Ragnarok Online DS: a fat and lazy review.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

 

Being an XSEED fanboy (I loves me some Ys, and they give me my fix), I decided on a whim to pick up and play me some of this game. Several years ago I dabbled in RO for all of ten minutes... so far be it from me to judge a game on something I know next to nothing about. But you're sitting there, asking me why in the name of delicious pumpkin pie this was a good idea. And so did I, when I began...

 

Let's get one thing straight; if you're sick of girls with amnesia, then this game might annoy you. But in the end, you'll come to realize why this is such an important plot point, and it you will come to accept it. Maybe. Possibly. So our main heroine is full of amnesia; our main hero, however, is not a righteous knight. If anything, he's an asshole; our hero, if we can call him so much, is a bitter jackass with daddy issues. As he'll remind us over and over, his mother died from working herself to death because his father abandoned them. Upon having our heroine fall on top of him and save his life while not knowing about the world, he allows her to tag along because she's useful.

 

So begins a tale that would... well... let's not beat around the bush again. The story is like a cat; it'll look at you, then fuck off to who knows where, leaving you wondering where it went, only to return when it wants to in the middle of the night to lay on your face and smother you.

 

OUR MAIN CAST;

 

Ales: Looks like Adol from Ys, but doesn't act like it. A red haired jackass and a rare male tsundere, his desire is to make piles of money.

 

Sierra: The amnesia girl who follows Ales like a lost puppy. She seems to be quite deadpan for much of the game, an emotionless little thing that is confused by her emerging feelings. Her favorite line is huzzah.

 

Lucifi: Damaged goods, this one, A knight who is scared of ghosts and has no friends... until Ales helps him because Lucifi needed to be alive to finish a quest, and then decided to abuse the trust Lucifi gives him.

 

Viselc: The brains of the operation, a thief who has the odd position of being a mediator for caravans. Being the brains, he's the only one who actually thinks things through... though this also makes him leave the group the most.

 

Lisir: Greedy and selfish, who luckily can cast some spells. They try to make her out to be some kind of tragic figure, yet you forget all about that when she shoots her mouth off or ran away for the third time and you have to chase her to THAT FUCKING MJOLNIR DEAD PIT.

 

The game likes to remind you of its MMO parentage by being a grindy pain in the ass, both in leveling and the quests, which amount to killing monsters over and over until you get enough of a given item to drop. Thankfully, most quests aren't needed to actually finish the game... but if you want to get any kind of money, you better do it.

 

Monsters don't drop money; rather, you have to either do quests or sell items dropped. Money is of greater importance than in most RPGs; in order for weapon and item shops to expand their inventory and get new stock, you need to spend money in them, to the tune of tens of thousands of gold, and each shop has atleast two upgrades, if not more. This might not seem so bad... until you realize that you must do this for every town, and there's atleast five towns in the game. Add on to that, it seems that most of the later towns require more gold to get the upgrade, and you'll soon find yourself busting your ass killing monsters and redoing whatever quests that can be redone to get the gold to do so.

 

But beyond that, there's tempering equipment. At some point, shops are going to cap on the gear they stock; there's only so much you can have. In this case, if you want something stronger, you have to go to a blacksmith and get them to boost your gear. How much might you ask? Well, just to get a baseline temper for some armor, you have to spend 10,000 gold; that's about enough to get you up to Regular rank at both the weapon and item shops in the first town. This price goes up for every tempering you do, it can break your gear and, worst of all, it will remove any cards you slotted into your item.

 

Oh yes, cards; another aspect of killing everything, is sometimes getting a card to drop. These cards can be slotted into some gear (only special ones that have slots, and these special ones cost atleast 25% more than normal items) to get stat boosts. These range from stat boosting to doing more damage against certain types to boosting various stats. They're incredibly rare to find; as an example, I've killed maybe close to a thousand Porings, the most basic enemy in the game, and I've gotten cards maybe five times from them.

