So are the next few, and the next few, with the quests serving more as an excuse to reward new players for their progress occasionally than as any kind of mechanism to provide structure to the gameplay experience. The first few levels you gain in the game, foraying further and further outside the toytown environments of your starting city as you take on tougher beasts, are an unashamed grind. First you must choose your race, then your character class, then your weapon, with little indication of what impact each of those decisions will have - then it's off out to the hunt with you, without much in the way of guidance or assistance from the game other than the occasional new quest to push you gently along the levelling path.Īt first, this lack of hand-holding can seem like a step back into the dark ages compared to the finely implemented and quest-centric mechanisms used by the likes of World of Warcraft - a game to which RF Online is inevitably going to be compared, and therefore I'll make no excuses for doing so repeatedly. Although it's only in beta at the moment and allowances must be made for the lack of decent translation in many places, it's still a confusing game for newcomers.

RF Online is a game in which finding your way is trickier than perhaps it should be. Like so many times before when starting out in an MMORPG, I'm reminded of the start of each episode of Mr Bean, where the hapless fool is thrown to earth fully formed and expected to find his way. Cast to earth in the thriving city that serves as headquarters for the Bellato Union in RF Online, I'm a typical clueless n00b, lost in the rush of people who scurry to and fro with purposeful intent. I've just started life in a new massively multiplayer game.

I have absolutely no idea where I am, only the vaguest sense of what I'm meant to be doing, and yet the whole sensation is comfortingly familiar - like slipping back into a well worn pair of shoes. Colourful ramparts rise to a blue sky, and architecture that wouldn't look out of place in Lego Land - all primary colours and bold shapes - surrounds me, while at ground level, people scurry to and fro purposefully. I am standing, once again, in an unfamiliar city.

Rf online