Regnum Online

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October 29th, 2008 - By Dalmarus

“Your soul has been strengthened. Let you body do the same soon, with guard Hesid's helping hand, in front of those antique ruins.”

Seeing that phrase uttered to you by a guard within moments of logging into Regnum Online for the first time is not the best way to instill confidence that this is a game worth playing.  It’s like starting a book with, “It was a dark and stormy night”. It's so uninspiring and a textbook example of what not to do that it's disturbing. I'd like to be able to tell you the writing gets better, but again, I'd be lying, so let's just get to the nitty gritty, shall we?

Regnum Online is a Free-to-Play Massive Multiplayer Online Game from NGD Studios, based in Argentina. The premise is solid, if not particularly engaging. Players must choose from one of three realms to explore and compete in a world with both PvE (Player Versus Environment) and PvP (Player Versus Player) content. Once you choose a realm, you cannot create a character from a different one unless you do so on another server, or delete all of your old characters. While on the surface, this may seem like a harsh choice, it's actually fairly standard practice in RvR (Realm Versus Realm Games).

Dark Elves... or Skinny Smurfs?

Initiation Hazing

That’s certainly what the installation felt like. Trying to find a site I could get an uncorrupted client from was like searching for an alley in New York that doesn’t reek of urine. Even when you find one, you’ll still feel like you need a hot shower afterwards. Eventually I found what I was looking for at Fileplanet.

After having sorted out the initial file problems, I assumed the rest of the process would consist of smooth sailing... how wrong I was. At one point, I discovered there were 14 instances of Regnum Online running during the fiasco known as patching. It felt like Leeroy Jenkins was grabbing every ounce of processing power my system had like they were magical tiny dragons.

Once you finally get past the pain of getting things running, character creation is a simple process of choosing a realm and then one of three races. From there, you'll choose one of three classes. The whole idea of it seems to be a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors gone wrong.

There are no stats to distribute between your attributes and the game does a satisfactory job of giving you the basic descriptions of each class. How hard should it be to describe a warrior, mage, or archer, I don't know, but at this point, I wasn't necessarily optimistic.


Kill Me, Kill Me Now
If you're anything like your normal gamer, you'll be begging for the sweet release of death before long. In fact, it's probably the fastest way to regain your health and mana. Get used to long amounts of downtime because that's the only thing you have to look forward to with the combat of Regnum Online. Fighting is a simplistic affair of setting your character to autoattack and hitting a button on your hotbar every 5 seconds or so.

As a Mage or Archer, you can get one long range attack off before your target closes with you, but after that, it's the same pattern of hit hotbar button once, wait for timer, hit again. Whether you're a Warrior, Archer, or Mage makes little difference in terms of combat. They all play the same. Save yourself some pain and go watch Donny Osmond dance like a maniac for a good laugh instead. Combat and recovery is so slow, you can probably finish the video before you'll be ready to choose your next pixilated victim.

It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This... Really.

There Has To Be Something Good, Right? *crickets* Right?
Believe it or not, there are some bright spots, though they are few and far between. Once you adjust the screen resolution from its default of 600x800, the graphics are actually rather charming, and better than I had any hope to expect at this point. While the basic structure of character models and environment are definitely dated, they have what I like to refer as, an old-school charm. Think Darkstone meets Asheron's Call and you're in the right neighborhood. The textures are smooth and clean, and the Anti-Aliasing in the game works great.

The music composition and general sound is on par for what you would expect once you've logged in and seen what you’re up aga... I mean, playing. Neither great nor excruciatingly irritating, it's relatively par for the course. The music of each area you’re exploring is fitting if not exciting. The combat music reminded me of the Peter Gun theme, so it kept me mildly entertained while battling a number of creatures in the world.

The Regnum Online UI is actually something of a simple masterpiece. No need for a roll of Bounty Paper Towels to clean up any mess here. The UI is Spic and Span clean! So clean in fact, that after having played for a few hours, I went back to another game I frequent regularly and was searching for ways to shrink some windows while wanting to remove others. The interface gives you so much screen space to enjoy what little action can be found, it's hard to go back to something else messier than a Saturday night mud wrestling competition.

Sadly, this was the last really good thing I have to say about Regnum Online.


Final Overview
If you miss the days of watching your avatar autoattack its target while you sat watching while periodically pushing a button and watching a long cooldown timer reset, you may be in luck. If you feel today's games are lacking in downtime to get to know one another while resting for three to five minutes after each battle, get your hernia pillow ready for some long sessions. For those players that long to return to an earlier era when combat was slow and simplistic, I've found the game for you.

If Regnum Online had been made before 1999, it probably would have been a big hit. Unfortunately for me, and perhaps you if you decide to give the game a try, we're right around the corner from 2009. While it may hold some charm in a nostalgic sort of way, it's too outdated to be a viable choice for today's gamer. It's a classic case of getting what you paid for. I don't know about you, but for myself, being able to play for free just isn't enough. My time is worth more than that. <link to forum thread>What about yours?</link>

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Disclaimer: The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of the Ten Ton Hammer network or staff.

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