You can see RO2's overall reviews and scores on MetaCritic.
Now for the very long winded review covering all the aspects of the game I could think of. Hold onto your seats, and grab your popcorn, you're in for a long read.
RO2 Review
I'd like to begin by saying, I went into this game with some initial bias. I played RO1 extensively, and was bitter that the company (Gravity Inc., ran by South Korea) chose to invest money into a new game (that has been in production since the mid 2000's, and failed twice, before its current release) instead of improving the game that led them to a relatively high popularity in the first place. But, despite my bias, I have attempted to put that aside, and judge the game for what it is. I will do this through general gameplay first, and then through modern game comparison second. I have played numerous f2p, and p2p games. From Tibia in my earliest gaming days, to RO1, to World of Warcraft, to many more modern mmo's (pc and platform), including obviously RO2. I believe that through my multi-generational and platformal experience, I am in a position to accurately judge the quality of a game.
Now, let me say, this review will not be positive. Like I said, I have managed to set my bias aside, this review will be based on the quality of the game itself, and has been, and will be echoed through many other reviews (for anyone not believing I have put my bias aside).
So, let's dive into the game.
When you dive into the game on the login screen, you are captured by a beautiful voice in the background, some ambient tree setting, and a giant airship (or one would assume, considering distance) flying far in the background sky. It seems enthralling, enticing and makes you want more! Unfortunately, that's pretty much where the good parts end. Yep, you heard me. The login screen is the epitome of this game. You'll put in your account and password, and be greeted by a "pin number" system present in other games to protect account security. It's slightly annoying (though refreshing to know they appear to care about the individuals accounts) but bearable.
Character Creation
Let's move onto the character select. This is where the game gets pretty bland. As far as classes are concerned, you have 5 (currently, there is one more planned to be released shortly) to choose from. Each class will eventually be able to "class change" into one of two of its secondary classes. The 5 starter classes are the usual swordman, magician, archer, thief, and acolyte. The swordman will turn into your usual tank or offensive classes. The magician will be your glass cannons. Archers will either remain ranged, or become a "beastmaster" which resembles a mock druid class from World of Warcraft. Thief's will be your average stealthing class, and acolytes will either be your healer class, or your jack of all trades class (the monk) which resembles a non transforming version of the beastmaster. You will be able to change your job at level 25 (which currently, is literally half the game. Max level at the time of this writing is level 50. So you have to travel through half the game before you truly get to experience your desired class).
After you've chosen your class, you have to choose your "job", which is absolutely no different than choosing a profession in any other game. The difference from most is that you obtain this profession in the very beginning of the game. The only way you can change it is with a purchaseable cash shop item.
As far as looks are concerned, you'll have limited hairstyles (like many f2p games), a few different face styles to choose from (this primarily changes the eye shapes, the other features are so subtle you'll hardly notice them), and eye styles (which is pretty much differently shaped iris'/pupil's). You can change your hair and eye color based on preset colors (no color bar or wheel sliding for uniqueness). You also have a choice between 5 separate voices for both the male and female characters.
So the character creation as you can see, is not complex. There's really nothing about it that stands out. Nothing that makes it special at all. But we don't play games for character creation do we? So lets dive into the gameplay.
Interface
When you first get into the game you will notice your interface. You can change your interface only slightly through options in the game settings. You're limited to 3 different positions (not very different from how you are limited to controller configurations for consoles), there is no customization to be had with the interface in this game. You have a maximum of 3 rows of action bars (in my opinion, it needed at least 1 more, though 2 would have been great).
Questing
Next you will notice their quest system. You will be greeted by npc's with the usual exclamation (quest you need) and question marks (quests you've finished) over their heads, and a quest log with a quest tracker. Very standard, again nothing special here. Not going to go much in depth on this one as it's a generic quest system. You'll be asked to deliver items, kill x amount of monsters for whatever reason the npc's want them dead, and gather items lying on the ground.
