Ragnarok R Review

A massive disappointment

Rom Poul
Ampersand Media Lab
3 min readMay 12, 2017

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Ragnarok Online, often referred as RO, is a Korean MMORPG that was first released in 2002 and became wildly popular with 40 million players reported playing the game throughout the years. The game was popular enough to spawn its own anime series and sequels, plus a number of other games based on the license and branding.

Characters standing around in the classic MMORPG

One of the most unique features of Ragnarok MMORPG is the job system which levels up separately from the player level. The game features up to 50 jobs or classes in total, which you can specialise into two different specs and can also ‘rebirth’ your character to reset your leveling for greater levels of power at the end of the game.

The game is still fairly popular today with players still meeting regularly in game.

Fast forward to 2017, Ragnarok R was announced and teased for mobile, with hints that the game will be based on the classic MMORPG and will have the same job system in the game. As other mobile MMORPGs based on classic IPs like Lineage was wildly poplar and successful, the hype for Ragnarok R was huge. Everyone was excited and the early-bird registrations for the game reached maximum capacity within hours. The bonuses offered for registering early would reward players with massive rewards when the game is released in April.

Same boring side-scrolling pet collecting game.

However, when the game was released…. it turned out to be just another ‘Summoners War’ type Gatcha system game, where you are required to buy gems and in-game pets to play through each level. You choose which job your character has, then you just auto-play through each level to farm experience and items. In other words, it was a boring generic game with absolutely no relation to Ragnarok, except the name.

Huge amount of spam to make you buy in-game items

What followed was HUGE amount of negative feedback from Koreans and EXTREME disappointment. Using the famous Ragnarok IP, the expectations for the game were huge. Advertising the game as a MMORPG also increased expectations and players were waking up at 8am to download the game as soon as it appeared on the App Store or Google Play. However, it was the first time a game jumps to rank 1 position with a single star rating.

Unfortunately, a job system with a choice of 5 classes is the only resemblance of Ragnarok in the game

I generally live my life with low expectations and I have never been so disappointed in a game in my life. My recommendation is to skip this one.

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