 

I'd like to take a moment now, to tell you about the game world and that you'll be walking a lot. There are no spells to take you out of dungeons that I know of, nor any to teleport you to towns. There are items that do this, but they cost several thousand gold each and worse still, the town teleport item doesn't appear until you get up to regular status in the third town you visit, which is easily 20,000 gold. So you'll be hoofing it for atleast half the game... and this is where the entire thing breaks down.

 

I would like to direct you to these maps of Mt. Mjolnir East and West (just scroll down a bit), and remind you that the game makes you go there three times when not doing any side quests. That's three times of walking that twisting, convoluted path. I would also like to point out that to get there, you have to go through three more maps, and a town (unless you use a shortcut that skips the town and a whole two taps to get out), from your base town to get there.

 

And now the big elephant that's in the room... the controls. As a PC based MMO, Ragnarok uses the mouse. Guess what this game uses? That's right; the touch screen. From moving, menu interactions, doing battle or selecting skills, you tap your little stylus on the screen to get things done. Now, while you can use the directional buttons to move, the other buttons on the system act more line hot keys to open various menu options; you cannot, for example, hit the R shoulder button to prep a skill and then activate it with the touch screen.

 

Speaking of skills and the touch screen, most of them require you to target them, or in some other way trigger them. From tapping on an enemy multiple times to holding it on your character until a bar fills, then dragging in a direction to attack. This can get hectic in the middle of battle; having your hand take up any amount of screen space as you have to tap a sill on a menu bar and then use the sill can lead to blind spots which can get you killed. And when Ales falls, it's game over... even if the rest of your party is alive.

 

Oh, didn't I mention? You only control Ales; you can offer vague suggestions to the AI of your other characters, but at the end of the day you cannot decide if your Priest will heal you or try to run in and smack an enemy with his mace. This will lead to many, many, many losses because some enemies are more interested in kicking Ales around like a sack while your other characters pick their noses and don't use your reviving items. So in the end, it's mostly up to you to keep Ales healthy, and by extension, the game going while your party does... I don't know.

 

Another cat metaphor or something.

 

I can hear you now; "You fat fuck, why did you play this if you'll just bitch?!" you screech at me, then attack with a fork. To that, I will respond; "I like the characters."

 

Yes, I like Ales and his tsundereness. I like Lisir and her greedy ways, I like the deadpan Sierra who gives a monotone huzzah. I like the way Lisir and Lucifi fight, the way Viselc acts calm when I can just tell deep down he wants to put his Assassin class to use and kill them all. I like the way some of them grow, and at the end, I really do enjoy some of the twists. And yes, I even can stand the grinding; I've played and beaten almost every Dragon Quest game, this kind of thing is old hat to me.

 

Want more, okay then; you can build your own guild and expand beyond the main characters. You'll watch it grow as you finish quests into something bigger and better, a feeling of accomplished is to be earned when you see your fame building from a nobody to a household name and beyond. You can choose Ales' classes, but more, you can actually restart him at level 1 to go through other class lines when you reach the maximum in your current line, getting stat point bonuses along the way so that you're never trapped in one profession.

 

Speaking of classes and story, your main cast has backstories that can be seen by doing their class changing quests, and it seems, even after finishing the game, you get even more.

 

AND THAT is the biggest point; after finishing the game, you can go on. Your characters grow and you get to see them after the story. You can keep building your guild, keep leveling, find all those cards, level up the shops and get access to more content.

 

All in all, the game has its flaws. Some serious flaws. But at the end of the day, it's game that will soak up your time and give you that quasi MMO feeling without having to put up with idiots all over the place. It's the same appeal that makes me love the .hack series on the PS2, and for that, I would recommend the game.

 

[spoiler=RAGE]But fuck the last area; I spent nearly 2 hours in that place, fighting boss after boss without a single save point. Imagine how pissed you would be to lose all that progress.

They really dropped the ball on that one, especially since this is for a handheld system.