The open beta of Broken Ranks starts today, on July 2, 2021. The new old-school MMORPG from Poland impresses with classic gameplay, a stylish look, and a dark atmosphere. However, those who want to test it only have until Monday.
What is Broken Ranks? The new MMORPG comes from the Polish indie studio Whitemoon, which has previously gathered experience in the genre with “Pride of Taern.” Broken Ranks is even based on Pride of Taern.
You play as a survivor from the shattered realm of Taern and must now fight your way through the largely destroyed world. In the hand-drawn world, you move in isometric perspective (“viewed from above”) in real-time, but combat occurs in a turn-based manner.
In one turn, you have ten seconds to plan your actions. Visually, the battles remind a bit of classic J-RPGs like the older parts of Final Fantasy. You can choose from seven classes for your character, including classics like Barbarians and Rangers, but also more exotic classes such as Druids and Voodoo Shamans.
The content is also oriented towards “old-school.” You can play alone or with a group (with no specific size mentioned) and explore cities and ruins, defeat simple and powerful enemies, and get loot. PvP will also be possible.
How can I play the beta? On Friday, July 2, 2021, at 21:00 German time, the open beta for Windows PCs will start. You can then play until Monday, July 5, also at 21:00.
You can find the download directly on the official website (via BrokenRanks.com). The open beta follows the closed beta from May, in which a few players were already able to get an impression, but is not under an NDA.
So you can both stream yourself and watch your favorite streamers if you don’t want to test Broken Ranks yourself. However, any content and characters you unlock will not carry over to the final game.
Low hardware requirements, release still pending
If you are worried about whether your PC can handle the beta, you should be at ease. The requirements are so low that a roughly eight-year-old PC should still be able to run the game:
- Memory: 4 GB RAM (8 GB recommended)
- Processor: at least an i3 (i5 recommended)
- Graphics card: integrated Intel HD graphics is sufficient
- 512 GB VRAM required (1 GB recommended)
- Size: 5 GB
When exactly Broken Ranks will be released is still open. However, a version for macOS is already planned, and Broken Ranks is also set to come for iOS and Android with crossplay for all versions. Anyone who had an account for Pride of Taern can later transfer this to Broken Ranks.
While you wait for the release, you can find some strong games in the genre. MeinMMO shows you the 15 currently best MMOs and MMORPGs 2021.