Combat
Next, let's break into the combat of the game. The combat is an outdated tab target model. Since the release of TERA, I have seen multiple games adopt the style of "real action" combat that TERA boasts. It's a much more engaging experience, unlike the simple tab target, smash skill keys and wait for your stats to randomly determine whether you've been hit or not. Other than that, the combat is extremely slow. Extremely. The worst I've seen in any of the games I've played. It can take between 10 seconds, to 30 seconds (depending on your class) to kill a single mob. It just feels like you're poking them with toothpicks rather than razor sharp weapons. I played a swordsman for my main character the first time, and a magician my second time. For 25 full levels, I had a total of 4 attack skills on my swordsman to use, and 3 skills for my magician. It was incredibly repetitive, and boring using those same skills over and over and over and over and over and...you get the idea.
Now...for the worst part of the combat system: targeting. Tab targeting is outdated, as stated above, but making matters worse, their tab target system is broken. Every single player (even the GM's) have complained about the targeting system. They are aware it's broken, and have to wait for their South Korean masters to fix it (they're taking their time with the fix, who knows when it will be adjusted). When you attempt to target something, it will choose a target sometimes near you, sometimes far away. I honestly havn't been able to figure out how it determines what to select. This is particularly infuriating when you want to hit the monster that is smacking you in the face, and can't select it. Compounding the matter, is the fact that you can click target a monster/player by clicking on their name or the monster itself. This is an issue because the characters names are so riddled with text, it often lays over the monsters name. If the monster is nearby you, it's likely your characters title, guild name, guild title, and character name will make it all but impossible to click target the monsters name. I eventually ended up disabling everything except my characters name and title (which you can't disable, or I would have) in an attempt to remedy this. It helped slightly, but it was still difficult to click target. Add that to the monsters hit boxes being mis-proportionate, and monster corpses interrupting your targeting, and you have one heck of a messy targeting system.
The targeting system is so clunky and cumbersome, it's something I would expect to see from an alpha test, not a game claiming that it is in in its final release.
Skills
Lets discuss skills now. As I sort of mentioned in the combat section above, the skills you will use in your first job will be incredibly limited. The one thing I couldn't help feeling throughout all 50 levels was a complete lack of variety. Sure, there's lots of skills, but that's not what I mean. I want skills that add variance to builds. I want skills that add flair and can make each build of the same class unique. This game lacks all of that. There is not many skills (if any at all, depending on your class) that "lower the cooldown of x skill", or "add additional effect to an existing skill", or anything of the like. The skill tree's are all very linear. You get this skill, this skill, and this one. That's your build, if you try any of the other skills, you're wasting points. They need some skill adjustments to make the less desirable skills desirable and make people actually say "Thats a tough choice between x skill and y skill! I wish I could get both!" I did not once feel that way with any of my characters.
PVP
....
That's what I want to say to the PvP in this game. It's ridiculous. They have 3 current versions of PvP in RO2 (with a fourth called War of Emperium on it's way in the coming months). The first version is the usual and expected "duel" with another player. This doesn't need an explanation. The second version is the "arena" which is literally just an open pvp room you can go into and vent your frustrations. Hardly anyone goes there because there's nothing rewarding about this style of PvP. The other version of PvP in this game is called the Coliseum. This is a twice a day (currently at least, they are being petitioned to make it more than twice, we'll have to see if Gravity listens to the player base requests) pvp opening where you have one hour to enter the coliseum and participate in a battle royal against a number of other players for "blood points" which get you great gear that is currently one of the top sets in the game (so you need to participate in pvp to gear up for higher end game raids, which made alot of people that don't like to pvp upset). Now that I've described the types of pvp present here, let me describe the pvp scene. Cash shop users (spinel, which is an on the spot self resurrection), ranged characters, stealthers. If you don't fall under one of those 3 categories, then you will not win. Melee characters don't stand a chance against ranged characters here because they have no way to close the distance with them (think charge from World of Warcraft, skills like that are non-existent here). And stealthers just wait until someone gets low on health, bursts them down, and hides again immediately (nevermind there is no way to force a stealther out of stealth), effectively stealing your kill point and giving them the "win". The PvP realm is completely broken, and skill revisions are seriously needed to balance it. It's not fun at all in its current form.
