RF Online’s unique approach to the genre goes beyond a simple blending of sci-fi and fantasy elements. The game’s appearance also blends elements of realism and anime, producing the game’s beautiful presentation. While it may lack the technical impressiveness of games like
EverQuest 2 and
World of Warcraft,
RF Online makes great strides in delivering a stylized approach that just looks “cool”.
RF Online takes a more action-oriented, point-and-click approach. Skills are assigned to the Function keys (F1, F2, etc.) and mapped to a hotkey bar. Skills rely on Force points, which act like mana in other games. Each skill requires a varying amount of points that regenerate over time. The catch is that you can only regenerate points while standing still, which requires you to have plenty of potions on hand during battles. I assume this is meant to keep players from spamming a particular skill over and over again, though it does slow the play experience a bit and makes you a little apprehensive about using skills. It adds strategy, but also a bit of paranoia. Other player attributes include Health and Stamina, both of which can only be regenerated by standing still. Again, both are highly dependant on potions and suffer from the same downside as Force points. Hopefully this will be tweaked before the game launches.
Much of RF Online’s single-player experience seems to be geared towards building your character up to participate in the game’s large-scale PvP battles, giving it a flavor that should be familiar to Guild Wars players. Missions are of the “Kill X number of X” variety, so there isn’t that much variety on that end. Still, your ultimate goal is to take part in the thousand player PvP battles, so it is worth the grind.
While RF Online doesn’t look like it will be a completely groundbreaking experience, there are enough unique elements that should help to make it one of the better ones. Provided some of the smaller nagging issues can be dealt with, RF Online could be one of this year’s massively-multiplayer success stories.