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.

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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.

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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.


To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Rappelz Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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