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Ten Ton Hammer has been excited about style="font-style: italic;">Rusty Hearts
since our eyes first beheld the game href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rusty-hearts/E3/2011/preview">at
E3 2011. This upcoming
free-to-play MMORPG from Perfect World features tons of action in an
anime-inspired gothic setting, where players take on one of several
roles in an effort to destroy an ancient evil and his countless monster
hordes. The game is currently in beta and I’ve been fortunate
to get some kills (ok, lots of kills) under my monster-slaying belt.



Rusty
Hearts
really takes me back
to golden age of arcade games, where my buddies and I would spend hours
teaming up to play games such as style="font-style: italic;">Golden Axe,
Double
Dragon
, and style="font-style: italic;">Gauntlet.
Rusty
Hearts
is a MMORPG that
focuses in on action, not wasting your time scouring zones for
different types of plants or other lame stuff. You’re
supposed to be killing monsters, so get to it! This game is all about
the action, and you’ll get treated to more action than you
can handle.


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Killing some undead with style!

To begin, you choose one of three different characters, each with their
own back story and combat style (even though they are all close
combat). The three current characters are Frantz (the tormented
human-vampire hybrid), Angela (an apprentice witch), and Tude (a man
struggling to retain his humanity and not become a werewolf). Each
character uses different weapons, different types of armor, and has
different abilities as they level.



The basic premise of the game is that you gather quests in the town and
then enter one of the varied dungeons to fulfill those quests. The town
itself is broken into several sections and to gain access to the next
area, you need to fulfill the main storyline quests. Each section has
its own dungeon and each dungeon is broken into several different
dungeons from which you can choose to enter. For example: the canals
are broken into four different dungeons – Canals B3, Canals
B2, the Upper Plant, and the Lower Plant. Each dungeon has a
recommended level range associated with it. Each dungeon is filled with
hordes of monsters that you must battle, and you must kill all the
monsters in a room to advance further into the dungeon. In the final
room of the dungeon, you’ll fight some bad-ass looking boss
monster, plus more hordes of regular monsters. Once you’ve
defeated the boss, you’ll get a random pick of loot from
picking up various cards within the dungeon. After you’ve
completed the dungeon, you can go through it again at a higher
difficulty (if you choose), but with the chance of getting better loot.


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The first dungeon area has
four seperate dungeons for your monster slaying pleasure.

The combat itself is fast and furious. You have your basic attack (X)
and various special abilities that you gain as you level. If you stream
multiple hits and combos together, you get a higher style rating. At
the end of the dungeon, you get a score depending upon how many times
you were hit and how good your style was. (I rarely got an A rating.
What? Parachute pants are still stylish!) Combat is the core of the
game and it rocks. It’s been a long time since I’ve
had this much fun kicking the crap out of evil creatures. The various
special attacks look damn cool and you feel like you’re a
major bad-ass as you’re wiping the floor with baddies. The
monsters themselves are of differing types ranging from undead to fish
men to my favorites, little guys who walk around on stilts. As you kill
monsters, you get hit point and magic point buffs that replenish your
character.



Another interesting tidbit is that changing your weapon can alter your
special attacks. When I switched my Frantz character’s weapon
from a sword to an axe, the special attack where I lunged at my foes
turned into my throwing my axe at them and the axe then returning to my
hand. You’ll definitely want to check out the differences in
fighting styles depending upon which weapon you’re using.


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Skills and combos.

The art in Rusty
Hearts
is anime-style
European gothic with cel-shading. While the gothic atmosphere is
sufficiently brooding and melodramatic, the colors are very vibrant and
eye-catching. It’s a beautiful game to play, plus the
soundtrack is actually pretty good. From fighting themes to haunting
melodies, the music in the game helps immerse you into the world of style="font-style: italic;">Rusty Hearts.






An aspect of the game that struck me was the unfolding story told as
your progress, and the great deal of humor found within the
conversations you have with the NPCs in town. An amusing story arc was
you being forced to go through an anger management course due to an
anonymous complaint in how you were interacting with the townspeople.
Angela’s character is especially funny and delivers a lot of
biting lines.



While there are only three characters to choose from, you can
differentiate your looks from wearing costume pieces. You can get
costume pieces as rewards or you can get them through crafting or the
cash shop. The cash shop sells resurrection scrolls, costume pieces,
personal room items (for your player housing which is just a room),
pets, and other sundries. Pets and room items are not yet available at
this time.


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Somebody's getting angry!

Crafting is available in the game for those who wish to do so. There
are two kinds of crafting. The first is the simple kind where you can
drop a stone onto an item to give it a bonus. The second type is your
normal style crafting where you follow a recipe and combine various
ingredients that you loot from monsters or buy from vendors.



It’s hard for me to describe to you how much I’ve
enjoyed playing this game. After you get a quest, you’re only
30 seconds away from being in a dungeon killing monsters. You
won’t spend time running from one side of a zone to another.
You get your quest, you run to the dungeon entrance (taking about 20-30
seconds), you join a party if you wish or go in solo, and you then
enter the dungeon and choose which part of the dungeon you wish to do
and the difficulty. While you will go back to the same particular
dungeon three to four times at least, it doesn’t get stale
because you can change the difficulty and by the fact that you finish
the dungeon in six to ten minutes on the average.


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Getting some new duds at the
cash shop.

If you get tired of dungeon crawling, you can play some PvP. style="font-style: italic;">Rusty Hearts
has a quick and easy PvP system with different types ranging from last
man standing to team matches to kill the opposing team’s
leader. I heartily recommend it if you need a reminder of your
sloth-like reflexes. (Yes, I lost a lot in PvP.)



The game still has a few rough spots. The enemies are pretty easy to
kill at lower levels, so it’s not too challenging until you
up the difficulty quite a bit. Perfect World is also working on their
stamina system. Every time you enter a dungeon, you use some of your
stamina. When you run out, you can’t enter a dungeon or learn
skills. I haven’t had any issues with stamina, but if you
play for ten hours non-stop, you probably will. In their first href="http://rustyhearts.perfectworld.com/news/?p=297681">state
of the game letter, Perfect
World has acknowledged these issues and is working on them.


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PvP is quick and hard on your
dignity.

All in all, style="font-style: italic;">Rusty Hearts
is a blast. It’s a throwback style of game, but with all the
modern bells and whistles. If you crave dungeon crawling, monster
slaying, no-holds-barred constant combat, then this is the game for
you. The gameplay is deceptively simple, but has a nuanced complexity
to keep it from getting stale. The game is meant to be fun, quick, and
addictive and it hits the nail on the head for all three. I
can’t wait for the final version of the game to come out. If
you want to give the beta a try, then visit href="http://rustyhearts.perfectworld.com/">Perfect
World’s website to get
a beta key.


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

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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