RF Online was released 2 years ago (2006) and has been one of the games which is very much active with lots of people online. Here in the Philippines, RF Online is managed by Level Up Games. Before, you needed to pay in order to play the game. You can play for a set number of hours by paying certain denominations but now, it’s free to play for everyone.
You can pay for premium service which will increase the experience, the job points (called TP) and doubles the items that are dropped by the monsters. When you play RF Online for the first time, you can see that it has a futuristic theme to it. You can play any of the 3 races which are Accretia, Bellato, and Cora. The Accretians look like robots (reminds me of the anime Gundam) which has the best defenses. The Bellatos are people who live in high gravity zone and has good dodge. The Coras are those who live by Magic and have one of the most powerful attacks.
System Requirements. RF Online has quite a reasonable system requirement in order to play. You’d need a 450 MHz processor, 256MB RAM, at least Windows 98, 2 GBs of Hard drive space and a 128MB Video Card. However, if you want to really enjoy the game’s lush visuals and since during Chip Wars (explained below) you’ll be battling it out with the other 2 races along with your entire race, you’d need a more powerful machine. The recommended system specifications are at least an Athlon XP/Pentium4 or Sempron, 512 MB RAM, 3.0 GBs of Hard drive space, a 256MB Video card at least a GeForce 6600 or ATi 9800 series. You’d need an internet connection and broadband connection of at least 128 kbps is needed to play the game. I’m not sure if a dial up connection can handle the game.
Sights and Sounds. RF Online has one of the most impressive graphics and sounds. The environments are very detailed with really nice special effects like fog. The characters are also extremely detailed and you see them change as you replace your armor. The monsters are also we designed and it makes it feel more real than other MMORPGs which have simple graphics. The sound effects are also great. You can hear nice background music while you’re roaming around and the effects when you fight are nice as well. If you play as an Accretian, when you get hit, the effect is almost real and it would sound like a can or a metal.
Controls. RF Online can be controlled both by mouse or the keyboard and in the game, you can choose either keyboard or mouse mode. In keyboard mode, you can control your character much like a first person shooter does. You use directional keys (W for forward, A for left, S for back, D for right) to move around. As for the mouse mode, you can click the direction where you want your character to go to. It takes about 2 to 3 hours or so to get used to the controls. It’s not that tough and there are lots of camera angles to choose from depending on which you prefer and what would work best for you.
Gameplay and Features. In RF Online, you fight monsters to gain experience and engage in quests to receive bonus experience points or more powerful equipments. As you level up, you can wear more powerful armors and weapons. In RF Online, there is what we call TP which is your character’s specialty. If you’re a warrior, your TP would concentrate on Melee attacks and if you’re a ranger, your TP would concentrate on Range skills. It takes about 3 hours or so to start understanding how the TP system works. This also applies to special skills such as powerful attacks and support skills. Currently, the maximum level (in RF Online Philippines) is capped at level 55 but at that level, your character is extremely powerful and coupled with high level equipments you would be almost unstoppable.
The game also has its own currency and each race has their own. As you may have guessed, the 3 races fight each other for control. The game is strong when it comes to PVP. At any time, a player can attack you especially if they’re from another race. As with almost any other online game, there will come to a point when some rude high level characters would just have fun with the low level characters and kill them. It’s part of the game. Also, for each race, there is what we call an Archon. He/she is a player whom the race has voted to be their leader (much like a president). There are also the consuls who support the Archon and the rest of the server. Each race has their own places to level however the other races can invade them and start a mini war. One of the nifty features of the game is the Chip Wars. During CW, as we call it, the 3 races battle it out for control of the mines. Whoever has control over it has the right to mine for gems and jewels used for upgrading equipments. It happens almost everyday and lots of people join the event.
I’ve enjoyed playing the game for a couple of weeks. I liked the graphics and how the overall gameplay is. It is really fun to play. But as with most online RPGs, it may seem repetitive. Nonetheless, it is a great game and it is worth playing. Enjoy and watch your game time. Play moderately.