Auction House
This will be short, let's just say that the auction house functions are extremely limited. You can't choose to search under a certain category while searching for a particular item name. That may sound confusing, so imagine trying to find some cloth pants, you click on the cloth pants tab. Now you want to narrow your search for "elemento" pants (which is just a prefix to denote what stats are on it), so you type elemento in the search bar, expecting it to search for all pants with elemento in the name. Not so. It will search ALL items with elemento in the name, gloves, shirts, boots, pants, and everything. It does not organize all of those items by type either. It's organized by which item was put in there last, and you can't change the organization. So you have to search through many pages of elemento armors of different types and figure out which page each of those pants are on, let's say you find 4 listings total. You then compare prices on page 2, 13, 24, and 29, and if you didn't remember the prices of all the pants on each page, then you have to manually click through each page to go figure it out.
It is the most broken and cumbersome auction house I have ever experienced.
Khara (Achievement system)
This...this is where I have to give them some credit. They took the usual drab achievement board, and made it into something interactive. You can unlock achievements by the usual ways of getting certain kills, item collections, and interactions throughout your gaming experience. Many of the khara missions you do will happen naturally as you level, and still some you will have to actually try to complete them. That's not what makes this system special though. Through completing certain khara quests, you achieve titles (which give you stats), experience for either your base or your job classes, and "points". The point system is what I found to be unique. Eventually, you will be able to unlock everything on the khara board, but as you level up, you will have to choose which quests you want to accept, and you will be limited by how many points you have at the time. They also have "bomb's" in each episode tab which give you a massive boost to job experience if you can clear an entire row in the direction the arrow points. This all sounds very trivial, but when you're choosing between that new title you want, and that next big bonus of experience, all while trying to make sure you don't run out of khara points in case you suddenly need one for one of the big boss monsters or a dungeon quest, it makes it a entertaining system. All of this put together gives you one of the silliest, simplest, and yet most entertaining features of the entire game.
Cards
Many familiar with RO1 know how cards work. Now for those unfamiliar with RO1, this won't be as big of a deal. They add a whole lot of variance to the game and your character. For example, the common "Thara Frog" card would lower pvp damage by 30%, and would be slotted into a shield. Or the Baphomet card, it made all of your melee attacks hit with splash damage instead of single target and was slotted into a weapon. This system was completely unique to RO1, and many feel were one of its signature features. RO2 is not the same. Card's have become very standard. No more special effects. They just give stats. On top of that, you don't slot them on gears anymore either, now you have 5 card slots available that are attached to your character, and they will be with you until you replace them with another card.
On the subject of cards, I will bring up the card albums. Card albums are what holds the massive amount of cards you will get throughout your leveling experience. One problem though. Despite them being such an integral part of your character, and completion of your card collection, card albums are timed. This wouldn't be a problem if they were obtainable in game, but no. You have to spend real money to store these things that will inevitably swallow your inventory if you do not put them in the album, or sell them.
Travel
....
Yes, the elipsis again. Travel is another major flaw this game has. You can't get your faster travel mount until you hit level 15. If you purchase a "VIP Token" through the cash shop, you will have your movement speed increased by 20% for 30 days. That 20% is noticeable. I participated in the beta, so received a free 15 day token to experiment with. I will discuss this more in the cash shop section though, right now the focus is movement. When you move with that 20%, your character's movement speed actually seems "normal". It looks like that was the way the character animation was actually made to move at, and it appears as if they slowed it down by 20% so they could make another bonus on their cash shop VIP token to give people a reason to purchase them. This is a very underhanded sly technique.
The problems with travel don't stop with character animation. When you finally make it to the main city (prontera/alberta), you'll see there's a new flying kafra (the games method of traveling across the maps quickly) called the "Long Distance Kafra". This is the only kafra in the game that will allow you to travel from map to map. Otherwise, you'll have to walk from each zone to the next. Each normal kafra will also only take you back to the main town of that zone. From the main town of that zone you will be able to access all the rest of the kafra's in that zone. To give an example, let's say you're at "point A" and you want to go to "point C". You cannot use the kafra to travel from "point A" to "point C". You must travel from "point A" to "point B (main town)" and then use "point B (main town)" to fly to either "point A" or "point C". This wouldn't be so much of a complaint if you could click point C and have it take you to point B and keep going. But it doesn't. It drops you off there, and you have to speak to the NPC again and then you can have it take you to point C. It's an obnoxious oversight on the developers end, and makes the long distance travel in each map annoying.
