Just a few days ago.. I got hooked up again with a game that I've played last time.. in my Secondary school times.. I'm sure most of you heard of the (used to be) popular Ragnarok Online (RO).. This is a side-scroller OFFLINE "version" of it..
Its... Ragnarok Battle Offline (RBO)!! Below is the introduction video when you start the game.. It looks quite cool =)
P.S. Forgive the low quality (i used 3frames/sec, if not the vid will be HUGEEE) and lack of sound (the real video is damn nice).. I took it using SnagIt. Its a freeware.. maybe I should talk about it next time... ^^
Well.. Basically its like most side-scroller single player games.. you choose a character, you run around in a 2D world kicking monsters butts. Only thing is, in RBO, your characters can "level up", increase status points of your character, learn spells based on their professions (similar to RO) and you can actually play with your friends!! You can input up to 3 players on the same computer, i.e. 3 people can be playing their own characters and working together to complete a stage. This brings all the fun together as everyone can benefit from each other's spells and there are many combos to be discovered. Cool eh?
While creating characters, you may pick 1 out of the 6 first-jobs in RO (Swordsman, Archer, Mage, Theif, Acolyte, Merchant) and choose either Male or Female. Obviously each job will learn different set of skills/spells, each with their own requirements. An interesting thing here is that the game makers made a difference in the Male and Female characters. Male characters tend to be stronger while Female characters have access to certain abilities that Male characters don't, and some of these abilities are actually very useful and/or powerful. So don't be surprised if you see your friend playing a cross-gender character! Oh and not to forget, if you complete the game with all 6 characters, you get to unlock secret jobs!
To add spice to the game, the game makers have added 3 "expansion" updates to the game. These include the Arena mode, where players can try to get the best timings for clearing a certain set of monsters.. To cater to the English speaking (and obviously non-Japanese speaking community), a fellow gamer Sara Leen has come up with an English patch that will translate essential parts of the game into English, such as the title screen options, your spell names, etc.. However, it only works with the 3rd expansion. This means if you want to play RBO in English, you gotta download all 3 expansions and install them.
Besides the cute (and personally I think it looks damn cool as well) graphics and animations, the fun part of the game comes from ganging (or you may say GANK!) the boss at the final part of the stage. The harder the boss, the more people fighting together, the more fun it is when trying to beat it. Whats more? Since this is an offline game, there are no "obligations" (as compared to online gaming.. Those familiar with Frozen Throne would know how much "leavers" are hated online) to finish the stage when you have something more important to do. You can either press the "Pause" button and come back to it later, or simply close it.
Well obviously nothing is perfect, the boring parts of this game kicks in after a few stages as the mobs are just "wasting your time" before you actually reach the final boss of the stage.. Since this IS a 'simple' offline side-scroller game, there isn't much variation in the way you can fight, so you will end up using at most 10 different skills/spells (usually you use only less than 5).. This kind of repetitive action is what puts most people (including me) off games like Maplestory..
My final verdict on this game: 6.5/10
Cute graphics. Attempts to provide variety to the game through different characters. Good for casual playing, especially good if you have friends who play it together with you. But it tends to get boring after a while if you're a hardcore gamer. Tends to have low replay value unless you're bored.
Some RBO related links:
The official RBO website: www.ragnarokbattle.com/
The Wikipedia page on RBO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnarok_Battle_Offline
A very informative guide to RBO: http://cmcforums.mrx.ca:8000/showthread.php?tid=4306
1 comment:
I've also translated a game called Suguri.
Maybe you should check it out sometime~
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