Back in 2004, Gravity Corp. announced at KAMEX (Korea Amuse World Expo) that they were working on Ragnarok Online 2: The Gate of the World, a sequel to the ever popular Ragnarok Online. Ragnarok Online 2: The Gate of the World then proceeded to enter closed beta from 2006 to 2010. However, due to poor reception, the game was ultimately scrapped and a new version, Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second would be developed instead.
Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second is now in its open beta phase but due to possibly licensing agreements and server limitations, the open beta is only open to players from Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand. The initial open beta was planned to launch on Dec 27th 2012 but due to the unprecedented amount of players trying to get on, the server could not handle the stress and was thus delayed to Jan 3rd 2013.
The game features all of the original Ragnarok Online classes except for the Merchant and Blacksmith classes. However, it now has a system called the Dual-Life system where players get to pick their jobs/profession like Blacksmithing, and it will allow players to set up shop as NPCs to vend items to players while they are offline.
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Character creation for Legend of the Second allow players to customize a unique character that best represent themselves. The Novice job from Ragnarok Online is done away with and players are able to choose a job from the Character Creation menu. While there aren’t any sliders like or in-depth character customization that players can find in games like Guild Wars 2 or Star Wars: The Old Republic, the Character Creation gives you enough choices to shape your character’s appearance.
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Players may also remember Ragnarok Online’s card system where players are able to find monster cards which give unique effects to their equipment. The card system in Legend of the Second has been revamped. The cards are no longer equipped to your individual equipment but rather to your character. Players can unlock more card slots every 10 levels up to a maximum of 5 slots and can also combine cards to form even more powerful cards to equip.
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Combat in Legend of the Second is nothing at all like the original Ragnarok Online. Instead, it is very similar to World of Warcraft and every other generic MMORPGs that are out there. You select a target, and proceed to mash your button keys to execute skills on your hot-bar. The game also follows the ‘holy trinity’ of character roles; Tank, Healer and DPS. Where you have the tank taunting and holding threat on mobs and the DPS trying to kill the mobs as soon as possible and all the while, the healer is trying to keep the group up.
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Once you’ve gathered enough experience points through questing or killing monsters, you gain a level, where the game awards you with Stat Points and Skill Points to improve your character. Again, these Stats that are available to players to choose from are the usual Str, Int, Agi, Vit and Wis. Each playing a different role in different class’s progression.
The same can be applied to the Skills that are at the player’s disposal. Each class has a unique set of skills and every time a player levels up, he or she can either choose to learn a new skill or to improve on a skill that has already been learned.
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Questing in Legend of the Second is exactly the same as it has been in most other MMORPGs. You find a NPC, accept and execute the quest then turn it in for a reward. You get the occasional fetch quest but more often than not, quests require players to either collect a certain number of an item or to kill a certain kind of monster. Players will notice that familiar monsters such as Porings and Lunatics have made a comeback and there are some new monsters as well to break up the tedium of killing the same old things over and over again.
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Like all MMORPGs out there, there is a PvP element to Legend of the Second. While the game isn’t open world PvP oriented, players can choose to duel with other players at any given time simply by right-clicking on the opponent’s portrait and sending a ‘Battle Request’. While the famous War of Emperium isn’t implemented at this point, the Korea servers will get a content patch for it this April. Until then, all players can do is to either duel with others or opt for the Battle Arena.
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Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second is a free to play game. You do not have to buy it, all you have to do is to download the installer and you are all set. That being said, there is a cash shop for in-game for micro transactions. While there is nothing in the cash shop at this point, the items which will be sold are probably quality of life items such as Skill or Stat Reset, items which improves enhancement rates and even costumes and mounts.
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One issue which plagued the original Ragnarok Online was that the game was too much of a grind. This results in too many of the players botting to gain levels and money. While I have not invested much time into game, it feels like there are enough quests for players to take on to level up and not become a grind fest.
Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second is still in it’s open beta phase but a few bugs do annoy me. One of the bugs I’ve noticed was that on collection quests, some of the stuff you interact with does not give you any items nor does your character interact with the quest element. Your mouse icon do change but despite hitting the right mouse button over and over again, your character simply won’t interact with it.
One other bug is that sometimes, certain mobs will simply bug out. When you choose to attack them, you can see that they have health but the game simply informs you that you are unable to do so leaving you frustrated.
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Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second is actually quite good to look at. The art style is very anime-like and the animations are very well done. A link to it’s system requirements can be found here.
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With all that being said, I personally feel that while the game itself is fine, what Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second fails to do is to take risks. It doesn’t change up the combat or the questing system. There is a story to the quests but like most if not all MMORPGs out there, players will just skip the story and just power through these quests just to get to max level as soon as possible and attempt the end game content.
If what you are looking for is the same experience and fun that Ragnarok Online gave you, you will not find it in Ragnarok Online 2: Legend of the Second. The only thing similar which Legend of the Second has in common with Ragnarok Online is it’s name. Players are familiar with Ragnarok Online and are thus excited and willing to give it a shot, to see if Gravity can recapture the fun that was Ragnarok Online. However, given that it has been in development for as long as it has, Legend of the Second is just another generic MMORPG that every player has played before.
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