Like other parts of this game, I will say here too that I have not experienced such a faulty (though seemingly intentional bad design this time) travel system in my many years gaming.
Cash Shop
Here is one of my biggest peeves with this game. Between this, and the combat targeting, it's a tough call which irritates me more. Let me say first of all, I don't mind cash shops. I welcome them, as I know it's the only way free to play games can actually pay their bills to keep operating. But some cash shops are good, and some are bad. This cash shop is just all around one of the bad ones. It, beyond a shadow of a doubt, falls under the "Pay to Win (P2W)" category. When you begin, you won't see much of a need for it, but when you reach the end game, it's almost a requirement. Sure you can get away without it, but the higher end pvp and raids, well, don't even think about it.
Let's begin with their VIP system which I touched on above. I don't mind paying subscriptions, I don't mind paying for bonuses for my characters and so on, the problem here though lies in the fact that this "subscription" only applies to a single character. You don't get it over your entire account, for every character you create. So you have to pay $9 for each and every character you want to have increased movement speed, increased stats, and increased hp/sp. Bummer.
The next issue with it lies in the randomness of the boxes (they have a feature called phantom pyramid which is another randomized gambling feature, so, for simplicity purposes, consider the pyramid part of the boxes as well when I mention them) they release. You want a faster movement speed? Well purchase a mount, but wait! You have to get that mount out of a random box, and you only have a chance at getting a permanent mount. At $4 a box for a temporary mount, and only a chance at a permanent one, that could get pricey very quickly.
Next is the costume boxes. Some costumes have stats, some dont. The rare ones have the highest stats (as would be expected), but give enough bonus stats, and a rune slot to actually be worth it...If you feel like shelling out more than $100 on the random box to finally get lucky and get it. Sure, it's random, so you could get lucky and get it on your first try. But that's not likely, we're playing an odd's game here. And as with all gambling, the house is the one who wins.
Then you have consumables. You can randomly get consumables like potions from these random boxes too.
On top of that, we have the kicker to it all. Like I said about competing in high raids/pvp, it comes down to the cash shop. Those who pay more, win more. We're talking about the refinement system now. They have these items called Kharnium, which are obtained only once again, through random boxes. If you want to refine your purple (epic) gears, you need to use this Kharnium. If you don't, you risk the item breaking and being destroyed. There is a maximum of 10 levels you can refine to. Even if you use the Kharnium, the item still has a chance of de-leveling instead of breaking. Leading to the need to use even more Kharnium to get it back up to where it was.
The only way you can use the runeholes in your costume gear is by obtaining "Super punchers" to open up the runehole. Guess what? You have to pay cash for each costume gear runehole you want to open up.
You will also have noticed early in the game that you have 20 slots of storage space. I was hoping at least at some point while leveling that they would have given me one free storage expansion. I hoped wrong. The only way you will obtain more storage space is through purchasing their "Storage Slot Expansion" for $10. Oh, and if you want to max bank space, you need 3 of those.
Bags...Oh bag space. This has been an issue that has plagued this game since it's opening in North America. I won't get much into the problem, but will say that the largest bags you can get in game currently without paying are 15 slot medium bags. There did used to be Large bags in the game, and when the NA version was localized, they got removed, leaving the only obtainable bags larger than medium ones: Super large bags. At a whopping $20 per bag (you can have 3 total). So either pay $20 each, or stick with your 15 slotters. I opted not to pay personally. I can't imagine paying $60 total to maximize my bag space.
As well as potions, there is the Spinel, you can purchase character self resurrections for 75c each or 10 for $5. Usable every 10 minutes in the coliseum. Yeah, thats not broken at all. -insert sarcasm-
Then we have the final thing that was mentioned earlier, the card album. You can get one when you purchase the $9 VIP token that last for 30 days, and so does the card album. They are not permanent, they are timed. Like almost every other thing in this game to get you to continue spending money on them for as long as you play this game.
The game is so heavily based around the cash shop that it's ridiculous. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are not being honest.
Guild System
The guild system itself isn't so bad. The problems with it lie in the absolutely Massive amount of experience required to level a guild up. When War of Emperium does finally come out, guild skills will play a large role. Small guilds will not possibly be able to compete with large guilds for the castle captures.
