Rappelz is a free to play MMORPG developed by the Korean company, nFlavor, and published by Gala-Net Inc. In case you're wondering what the name means, it comes from the French word "rappeler," meaning "to summon." This word suitably fits the central theme of the game - you tame and summon pets to help you in combat. There are currently three races: the Deva, a race representing light and specializing in defensive and healing abilities, the Asura, an offensive race representing darkness and destruction, and the Gaia, an earthly race somewhere in between. This review will be based on Epic 4 and the current status of the game.
Gameplay: 5.5/10
Much like many other MMORPGs, a first timer player may find the game incredibly complex.
Leveling Up & Skills:
You gain experience by killing field and dungeon mobs, or by completing quests available from the NPCs. With each kill or quest completed, you also gain some JP (Job Points) that you can spend on your class's skills. Skills can be improved by leveling them up or by equipping skill cards. However, the chances of skill cards breaking and you losing everything are extremely high. This has been a huge turn off for many people. The end result you get for combining cards sometimes doesn't justify the risk factor in making them.
At first, it's extremely easy to level up and quests are abundant. The quests, however, are all the same, falling into one of three categories: kill X amount of a certain creature, collect X amount of a certain item, or deliver this item to a certain person. There's hardly any variation or originality, and you may find yourself waiting in frustration for a certain monster to spawn to complete your quest. Once you've reached higher levels (r3), quests become sparse and you may find yourself killing hundreds of mobs just to go up one level. At really high levels (r4 and r5), you may find yourself ready to quit to game. There's nothing to do at high levels but the endless grind. It takes forever to level up and hundreds of thousands of JP just to level up a skill.
Pet System:
The unique thing about Rappelz is its pet system. There are three basic pets sold at the NPC shops that can be easily gotten. However, many people want better and stronger pets. The way of obtaining a desired pet often leaves many players feeling bitter and angry. To obtain a pet, you must first find an empty pet card from a random drop. This can takes minutes of farming the same mob if you're lucky, or it can take hours, days, weeks, or even months. Finding an empty pet card is, unfortunately, the easy part. You must then try to tame your pet in order to acquire a tamed pet card for summoning. The tame rates are fairly low for non-NPC pets and rare pets are almost impossible to tame. If you fail the tame, the card breaks and you end with nothing. There goes all the time you spent farming.
Economy:
Starting early Epic 4, prices have been rising gradually. This can be attributed to rupee sellers flooding the economy with gold, and no proper money sinks to relieve the excess. Inflation got so bad that prices literally doubled overnight. Any new players to the game will find it impossible to buy items from player shops. The only way they can compete is if they find rare item drops to sell, or buy items from the cash shop using real money in exchange for stuff in-game.
User Base:
There are nice people and there are jerks. Due to the inflation, people have become opportunists and some have gotten extremely greedy. When taming an empty pet card, people usually rely on the services of pet classes because they have better chances for success. One must be careful, however, as there are scammers out there who will steal your pet card. In contrast, many honest tamers are unjustly accused by bitter players of scamming. Not everyone is like this and there are some really nice folks out there. You have to be careful of the type of people you associate with.
PvP/PK:
To describe PvP in one word: imbalanced. Some classes are clearly top tier and some stand no chance. If you're a pet class, you're probably one of the strongest class in-game. Having dual summoning and pet boosts/auras mean you'll dominate the battlefield. The Dark Magician class is arguably the lowest tier. They have high magic defense, but what's the point if most of the enemies and classes in the game use physical attacks?
Guild/Dungeon Party:
If you're bored of farming, join a guild or dungeon party. There are many types of guilds available, so just ask around. Some are power guilds recruiting only high levels, and some are fun guilds that goof around. Guilds can Time Attack dungeons and every weekend, guilds can fight each other for the ownership of dungeons. Aside from that, there doesn't seem to be much else guilds actually do together, which is a real shame.
