The new free-to-play MMORPG Revelation Online is accessible to everyone in open beta. Progress will no longer be wiped, so we can see Revelation Online as “released”. What impression does Revelation Online make after a first test?
Revelation Online is currently in soft launch, a form of release whereby the publisher can excuse all shortcomings – it’s not officially released yet. However, players can play for success thanks to the absence of character wipes and invest in the in-game shop. But why, despite this, has the old cynical Grand Chancellor been captivated? Here’s an attempt at an explanation.
Revelation Online is a phenomenon; it is unnecessarily complex and quite repetitive, some players find it graphically unappealing, and the portion of new features that I call the “awesomeness factor” intended to redefine the genre is non-existent. But all that doesn’t stop me from logging in with frightening regularity and having real fun. Revelation is fast food.
It’s not really good, it’s not really necessary, but it’s fun. Afterwards, one feels a bit dirty and tries to convince oneself that it was just a one-time slip – starting tomorrow, only culturally high-quality gaming fare with alfalfa sprouts. But it won’t stop there …
Revelation Online – The Full Daily Dose
To put it bluntly, Revelation Online is a series of daily quests. Anyone expecting a sandbox MMO or even a quest-driven story MMO has not even the slightest chance of being happy in this game.
Revelation Online offers different content, but it’s almost like the essence: concentrated and uncompromising.
Players can expect various solo and group instances daily, an allegedly very difficult raid, and “level” instances following the pattern: kill 200 monsters. In addition, there are short, repetitive open-world quests like: “Kill X, collect Y.” There are also guild quests, PvP quests, and eating and drinking in the wellness area.
Yes, you read that right; one daily quest says: stand AFK in the hot springs for 15 minutes, fill your belly, and drink alcohol! If you want, you can also sit by the water in a tank top and fish (AFK). Quite ideal for frying an egg in real life and opening a beer. Afterward, you can get to work on the quest list, satisfied.
Quests – You Can Do Them, But You Don’t Have To
This list consists of all the activities mentioned above, and you get it presented again every day. If you want to complete it entirely, you might rack up 4-6 hours of gameplay, especially if you have to rely on group searches. However, a large part of the tasks is not that important, so you can do just the two or three most significant quests and let the MMO god do his thing afterward.
You are not forced to meticulously complete every quest daily, but if you suffer from an accounting compulsion, you should plan appropriate playtimes.
It will henceforth be quite rare for it to be boring. There are various tasks that ultimately aim to develop your character, albeit sometimes in manageable baby steps.
Dungeon Finder with Flaws
However, this system does not come without flaws, as unfortunately, the developers made avoidable mistakes with the dungeon finder. Instances exist in various difficulty levels (trial/easy/hard/expert, etc.). These are sometimes further divided, so some instances, for example, exist in three expert levels. The principle behind how the developers decided what has a queue and what doesn’t remains a mystery to me.
For many instances, I can simply sign up in the tool and happily run through the world, maybe to do reputation quests, fish, or whatever. Once a group is found, I can directly teleport luxuriously into the instance. However, if the difficulty level is higher, this luxury is no longer available.
So if I want to find a group for an instance at expert difficulty, I am forced to stand in front of the instance and look for a group in chat … that is not very fun, especially when the level differences of players vary greatly in the early stages of the game; it can sometimes take three-quarters of an hour.
Time that could have been used more sensibly, even if it’s just with alcohol in the spa area. Thus, I often find myself asking whether to find a group or just grind solo content. In both cases, I have the feeling that I’m wasting time unnecessarily. Of course, you can alleviate this inconvenience by joining a guild. However, if a dungeon finder is offered, it should at least represent a meaningful extension.
The Sufferings of the Young Occultist
The instances in the lower difficulty levels are hardly worth mentioning. If the group does not mess around too much, it can go smoothly even with me as a tank. The higher you struggle through the difficulty levels, the more important equipment and a decent group composition become. My first venture into an expert dungeon with a three-star rating shows: With faceroll tactics, you will reach your limits.
Just one example: I kite 3 ads and have a DoT ticking on me, so I either need to heal myself – which is difficult because I am fleeing like a chicken with a stick in my side – or have to rely on healing. However, that is also not so easy because the healer prefers to keep our tank alive. So I throw a healing field at my feet. But for that, I have to stand still for a moment and misjudge myself fabulously!
