Ever since RF Online PH went on a downward spiral due to massive hacks and exploits and the introduction of extremely bad players, we decided to make our leave. But RF online was the first local game we played, and that's saying a lot since we tried our best to stay away from local games just because international games have better community. Ever since RF Online PHbecame Free to Play and opened it's doors to the lowest form of players you can imagine, it has been bombarded with hacks and exploits. But we will not honor RF Online PH's current version, but rather it's younger version on which you have to Pay to Play.


RF Online PH is a PvP (player vs player) game wherein 3 factions go head to head with each other in a Realm vs Realm vs Realm scenario. These 3 factions fights every 7 hours to control the mines which produces "talics" that fortifies their equipment to make it stronger. Furthermore RF promotes more PvP by giving kill points to players, the higher the kill points the better the chance that a player can be selected as "Race Leader" to lead his/her brethren to victory. On later levels, players experience the harsh environment of RF, not only do they have to worry about killing monsters to level up, but the constant alertness to their surrounding for faction enemies adds more stress to the player. Having a limited supply on zones to level in, it's not surprising to find that every time you play RF, you'll end up fighting other factions rather than killing monsters. The other factor that makes RF a popular game is that it is one of the few games out there that successfully combined technology and magic.

Each faction in RF has their own "Race Specialty" which no other race possess and most of the time used in the battlefield to turn the tides of war. These factions that inhabit the Novus are:

Holy Alliance of Cora
These elf like beings specializes in controlling the essence of magic, their race specialty grants them different summons to help them in battle. This race are the least favorite ones in RF due to the fact that their the common element in most of the MMORPGs out there. They consider themselves as the "under dogs" in the early version on RF claiming that in the end, magic will rule above technology.





Bellato Federation
This race suffered from high gravity on their homeworld hence they appear "shorter" than the other 2 factions, but don't let their size fool you. Considered as the "Middle Race" they embrace both technology and magic, their race specialty is the ability to drive "MAUs" or Massive Armored Units, think of it as a huge robot with a little man inside. These MAUs are the pride and glory of the federation, the sight of it on the battlefield will make their enemies think twice before pushing forward.

These MAUs units have been in controversy on the early versions of RF. Players of these MAUs whines that the sight of a MAU makes players attack them in frenzy. I would just like to make a side note that these "MAUs" are considered TANK and must protected with soldiers/footmen. In military tactics, when do you see a TANK go solo? Of course when the enemy sights a big thing coming to kill them, they would focus their attention to it. The concept of military tactics applies in this game, it is based on a war torn world. It's just a shame that players prefer to make the MAU a one man killing machine instead of a tactical support vehicle. pffft whiners....

Accretian Empire
"Flesh is Weak" a popular tagline of the Accretian race, they have embraced technology fully thus infusing themselves with it making them a cybernetic race. These accretians pride themselves with their exclusive weapon, the dreaded Launchers. The accretian empire, having completely transformed themselves, has no access to any form of magic whatsoever. These mechanical warmachines have nothing but the gears on their backs. One of the things that the Accretians use in their arsenal is their feared "Siege Line" on which they mount themselves using their launcher, preventing movement but amplifying their damage. Forming this "Siege Line" requires cooperation with each other, but establishing a successful siege line on a tactical position has proven time and time again to be an almost impregnable wall of massacre.

Players tend to choose this race due to it's unique robot design, but having more players than the other factions wields a disadvantage. The accretian empire had and always will be bombarded with issues due to the fact that it houses more types of players than any of the other factions. If the other factions have a bunch of elite players, be sure that the accretian populace has twice as much. Which brings up the most childish mentality on gamers, Stereotyping, if one sees a hacker, they will cry out the whole race/faction is a hacker. This mentality of the players in RF PH drew us even further from playing more. Since the dawn of hacks, the Accretian race has been branded as "HACKretia" since it houses more players, it has more hackers. It's not like the race chooses it, and it's not like the other race don't have some hackers in them. They just want to blame something/someone for the the crap that's happening to the game.

Aside from the deteriorating community, the game itself is worth the time. The harsh PvP environment will always attract hardcore gamers. The concept is unbelievable and the graphics is one of it's best features. RF proved once that they can be a successful and clean game, maybe someday they will once again rise from this fall and continue as they were.

Recently Level Up! has released their newest MMORPG, RohanPH and Filipino gamers have been flocking to it ever since Closed Beta. RohanPH serves up some common and unique game features that has captured many Filipino gamers' attention, ranging from your basic human knight class to your very unique Dragon race known as "Dekans". RohanPH also has a "refining system" on which players can manipulate the stat requirements of the items to benefit their stat build, this is one of Rohan's features that makes it unique. Instead of basing stat builds to the requirements of their equipment, players can do the opposite, which in term gives Rohan's classes different "builds" that does not rely heavily on equipments.
















