Rising Force Online

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Rising Force Online

by Aethyna Jul 20, 2017 | 1 Votes | 0 Played | 0 Reviews

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Genres:

RPG , MMO

Graphics:

3D

Labels:

Anime , Sci-Fi , Player vs Player (PvP) , Crafting , Hunting , Fantasy Setting , Mechs , Dungeon/ Instance

Platforms:

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RedFox Games Set off on an exciting adventure across various planets while fighting for the faction of your choice in a sector of the galaxy where rich natural resources have been found. Will you be able to rise up the ranks of the army and perhaps one day be sworn in as Archon (the leader) of your very faction? Play Now Similar Games Played Post a Review

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Community Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

There were many old-school MMORPGs back when MMOs are considered a fairly new genre. Many faded away into obscurity but RF Online is not one of these.

Rising Force Online, or better known simply as “RF Online”, is a rather old-school, sci-fi/fantasy-themed MMORPG that has not really aged well but is still pretty popular among a small niche community. Players in this game will get to set off on an exciting adventure across various planets while fighting for the faction of their choice in a sector of the galaxy where rich natural resources have been found. Will you be able to rise up the ranks of the army and perhaps one day be sworn in as Archon (the leader) of your very faction?

Plotline

When a sector of the galaxy was found to contain rich natural resources, it is pretty much inevitable that the 3 major factions within the galaxy will want to fight for its control. The relationship between factions has always been rather strained and it simply took a little spark to set everything ablaze... cumulating into a war that has been going on for 3 years and counting.

In this game, you play as a new recruit of the faction of your choice. Level up and improve yourself and your gear so you can contribute better to your faction and your people.

Gameplay

After signing up and choosing one of the 2 servers available, you’ll need to create your character to plat the game. The character creation process is pretty much painless I’d say. You’ll first be asked to choose a faction out of three – the physically strong Bellato Union, the incredibly religious Holy Alliance Cora and the mechanized Accretia Empire.

Once done, you’ll then be asked to choose a class. There are four in total, namely the tanky warrior, the hawk-eyed ranger, the Force-wielding mystic and the specialist who provide support to allies. Interestingly though, players who opted for the Accretia Empire will only get to choose 3 classes (mystic is excluded). Not to mention, you can only create 1 character (per server) for free so you might want to carefully choose both the faction and class you want. But of course, if you’re willing to break out some real money, you can buy extra character slots in exchange for the game’s premium cash, gold.

Now, the game immediately initiate its special tutorial map once you’re done with your character, but you can choose to skip the tutorial simply by clicking “cancel”. However, I’d highly recommend you persevere through its rather slow-paced tutorial just because the game has very different (and somewhat more complicated) controls and gameplay than the usual MMORPGs you might have played before.

Granted that the tutorial can be quite a pain since apparently it seems to constantly bug out, forcing you to restart the game client and subsequently the entire tutorial sequence, but through it, you’ll at the very least learn a thing or two about the basics such as how to attack an enemy or how to toggle walk/run. The tutorial isn’t exactly comprehensive either, and you may still need to do a bit of “exploring” of your own.

To save you some of the trouble though, here are generally what you can glean from the tutorial. First things first, the game uses a point-and-click system to move by default, but I’ve noticed that you can change it from mouse to keyboard mode simply by pressing “H”. I’d advise you to stick with using point-and-click mainly because the world in this game can be really huge and running from one place to another feels a lot less energy intensive with a simple click rather than having to press down the “W” key.

That said, the movement system isn’t very intelligent though. Your character will not run around an obstacle to reach the location it needs to go and will instead stop at the obstacle. Needless to say, even with point-and-click, you’ll still need to take manual control of your character rather frequently. Although your character is by default constantly running, running actually drains your stamina. So, the game advises you to save up on stamina by toggling the walk option from time to time. You can’t jump in this game either.