Also, currently the game does not like you typing zero's, and .com references in the guild message. There is also a very very small character limit of approximately 30 characters. This makes it difficult to network, announce voice chat programs, and link to guild websites.
Mail System
My only complaint with the mail system is that you can only mail one item at a time. I've seen this in plenty of other games though, so as bothersome as it is, I won't hold it against them. On the positive note, you can mail to other characters on your account, which many games to not allow.
Dungeon and Dungeon Que System
Dungeons...Here we go again. Let's start with the Que System. At the moment, it is completely broken. You can be a level 10 wanting to que for culverts, and it will take you to the level 50 Fortress of Sandarmen. If you leave this party because you clearly can't do that content, you are punished with a 30 minute deserter debuff. Like I said, it's broken right now. iRO2 staff has said they've filed reports to their South Korean masters, and that was more than 2 weeks ago at this point that it still remains broken (if you havn't gotten the hints yet, I'll just flat out say it. The Korean run Gravity Inc. is full of incompetent developers that have always taken their sweet time with requests from their North American Counterparts now known as "Warp Portal"). Anyways, back to the dungeon stuff. Dungeons themselves are linear. Follow this path, kill this boss, then go this path, and kill this boss. I have not once felt threatened by trash mobs, or boss mobs. Boss mobs themselves have reused mechanics from other games - stay out of the "fire", face bosses away from parties, kill adds (most of the time). None of the bosses had anything really unique, and everyone of them included at least one of these 3 common boss tactics.
Raiding
Well, what can I say here. Raids are raids, they are challenging. But then again, most of the more trivial encounters in this game are made many times more difficult simply due to the targeting system and lack of skill variability.
Graphics, Environment, and Sound
Graphics are definitely last generation. It's graphics I would have expected from most PC games released between 2005, and 2008 at the latest. The graphics are outdated, and nothing impressive or memorable. The environments are the same way, the zones you travel through are fairly large. Nearly the entirety of the zones repeat the same environments throughout, severely lacking in variety. The sound quality itself is what I would expect, it actually manages a pass. That doesn't count the musical scores. I, and others, had to replace the basic musics they give you with the game because they were boring and repetitive.
Storyline/Plot
Prepare to be.....unimpressed. No, really. It's a really un-captivating storyline, unlike its predecessor. The game is however in its early stages, so there is room for it to improve. That is, if the game can survive long enough to crank out its next chapters. Despite the doomsday preachers of its predecessor RO1, it has proven to be tougher to kill than a c.ockroach in a nuclear disaster. Hopefully RO2 can manage the same resilience long enough to get a proper footing.
Bugs
I'm not going to get into bugs, every game has them. I will say say though that many players have complained that the bugs are so common, and serious in here that they are shocked to know that the game is in its full release and is not a beta anymore. Now where'd my bug repellant go....
The breakdown
So let's break this down into con's and pro's.
Cons
Not much character creation flexibility.
Interface customization options are extremely limited.
Generic quest system.
Broken Dungeon Que system.
Guild system favors larger guilds.
Horrible combat targeting system.
Broken PvP favors the rich (or at least those willing to spend lots of real money, even if they aren't rich)
Skills lack depth.
Auction House lacks organization and is almost un-useable.
Travel is overall just cumbersome.
Cards might only be a problem for the RO1 nostalgic players. It would have improved the games variance greatly if it were like RO1, but for the newcomer, this con means very little.
Holy P2W Cash Shop Batman!
bugs...Bugs....BUGS!
Pros
Enticing login screen.
Khara system.
Overall Score: 2.5/10
I wish I didn't have to say this, as I loved and still do love RO1 and all that is RO, but its sequel is completely forgettable. In fact, I would urge people to steer clear of it, at least until they make the necessary changes to improve the game (fix the cash shop, fix the mountains of bugs, fix the broken dungeon que, fix the auction house, fix pvp brokenness, and fix the freaking targeting system. The targeting has to be the biggest negative out of the entire list of cons). If you still choose to play it, then good luck.
If I still havn't scared you off yet, then I really encourage you to watch the future of this game. If they make the appropriate changes, then this is a game to keep an eye on. If RO1 is any indication, this RO2 could be a very large, very great project.
Edited by Tkwan, 25 May 2013 - 12:20 PM.