Now we know what Rohan has to offer, lets focus on what it FAILED to offer. To start things off, RohanPH's tagline: "Vengeance is always an option", you might think that this is a hardcore PvP (player vs player) game, but it's not. How can you say that a game is PvP based if there is a penalty on attacking other players in open space? Rohan has a built in system on which a player's damage is REDUCED to a certain percentage when attacking other players, aside from the player's defense, so there are TWO variables that is reducing a player's damage to each other. Some Rohan fanatics might argue that Rohan's "Assassination Mode" paves the way to a hardcore pvp system, it doesn't. Rohan's pvp feature "Assassination Mode" on which players name is hidden and killing other players without any penalty comes with 2 disadvantage, first you have to pay a large sum of in-game currency to change and go back to "Assassination Mode", second is you can not be invited to other parties. In other words, if you you randomly attack a player alone, chances are your mediocre damage due to the game's fixed reduction will barely scratch your victim's HP and most likely other players will gang up and kill you instead. If you ask me, Rohan is more like a "controlled" pvp environment instead of an open space hardcore pvp game, the only place you can really get some good action is in Township Battles (guild wars),other than that pvp in other places boils down to a bore, and believe me, I've played ample amounts of games that claims to be a "PvP" game, and Rohan isn't one of them.

Rohan also offers an ample amount of quest and a system that updates you to the location where you can start your quests. Although Rohan offers a ton of quests, majority of them are just repeats with a different or same reward. Quests taken from the human starting map is the same as the quest taken from other race's starting map, which means same monsters to kill, same xp reward but different item. This wouldn't be a problem if other race can't visit each others starting map, but they can, so imagine taking the same quest from 6 different maps, killing the same mob and completing 6 quests at the same time. Aside from recycled quests, some quests that sound simple enough to do requires you to run long distances then go back again. Distances from simple quests wouldn't be so much pain if the reward was worth it, but most of the time you can combine better weapons/equipments than the reward from quests.

Aside from the "PvP" system and quest system, one major flaw that drew me and Reema away from playing Rohan any further is the game's obvious favoritism towards the Dekans or "Dragon" race. Never have I played a game wherein almost all class skills are rolled into one without any consequences, usually when game developers do this, the race that has the power/skill of all races have a major weakness, this does NOT apply in Rohan. If you look at the skill tree of the "Dragons" they have everything the other races have to offer, high defense and high damage or fast attack speed (they can manipulate their weapon into either slow but painful, or fast but consistent) they can heal others or themselves, transform and they even have invisibility! This all-in-one race has the ability to sacrifice percentage of their Health, amplify it by a certain percent and deal it to the enemy! Even after sacrificing their Health for damage, they can heal themselves so it really doesn't matter because their ability to manipulate their Health and Mana makes them almost invulnerable in the hands of a pro-gamer. The Dekans might have benefited from the game's design but one race suffered from it, that race is the Dhan or "Assassins". These two races are the favorite ones in Rohan international because their skills are made to kill other players, so it would seem. These "Assassins" are supposed to be player killers, and their skills do prove it, the only problem is, majority of their skills are BUFFS! Never, and I mean NEVER have I played a game where the "Assassin" class has such a limited supply of offensive skills! Dhans have so many buffs that their mana pool can barely accomodate them without the help of mana potions. The lack of offensive skills and stun skills makes it even harder for an "Assassin" to kill someone, I mean the only way you can kill is to attack your enemy, with normal attacks, you just have to make your character attack an enemy and watch them die or run. If your enemy decides to fight, all you have to do is watch. There're no buttons to press because your skill are full of buffs and buffs can't damage your enemies, if they run, just watch your character chase them, because Dhans can't stun or root their enemies, buffs don't do that, do you get my point?! Also...remember the fixes percentage deduction when attacking other players? Let's just say Dhans specialize on LOW but fast damage, the only way you can deal massive damage is through critical damage, but that's random. So, low base damage + fixed game reduction + enemy armor defense...if you can't follow where I'm going with this then, good for you, haha!

To close things up, I would like to clear out that we haven't played RohanPH, but we played Rohan International even before we knew that there was going to be a RohanPH. All pictures used are our personal experience from Rohan International. You might notice the Dhan's armors are a bit low level, that's because I refuse to post pictures of our high level armors for the fact that my character looked like a gay ballet dancer.

I hope you enjoyed my first post at our blog, I plan to review unusual MMORPGs that failed to reach the lime light in my future posts, for now I will leave you with this funny pic of me and Reema way back in Rohan International.