shooting these ^note above in melee^ you wear dragon hide armor...Made out of dragon hides from a dragon, they give an advantage to ranging, and a defence to magic, there are a few kinds of dragon hide, but i dont like ranging so i wont get in to that, unless your skilled in this, you do NOT want to fight a melee person if your only ranging. You proboly will be able to whip that mage over there blasting the **** outta your melee friend out in the wilderness.

Magic
Ah my personal favorite, Heavy damage, low wait time, and cheapo armor.
Basicly you wear wizard robes, cheap, and effective, they dont protect against anything to well tho, but you can guarantee some high damage if your wearing em.
Magic is carried out through runes, not mana, you buy, or craft magical stones, which you use to cast a spell, after you cast the spell they disappear, for example, you open up the magic menu, you click on fire strike, a lvl 30 something spell, it requires 3 fire runes, 1 chaos rune, and 2 air runes, you click on the spell, then you click on the enemy, you cast the spell, the spell either fails or succeeds, if it fails, it sorta makes a splash image, if it succeeds youll see the damage on the character you cast it on show up, but this is all told in tutorial island, im here to talk about using the skill. There are elemental staffs which will give you INFINITE runes of that kind of staff as long as you are weilding it, unweild it and its no longer infinite, these are cool to have, they cut the cost on runes, and they give a plus to magic. EX. your casting fire strike
3 fire 1 chaos 2 air, weild the fire staff, you have infinite fire runes, so now you only need 1 chaos rune and 2 air runes to cast the spell, and you have a magic increase!

Heres what you would wear.
Wizard hat, Wizard bottem, wizard robe, Elemenetal staff, Saphire ammulet of magic

Learning curve: 9/10
Surprisingly VERY good, it wouldnt take you but 5 minutes to go through the tutorial, it teaches you the basics, the guides at www.runescape.com the official site of the game has the skills and other things in good order, it tells you how to use them, what you need and so on, and if you cant find what you need at the runescape official site, there are a million fan sites with great guides, forums, and other things to help you, the official site even has a map of the world, it would take someone 30 minutes to figure out how the game works basicly.

Story: (N/A)
I read other reviews, they insulted the game for the story,its an MMORPG, there isnt really a story, it doesnt hurt the game one bit in my opinion, players can feel free to play how they want to play without a story.

8/10
Graphics: Not bad, could be better, could be much worse. 3D images, rotatable 3D camera angles, up and down views.Faces are a bit un detailed tho, i personaly dont care if the game has bad graphics as long as its a good game.

Community: 4/10
The best and worst part of the game, runescape is an MMORPG so ofcourse there a bunch of other people populating the world (sorry hermits) alot of em are nice, will help a newbie out, are good players, wont make your experience a living hell, MOST and i do meen most will beg, scam,lie,annoy,hate everyone who comes within 20 miles of em people, there there to make your life hell, thank god the game has ignore chat

Interface: 7/10
Pretty good, it has all the stats and menus right up there, easily accessible, a map always showing of your current surroundings, little icons on the map to show what it is,easy navigating.

Playabilty: 10/10 to 4/10

When you first try out this game, i guarantee youll play it for a long time, always on it, always raising skills, always having fun, its very fun actualy...While it lasts, eventualy it gets repetititive....Youll quit for awile, rejoin, quit for awile, do some other stuff, try some new skills, it will always keep you coming back, it does get boring after awile tho, i suggest playing it an hour max a day that why it will never get boring and youll never lose your flame for the game, i also suggest that when you start playing the game you dont try and get as much money as you possibly can as soon as you start, dont go all out training your skills, working extra hard for the armor in the shops you want so much, just have fun with the game, familiarize your self with the game, get a few friends to play... it is alot funner when you have friends to play runescape with you. Go on quests, just dont go for the money and items, have fun with it.

Conclusion:
Runescape is a pretty fun game while it lasts, ive gotten near lvl 80, and i still play it every once and awile, it has gotten a bit boring, but there always releasing new patches and updates, its pretty fun, i seriously suggest you play this game instead of spending your money on a more expencive game such as ultima online and everquest,if you really like this game then you could pay 5$ a month for a HUGE world behind the free to play gate 2-3x bigger then f2p tonsmore quests, and armor, and weapons, and skills.

Overall: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/13/04