Not enough distance! So all the ads hit me in the back nicely. Since my armor as an occultist is mediocre, my health bar drops below 30% HP. And that’s not good. Because the boss is attentive! No matter how much aggro the tank has built up, if someone falls below 30% health, the boss jumps on him like a ferret on angle dust!
Bosses in a Blood Rage!
If the respective player has no protective buff or something similar, the boss tramples the face of that player into the instance floor. Unfortunately, I was the only one who could have cast a shield, but only if my tuning would have been charged. And while kiting, you don’t build up tuning. The end of the story: Boss has a breakfast of me, ads have breakfast of the healer, and then the tank.
As a dessert, a few damage dealers, you know how it goes. But it can be simpler. Anyone standing within a 20-meter radius of the boss when he unleashes his AoE can pay the ferryman’s coins for their trip to the land of the dead. Only the tank, with good equipment or with a lot of healing, survives this.
Revelation Online – Nostalgia Bonus
Overall, Revelation Online is old-school MMO instance fare like we know it from the good old days. Am I bored by that? No!
After years of innovative, mutually surpassing game mechanics, I find this classic return refreshing, familiar, and perhaps I even missed it. A holy trinity of tank, healer, and damage dealer has something familiar and soothing about it; it’s a bit like grandma’s apple pie – maybe not the most innovative but enjoyable.
Revelation Online – Why Simplify If It Can Be Complicated?
At first, Revelation seems quite accessible, almost banal, but later it reveals itself to be much more multifaceted. However, as we progress, it also becomes unnecessarily complicated. For instance, let’s take a look at the skill system. You unlock skills with the level. As your character level rises, you can further enhance these abilities with points. Good, I get that, I like that, it works!
But then the game asks me for the pass card A38 from “Asterix conquers Rome.” There are special skills that you have to unlock. Either through the story, which doesn’t even seem worth clicking through, or through items from reputation vendors, for which you first need to grind enough reputation. It happens that you have to perform uninspired reputation quests for weeks; the challenge requires you to have the mental capacity to press two keys in succession.
Just to ultimately gain access to a skill that belongs to the basic equipment of the class. When I subsequently find out that the corresponding reputation vendor would like items from another seller of a different reputation faction as payment for this skill, I wish from the bottom of my heart for an Obelix to come and turn the good man to the north. “Pass card A38?” “Paff paff, KLANG! BLOING!”
Time Waste with Method
Unfortunately, this pointless nesting is systematic. If I need a specific ingredient to create a new weapon, it doesn’t drop in an instance. No, it drops an item that I have to double-click to receive a scroll. That scroll gives me a quest that leads me via auto-path to an arbitrary, unmarked place on the map.
Out of the blue, I get material thrown into my inventory, which I can exchange with a vendor for the stuff I need to build my weapon … at least, if I have enough reputation. Both the reputation quests and the number of materials I can obtain this way are limited weekly. I call this a perfect example of time-sink lobotomy.
Revelation Online – Not for Casual Players
Untangling all of this is already a task in itself. No wonder that beginner guides for this game often have the volume of a major city phone book. So, it’s rather a game for those who feel overly hand-held in other games.
A stark contrast to the first impression. The green glowing quest arrows that paved the tutorial’s ground had suggested otherwise.
I’ll spare you further details, but similarly nested systems are found in many areas of the game. Whether skill development, character development, or the equipment system, Revelation Online is by no means a shining example of intuitive user guidance, despite all love.
Revelation Online – Often Annoying, but Unfortunately Great
Actually, Revelation Online is a game that has immense potential to get on my nerves so quickly that either my mental health or my input devices can get battered. Setting aside speculation about my mental health: Why is my electronic rodent still alive?
Because the gameplay is genuinely fun for me. The classes all play smoothly, the combat system is refined, and especially in instances, many cogs mesh together so perfectly that it reminds me of the “good old days of the MMO genre.”
But whether Revelation Online really has the potential to become one of the big MMOs is something I doubt.
It ranks quite high in the roster of free-to-play MMORPGs, but ultimately, it is not perceived by many players as a AAA title, perhaps rightly so. For all those who love instance-based gameplay, Revelation Online still offers a “home-cooked” experience spiced with sweet-and-sour Chinese sauce.
This text comes from our reader Grand Chancellor. More from Grand Chancellor can be found on his blog.
If you want to try Revelation Online for yourself, here’s the link to the website with the download.
