Massively Mundane- Ragnarok DS Review

Eight years ago, I couldn’t open a browser without my muscle memory kicking in and sending me straight to Newgrounds.com to navigate their vast library of sophomoric flash cartoons depicting Sonic the Hedgehog performing unspeakably violent, and often lewd acts to Mario in a non-Olympic setting.  It was around this time that the entire site was papered with ads for Ragnarok Online, an anime inspired, free-to-play Korean MMORPG.  Nowadays, these types of ads are commonplace and are largely ignored due to the sheer number of similar titles littering what would seem to be a very niche market, but at the time, the idea seemed novel.  After almost a decade, Ragnarok has pulled in millions of players, and earned its permanent place in the MMO space, sporting a sequel, an anime spin-off, and now a game for the Nintendo DS.

Ragnarok DS (or “Ragnarok: Ragnarok DS,” as it is written on the box) attempts to take the sprite-based Massively Multiplayer Online RPG off of your computer screen and convert it to a story-driven Japanese-style RPG, custom tailored to the DS.  You take control of a young adventurer named Ales as he sets off to become a real adventurer, like his father.  Only moments after his opening monologue, Ales stumbles across a girl in the woods named Sierra: “don’t tell me you have amnesia!” he exclaims, setting the tone and keying the player into the fact that they are in store for yet another installment of Amnesiac Princess Theater.  The game certainly dodges any chance it would have for an originality award, but I suppose it deserves some respect for being up front about it.  By the time Sierra agrees to join Ales on his quest to be the greatest adventurer in the world for no reason other than because he woke her up from a nap, one has resigned to the fact that this will not be the game that catches the attention of the Peabody Awards Committee.

The nuts-and-bolts that make up Ragnarok DS are very contradictory; it seems like everything that the game does well is balanced out by something poor, to make certain that the experience remains vanilla throughout.  The environmental textures and character sprites are very colorful and nicely drawn; however, in order to enjoy them, you need to be zoomed to the maximum level, which only allows you to see your character and anything within arms’ reach.  If you zoom out enough to see what you are doing, even by just a little bit, the game becomes a pixelated mash of jagged blobs.  The battle system is hopelessly adhered its MMORPG pratfalls: Basic attacks are performed by selecting an enemy and waiting for your character to exchange blows until the enemy dies or you need to run away to heal.  You can break up the monotony of watching two-frame animations in a loop by activating special abilities, which require you to use the DS stylus to draw lines or circles, however, until you are several hours into the game, none of these abilities will cause any more damage than your standard attack, so get used to watching your soaps while waiting for bad guys to keel over.

It isn’t all bad though; the game is relatively responsive, and the developers had the good sense to allow the player to move using the D-Pad or the stylus, so your hand rarely needs to obstruct your view.  Although the animations are extremely basic, the game never slows down, even when there are mobs of enemies on the screen.  Ragnarok DS also offers a myriad of character customization possibilities.  Each time a character levels up, they are given a set number of status points and skill points that can be used to upgrade Ales and Company any way you wish, and if you find a particular weapon that you enjoy, you can have it upgraded at the shops in town as well.  There is a multiplayer mode that allows the player to team up with 2 buddies wirelessly to conquer a randomly generated dungeon, made up of perfectly square rooms.  It’s not terribly exciting, but the option is available if you ever find yourself in the back seat of a minivan with 2 other kids, 3 DS units and 3 copies of the game.