ROSE Online mini-review

ROSE stands for "Rush On Seven Episodes", but it might as well be "Ragnarok Online Second Edition", both being from the same Korean company, Gravity. The gameplay is the same as in Ragnarok, only that ROSE has beautiful 3D graphics, instead of pseudo-3D sprites. The game is very cute, but simple. But the biggest difference between ROSE and European games is how crowded it is.

In European games, you or your group can often hunt in a lonely corner of a huge world, and not meet anybody for some time. There are places where you are more likely to meet people, and then there are cities, some of which are crowded. In ROSE, any area you go to looks like the place between bank and auction house in Ironforge or Orgrimmar, teeming with people. Monsters respawn every couple of seconds and combats are all over the place. Accidental killstealing happens often, but isn't really a problem, because the first guy to hit a mob tags it, and gets its loot. Other people doing damage to it just share the xp proportionally. And combats only last a few seconds anyway. But it all feels a bit like having a swordfight in a shopping mall, there are so many people around you all the time.

You start as visitor on a newbie island, and start killing jelly beans and other cute looking mobs. At level 10 you can do a quest to chose one of 4 possible primary jobs, and at level 100 each class divides into two secondary classes. The highest level seems to be 150. Every level you get points to distribute between your stats. The current world is small, but they are planning to have 7 different "planets" to chose from later.

Combat consists of clicking on a mob and autoattacking. You can also use skills, which use up mana points. Then you have food and drink, which you can consume *during* the fight to regenerate hitpoints and mana. Using lots of food and drink during a fight allows you to kill tougher mobs, but you risk spending more money on the fight than you earn from it. You can also form groups and hunt together, but I didn't really see the point of doing so in this game.

Loot often consists of materials. One of the 4 classes, the dealer, can learn skills to turn materials into items. Or you sell the stuff to other players or NPC and buy weapons, armor, and other stuff. There is no auction house, but any player can open a mini-shop anywhere, buying and selling goods. Thus like in Ragnarok, all cities and often passed places like bridges are littered with shops. It is very difficult to find things, as you need to click through dozens of unsorted shops, not a very good shopping experience. Items have minimum levels and stats, so only if you put lots of points in e.g. strength will you be able to wield that huge axe.

Sound I usually don't mention, but it this case it was so bad that my wife asked me to turn it off. There seemed to be just one short tune on autoloop ad infinitum. In addition there are a couple of combat noises, and that's it.

This is certainly not a game I would be paying for, but playing it for a day was strangely relaxing. Very simple, cute, and a bit mindless. Apparently a lot of kids playing, from all over the world. Ragnarok has a free trial, I hope ROSE will have the same. Worth having a look at.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:53 AM Permanent Link