still a mystery how a game with so much potential failed so miserably
there are 3 races to choose from:
Accrecians (acc): these are cyborgs and are waaaay overpowered in the Codemasters version. although accretians lack any spirit classes, they greatly make up for in the other classes. accretians have extremely high defence and high offence. Bellatio (bells): these are mini elf like creatures. they are a balanced race in both range, magic and melee type characters
Cora: this race resembles elves in character design. this class is supposed to have the highest attacking ability of all races and the lowest defence.
this game is dominantly player v player (PVP) based with next to nothing in terms of player v enemy (PVE) or Quests. every 8 hrs there is a PVP event called a Chip War (CW), the chip war lasts upto 3 hrs. in that time one race must obtain another races chip and take it to the ore mining core where an indigenous creature that guards the mining core. the ore, when processed, gives many rare items that then can be used to improve your chars equipment to give you the upper hand in PVP battles and PVE battles when you are levelling your character.
there are high level creatures that drop rare items also these are called Pit Bosses and a group of characters are required to kill one. to obtain the higher levels in this game players must travel to neutral areas, these areas have all 3 races levelling. obviously this has been done so to encourage PVP during levelling of your character.
guilds can be created and recently a system was placed for interracial guild v guild (GVG)
the graphics are very impressive, so long as you are using an nvidea Graphic card. Unfortunately there seems to be an error only present in the EU and US version with ATI graphic cards, when the settings are used to maximum the system crashes. also there are synchronisation issues and sometimes you may find yourself dead for no apparent reason.
the sound has bugs when playing for more then 2-3 hours. the enemy sounds effects seem to get mixed up.
OK that's what the game is supposed to do and it works when the population of this game is more then the odd 50-60 players (around the time I left it was more like 10-15 players present during the CW).
there is a major balance issue with this game, the accrecian race is ridiculously overpowered, and the cora are pathetic in defence. the only race that has any balance is the bellatio. OK if that's the case why don't codemasters fix it? simple they don't have the rights to. the publishers for Korean and Japanese RFO they can and do change the settings for their versions of the game. they change the settings based on race population, so if bells are few in population they increase the stats for them so they don't get overwhelmed, if the cora are too many in population their stats are reduced so they don't overly dominate. Codemasters, in their short sightedness or maybe plain laziness decided they didnt need/want the part that allowed tweaking of the race settings. because of this EU and US now have the race stat settings from Korea/Japan. the population over in Korea and Japan versions are:
accrecians: lowest population almost half of cora.
bells: more then acc but significantly less than cora
cora: their population is around 2:1; cora : other race.
to keep the balance both Japan and Korea increased the stats for both bells and especially accretians, whilst lowering the stats for cora.
compared to EU & US population:
Accretian: most population
bells: almost the same amount as accretians
cora: around 4:1 other race : cora
as you have realised due to cora being so low in population and weaker in stats and accretians being so high in stats this creates an imbalance in the game which has lead to its downfall. in PVP accretians easily slaughter other races, the only way to stop an acc is to have 2 other race to every accretian. But that is not possible due to poor population; just to add some perspective high elemental defence classes (such as rangers) can be killed by a single elemental attack from a launcher class accretian. the affect is not only in PVP but when levelling characters; bells and accretians can level in higher level areas sooner then cora due to the higher stats. this means that bells and acc obtain more higher level characters; which allows them to obtain rare items, further increasing their stats. this has an accumulative affect and simply destroys any balance in the game.
codemasters in their limited wisdom have decided not to fix this even though they are well aware of this imbalance. many cora and bell players make acc chars and just power level to high levels, further adding to the imbalance.
there are many other faults with this game, such as random experience loss. when an enemy kills your character you may find you have lost up to 15% of experience. this can be infuriating when it takes 1-2 hours just to get 1% of experience. mysterious item loss, sometimes, although it is rare, you may find an item has suddenly disappeared from your inventory or bank. if you inform CM about it they decline to retrieve it (i lost 2 high level pieces of armour and both times CM refused to replace even though they admitted it was a bug).
if you think you can trust the stats you are seeing for your character, guess again. Codemasters official standing is if you want to check which item gives u the best stats check it on an enemy, as the stats on your screen are probably all wrong due to translation errors. levelling your character initially it easy, however when reaching high levels the grind becomes almost unbearable, when reaching high levels don't be surprised to spend 2 hours trying to get 1% of experience.
this game has massive potential if executed properly, the publishers in the Korean and Japan versions have seen to its success and it is reflected in the popularity of this game in the respective countries. however codemasters have single-handedly destroyed this game and all its potential. overall this game looks very appealing however when actually playing it shows its true form, this game falls pathetically short of its hype, and needs serious attention if it has hopes of being a serious game. do not waste your time and money on this game.