Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Admittedly, I have a pet peeve when it comes to games that are imported across the Pacific Ocean and dropped into the hands of the Western marketplace. The quibble that irks me the most is when I find consistent spelling errors in my game, enough that it actually distracts my gameplay. I understand that I’m no savant when it comes to spelling, but when playing a game there’s a degree of quality that should be adhered to in the development (or localization) of a title. If that quality is broken, theirs obviously going to be other faults inside the game.

Rappelz suffers from translation errors to a large extent, and you can almost visualize the state the translator must have been in to misspell or double type particular words. The deeper an individual gets in an NPC’s dialogue tree, the worse the language becomes. At one point during the game, I reached a section of dialogue that had been translated but was incredibly garbled.

The dialogue woes of Rappelz don’t stop there. Continuing through a series of quests requires an incredible amount of patience, because each time you return to a character, even if you’ve visited them previously, they will issue you the same bit of text and you’ll actually have to go through a section of dialogue before you can complete your quest. Instead of a simple one-click-and-finished solution, completing quests becomes a trial in patience as you continually plod through selected dialogue.

Dialogue in Rappelz is horribly done.

While it is an annoying problem, the quest dialogue dilemma actually reached its most aggravating moment just as I was ready to leave the initial stages of my beginning quest. Upon finishing one of the quest chains, my instructor told me that I still needed to learn some basic skills from him, but after I had learned the last few skills I could move on to the next trainer. Having to go through the quest dialogue tree again to actually receive the quest, I discovered that it was a quest I had already finished – the infamous “gather three feathers” quest that I had done at the beginning of the game. I canceled the confirmation of the quest because I assumed I’d already finished the thing earlier.

Unfortunately, this was not the case. The next trainer blatantly informed me that I needed more training from the basic skills master before I could train with her, so I ran all the way back (which was a few minute run) to my initial trainer. It turns out that he indeed wanted me to do my first quest over again, as a test of my skills.

Moving Too Fast

Another problem occurred when I was going through the introductory quests. Strangely, during either the design or the localization of Rappelz, a character is allowed to level faster than the tutorial explains the game to the player. For example, when I was on my introductory quest, I achieved a level in only a few kills. However, by the time the tutorial advanced to the section where it actually explained how to spend the points that I earned, I had already figured it out on my own.

Leveling your character in his or her various skills is actually an entertaining part of the game..

You see, Rappelz works on a pseudo skill-based system, similar to the Talent Points in World of Warcraft but more intrinsic than a simple fine-tuning of your character. As you kill monsters, your character earns “Job Points” (JP) that can be used to advance particular skills or to move your character’s “Job Level” (JLvl) up even higher. It’s a fairly fun system to play around with, but it’s disappointing that I had to puzzle it out rather than simply having it quickly explained to me. If the developers wanted to improve anything in the game, they should take a serious look at the new player experience and try to sort out how to really help the player along.

Crawling Deeper Into the Cave

As you progress through the levels, it comes as no surprise that Rappelz is essentially another grind-based imported game. While the quests are fairly simple and easy to do, you’ll eventually want to strike off on your own and explore away from the safety of your quest progression. Once you’ve done that, you’ve entered the world of the grind.