"Why is this not free?"

R.O.S.E. Online is absolutely not worth the monthly fee. This game is nothing more than a 3d grind fest with an incredibly weak, if not non-existant, story. The entire point of playing this game is to simply kill enough monsters to level up and get new skills to kill these monsters with. This concept has been done hundreds of times now in almost every MMORPG made and has only worked out a couple of times. This is not one of those.

The graphics are cute and are obviously the high point of the game. Your avatar resembles a sort of child/baby combination that is absolutely adorable but border line creepy. You choose from various different hair styles and colors and can dress your avatar in many different ways. Cute graphics can only redeem so much and this time it is not enough.

The gameplay is boring and lacking in many ways. You spend much of the time out in a large field killing the same monster over and over again until you become strong enough to move on to a new monster. You can use different skills that are really not all that impressive but do allow you to kill a little easier.

There is a nice selection of classes available but none are all that unique. You have your basic ranger/thief/rogue with the hawker. Warriors are exactly the same in this game as they are in other. The only difference is they are called soldiers. A dealer is your basic merchant character, basically a weaker version of a hawker with the ability to make a shop thrown in. A muse is your basic magic character.

The community is very childish and guilds rarely stay together for longer than a few weeks. Most of the guilds are made of up of people who are just on the trial version and will disappear and never come back. I found people for no reason at all running up to me and stealing my kills. I generally found ignoring these people would be the best method but then you have to deal with everyone calling you a cheater who is using a bot.

Overall, this game would be decent if it was free but it is not. If it ever becomes free, check it out. If not, pass this one by like the dozens of generic MMORPGs.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/16/07