Rusty Hearts - First Impressions

Have another first impressions review for you.

This is the new Free to Play MMORPG from Perfect World. It's available now on Steamworks as open beta.

Me and Deagle put about 4 or 5 hours into it today and despite the general sour taste I have developed for free to play games I think that this one gets the thumbs up from me.

About the game:

It's a MMORPG - Meaning Massive Multiplayer Online with RPG elements. Rusty Hearts in particular seems heavily anime influcnced. You can go online and create a character on a server and then anybody else on that server will be online with you in a centralized town area.

From here you can chat and socialize and most importantly get your quests and form parties so that you can go into the dungeons.

Dungeons are instanced and load quickly, the party is from 1-4 players. They are made up of several sections that get harder as your progress. So say Area 1 is level 3-5, then area 2 may be level 6-9. To get access to the next area you need to beat the previous area and you can unlock 2 higher difficulties for each area as well. You start on Normal, but can unlock Hard, and Very Hard.

You get ranked on performance SSS is the highest rank and you must get a certain rank level to unlock the next area/difficulty.

Gameplay:
It has great graphics for a game especially Free to Play - They use cell shaded graphics aka Borderlands style, combat is live action where timing, position, and tactics all come into play. Its very much Devil May Cry style, infact the "style ranking" from DMC is here as well. So while playing I thought of the game as a Anime Multi Player Devil May Cry. For me personally thats a cool mix


Story:
It seems there actually is a big overall plot and lore you can explore, I was skipping most of it for the sake of time and recording (have some footage I will try to post up later of us playing) It starts off the game with spoken dialog and live action cutscense but the normal questing dialog and stuff is just text driven. Very traditional RPG feel to it.


Free to Play v.s. Pay to Win
One reason I hate F2P games is they often just lure you in with the gist of free to play and you find out later that your game is severely limited in some fashion if your not willing to fork up real money for something.

Be it playtime, items you need to be competitive, etc. So far I see none of that in this game. You can get a head start or be lazy by buying items but it seems the game is fully unlocked and anybody playing for free can get all the same items as paying persons can and its not a super major grind. So far at the point in the game we are at its questing and having fun and not a grind. The game is going to be repetitive though so do not get the two confused.

From start to end you will be entering a dungeon and taking on hordes of enemies and bosses with your combos and special attacks. So if your not a fan of monotonous gameplay like that then you probably shouldnt look for any RPG game .

Overall I am impressed and while I only planned to just check it out, I now plan to keep playing it. Its a great time sink and sort of reminds me of a game I used to love to death Phantasy Star Online, except its free and toned down a bit.


Summary
Pros:
Free to Play
Good Time Sink
Fun To Play
Good Graphics
Good Soundtrack

Cons:
F2P games may be more limited than full blown pay monthly titles
No character customization.

Last I will just hit on the largest "con" and that is that everybody must choose from one of the 4 characters (only 3 avl right now) so everybody looks the same. Its not like other MMO where you have a character creator. I know people will complain about it and so I will just touch on my feelings about it.

I personally do not mind it, because in traditional RPG games like say Final Fantasy you did not customize your character, you took the role of that character and played with them. I think Rusty Hearts is doing the same thing. Your not "creating yourself" your playing as one of these characters and taking on their story. I think this helps make the game more centric on the plot also I think it gives the game a revenue strategy.

If your serious about the game you can buy a costume or something and look different, but this is optional and gives you no benefit in game. I much prefer they sell something like this than some high level items and stuff that would ruin the game for me. Also you can find and craft cloths & costumes in game without spending money so you still are not forced to pay out. So naturally your character starts to look different as your progress into the game so a high level player will look quite different than a low level player. Just still not customization of characteristics like size/height/etc.

Overall like I said its a winner in my book and has given me a new hope for free to play games. I guess some of them are ok. I actually learned about 4 other games that look really good while researching this one so I may do some kind of play of those in the future.

 

Also we Steam users get a bonus gift ingame for playing or something.
Might be worth checking out.

 

First bit of gameplay footage I took:



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Very interesting, I will try it out!

 

Rusty Hearts - Official Unofficial Rusty Hearts Site - Free MMORPG - DotMMO.com

 

I tried it too. And I agree with all your pros and cons about the game, Viscious. My biggest concern with it though is the control scheme. It's supposedly optimized to play well in a gamepad, but unfortunately it sucks for mouse+keyboard. That's because the mouse isn't used for anything except menu navigation! Having both hands on the keyboard is very limiting to me and that's why I stopped playing it after trying out the first 2 dungeons.

It's a shame because the game seems cool. I like action-oriented MMOs like this (e.g. Vindictus), but using the mouse is very important to me. Doesn't feel like a PC game without it.

 

i tried this game out last night and it was surprisingly fun to play. gave me almost the same satisfaction of playing it as Phantasy star does (coming from me that means alot since i am a pso fan)

I agree that playing with a keyboard and mouse is kinda clunky and not as fun. I can say that its fully compatible with my razer onza with no configuration required just plug it in and play. i may play this more at some point (currently playin minecraft in single player trying to get used to it again)

i think rusty hearts is worth a try though.

 

I just hit lvl 20 with my Angela and went Scythe specialization.

I enjoy the game quite a bit. I made a big mistake crafting a lvl 20 scythe that I worked forever to get the mats for. I disassembled every weapon and armor I found and just barely had enough, then when I crafted it I spent all my gold upgrading it to +5.

10 minutes later when I did my scythe mastery quest I was given a lvl 20 scythe as a quest reward that is probably better than the one I crafted

Why would they do that... its like 40 dmg less but gives +magic dmg but tis +0 and my other is +5 so I think its better but now that I spent all my money no way I can upgrade it so I am just stuck with it. I prefer magic dmg too. Sad.

 

Baka is now laughing at Viking

 

I'm enjoying the game very much, currently level 17!

 

lvl 24.5 almost to 25 then I can start farming my epic gear.

 

Decided to try it out because of this thread. I have to say, for the short time I've played so far, I rather enjoyed it. I really like the art style too.

 

a buddy of mine got me to play it the other day. plays very well with a 360 controller.

 

This game didn't seem to work with my xbox 360 controller, although after it didn't work by just plugging it in, I didn't try very hard to fix it because I find the keyboard controls to work just fine. And yes, the controller does work with other games.

 

Rusty Farts!

 

Sounds like you did not go into the game options and tick the box that says "enable controller"

I hit 25 this morning, didnt have much time to play needed to get some sleep. Crafted my lvl 25 scythe from the blacksmith and upgraded it to +5, just before work I took a chance and upgraded it to +7 now it has a sweet green glow pulse to it.

So tempted to go higher as you start to get larger bonuses for higher upgrades (and new glow effects) but of course chance for failure is higher so going to keep it at +7 for now untill I can afford to fully upgrade it again should it fail.

 

Heh, I figured it was probably something simply like that. Thanks!

 

Temptation broke me. Tried for +8 and failed.

Then used my 100k for buying stuff off auction and failed 3x in a row to get back to +7

Now I just barely got back to +6 after farming a few times I am out of upgrade stones and have like 1000 gold to my name.

I want to get back to +7 lol it was a big bonus over +6 and then farm out 200k gold and try for +9 where I plan to leave it (for real)

 

I'm really digging this game. It's really fun, well done and looks great, especially for a free-to-play game. I also really like that it is very single player friendly, but also looks like it be tons of fun to play with some friends.