RF Online also has a small segment in the tutorial where it introduces its many camera views to you. So, if you don’t like the third-person “camera trailing behind your character” view, you can change it into first-person instead.

As opposed to the rather clunky movements, the combat system in RF Online is surprisingly simple. This is perhaps mainly due to the fact that it uses the old-school-styled tank-and-spank. Mobs don’t perform actions and will just straight up melee you on sight (if they happen to be the aggressive sort). Oh, and there seems to be something wrong with its aggro range too, making it quite impossible to run through a throng of creatures without having a ton of them trailing you for a rather ridiculous distance which usually result in your character’s untimely death.

Anyway, to deal normal damage, you just need to double click on the mob. To use skills though, you will first need to shift the skills you want from your skills menu into the skill bar. Skills can be used by right clicking on them. As ridiculous as this may be, you should take note that although there are numbers for each skill on the skill bar, you can’t use the number keys on your keyboard to activate them.

Interestingly, RF Online offers players some macros to play with. There’s an auto potion option which will use the potion of your choice whenever your HP, SP or Stamina is lower than the level you’ve set, and there’s also an auto-action option where you can sequence up to 3 different attack routines and have them all condensed into a single button, respectively. There is also an auto chat system, but it is not available for lower level players, possibly to avoid spammers from abusing it.

Moreover, questing in RF Online feels very monotonous. Quests are beamed into your mission journal via satellite (there should be a satellite icon on the lower right corner of your screen) and most of them consists of killing a ton of mobs. The reasons behind killing these mobs can be varied but basically, you’ll be just slaying your way to a higher level. That said though, questing is the fastest way you can use to level up, so unless you want to do twice the grind, you do well to heed the quests you are given.

Starter quests are important as well because they reward you with beginner gear (only the armor is important since you are given super OP weapons as a welcome gift) and extra bags which will come in handy to horde all those crafting materials you get from “hunting” down the local fauna. At this point, I should also point out that despite the class you chose, you can actually use weapons that are intended for other classes, albeit not very efficiently.

Like most MMORPGs, RF Online also provides its players with challenging dungeons to farm better gear in. Getting into a dungeon can be rather tricky though since you have to obtain the required “key” which you’ll slot into a gateway machine in the city to generate the portal to the dungeon itself. There are also other PvE and PvP events that you can enjoy, such as bounty hunting a Wanted person or go on hunting adventures. Players can even get involved in faction politics and run for the coveted position of Archon (leader) of their factions.

Being a free-to-play game, RF Online offers players a ton of boosts and extra benefits via its cash shop. Many of the items on sale are more towards convenience goods, though there are some items, such as the socket extensions, which will give paying players a nice boost in stats since they will be able to add more sockets to their gear.

Community

Even as a newbie, you’ll quickly realize the benefits of being in a guild or at the very least, have some buddies to help you along. You’ll find that having a reliable band of friends makes the game much more enjoyable... and well, you may even get to cut down the waiting time when recruiting players for a dungeon.

Fancy leading a guild yourself? Well, you’ll need to gather up a party of 8 guildless players, you included, before you can apply. Naturally, you’ll need to be the leader of the party to do so.

Graphics/ Sound

When you play RF Online, you should keep in mind that this game was released back in 2004 and keep your expectations low. The graphics in this game is pretty dated but it allows the game to be run on lower-end PCs. Its world is surprisingly bland too. In terms of sound, the game has a few nice soundtracks, but I wouldn’t go as far as to call them memorable... as opposed to the music in Dragon Nest.

Conclusion

As mentioned before, RF Online has not particularly aged very well. Both its graphics and its gameplay leave newcomers, especially the new generation of players who grew up playing games in HD, feel wanting. That said, the game seems to ooze a pretty unique charm of its own, appealing to a small group of players, who eventually became loyal fans of the game. All in all, RF Online may not be everyone’s cup of tea as I daresay most players will quit out of sheer frustration, but for the rare few who do stay, they will be able to enjoy all that the game has to offer.