We've been talking to you about Revelation Online several times on Games Managers. Players who purchased a pack may have had early access, but for the past few days anyone can try it out thanks to the open beta. What does this new version have in store for us since 2016? We will find out.
Creation and choice of characters
As always in an MMO, you must first go through the creation of character and the choice of your class. The class chosen will define your character's modeling archetype. To give a simple example, if you take the Summoner class, you won't be able to create a tall character. Conversely, for a Master of Weapons, the cute Lolicon archetype will not be available.
Before we talk about customizing your character, let's talk a bit about classes. If you have been playing MMO for some time now, you will find the classic archetypes of the Holy Trinity:
- Hoplite
- Master of arms
- Magépée
- Summoner
- Occultist
- Maverick
Archetype: Tank
Lots of control skills and damage reduction. This class will allow you to wear heavy armor (which is, by the way, really well styled on human type characters).
Archetype: Secondary Tank
From what I understood and could see on the Chinese version, the Weapons Master appears to be the secondary tank in most raid team lineups. Like the hoplite, it is a melee class.
Archetype: Hybrid DPS
This class is, for me, the one that will allow you to farm effectively in PvE with its many area spells. Like any magic class, it offers an anthology of spells and will prove to be a real plague in battlefield PvP.
Archetype: Healer
He is RO's healer par excellence. It is sought after in the majority of groups for this specificity. The summoning side is moderately present on the other hand, but very useful for example to perform a quick and effective heal burst in hard hits.
Archetype: DPS / Support
This is the slightly Swiss Army knife class of Revelation Online. The occultist has both damage spells inflicting a significant amount of damage and the ability to heal himself with drain spells, but also directly his allies. According to some HL players, this class is becoming mandatory for some dungeons.
Archetype: DPS
This is the class with the greatest potential for damage in the shortest time. As always with this type of class, you cut your opponents as quickly as they unfortunately cut you. Placement with the sniper is essential in PvP to avoid leaving in less than 5 seconds to the graveyard.
As in most games from China or Japan, the character customization is very advanced to be able to create the character of your dreams or even identify the most with your character for immersion or the Role-Play side. I won't go into every point of the different menus, it would take too long to explain (and not very interesting to read).
One important thing to note however: you can save your character directly during creation on your hard drive in XML format, a file that can be shared with the community. This is a very interesting feature for people looking for pretty cool characters without wanting to waste too much time during creation or for community contests.
Quests, dungeons and game modes
First of all, the increase in experience is done in a classic way, whether by killing monsters or completing quests / dungeons. Quests are fairly common to the genre and will mostly require you to go Fedex or kill monsters. Moreover, even having passed level 50, I did not have complicated or very long quests. In most cases, it takes 5 to 10 minutes without worrying.
Regarding quests, a very common point in oriental MMOs is the ability to automatically move to the person you need to talk to or to the area where the monsters appear. This feature is really interesting and saves a lot of time for both new and old players by avoiding the question of "where should I go?". As always, the quest log gives a summary of the tasks to be done, with the possibility of hiding some of them if necessary.
Then come the dungeons which remain the best way to increase levels. Each dungeon is broken down into several levels:
- A solo exploration level that will allow you to see the environment and the different monsters / bosses. This part is often linked to a region quest or story mode.
- Different difficulty levels which will increase the difficulty quite quickly as well as some boss mechanics. Some modes require a minimum level as well as suitable equipment, even while your character is progressing.
Compared to the difficulty, the levels of dungeons in classic or normal modes are not very complicated during the progression. Leaving without being 5 in the group or even without a healer / tank is very good. On the other hand, in expert mode and on some dungeons, preparation or mechanical errors are much less forgivable. To be gone with a friend quite experienced in MMOs in a healer / tank pair, we were surprised several times on the aggro mechanics of monster packs or on some quite confusing boss mechanics when we go in nag mode . However, access to the dungeons is limited to 5 per day per difficulty mode, which allows you to avoid completing them in a loop to increase your level too quickly.
Let's take a step away from PvE to talk about PvP, which is very present in Revelation Online. At the moment, two game modes are available namely the battlefield and the arena. The battlefield is a 20v20 map where the goal is to reach 1000 resource points. These points are earned by capturing the 5 points available on the map. The longer you hold a point, the more points you earn. For the parts that I was able to do in this mode, it's a bit like bus versus bus mode without too much headaches. I was nevertheless able to notice, on the other hand, that with a small group of 3/4 players going quickly from points to points made it possible to win almost systematically. Regarding the arena, I did not look too closely at it because it remains something quite classic. It should be noted on the other hand that a classification is made on the scale of the server but also of the others. This is a good point to know your overall level.
Skills and statistics
Your character will have two types of skills: basic and special. The first, twelve in number, will be your main spells to cast. Each of these skills can be increased to improve its effectiveness. Be careful, however, the points to invest are limited. Starting at level 49 and completing part of the story quest, there is a talent tree available that I haven't been able to see yet.
Special skills do not work on the same principle. First, to increase its abilities, you will need to use them 100 times to level up in the spell. Regarding the summoner for example, 4 of the spells are damage spells while the other 4 are healing spells. It is also possible to add essences to these spells to increase their effectiveness.
The statistics are available on the equipment that you can wear but also at each level increase where you can invest points in the following characteristics:
- Strength : increases physical damage.
- Mind : increases magic defense, health, MPs and healing if you play a summoner.
- Intelligence : increases magic damage.
- Dexterity : increases the chance of criticals (damage and healing).
- Vigor : increases physical defense and health.
As you can imagine, depending on your class, there are obvious choices to be made in order to be viable in the game. For example, for Summoner PvE, the 3 Spirit to 1 Intelligence split works very well.
Conclusion
I must admit that I did not talk about everything I could see in the game because I was not able to dwell much on certain points. You can, for example, develop your harvesting or crafting professions via a menu where you will have to use knowledge points to access certain levels.
As for the game now, I find it a lot of good points compared to the F2P games on the market right now. Unfortunately, I cannot rule on whether the game is actually F2P, or rather P2W, having not seen specific items in the store (not available while playing). However, if we refer to the Chinese version, the game does not tend towards that. But, as everyone knows, that doesn't mean much in itself (but hopefully for us players).
I note on the other hand something that shocked me a little. We have the ability to fly, either with wings (level 25) or by a mount. You're going to tell me "What's the matter?", And I'll tell you that the game is riddled with teleport points to get us to all corners of the map. I find that a bit of a shame all of the sudden ...
Finally, to conclude, I will continue my journey on Revelation Online to discover the 10 player raids as well as the very high-level dungeons that the game can offer, I will come back to tell you about them if all goes well!
