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[Phil S.]

Hi all. This is my first LTTP topic, so I hope I do GAF proud!

In any event, I've been playing Ragnarok Odyssey ACE on the Vita for the past two months or so, and overall I'm enjoying my time. I've never touched the Ragnarok series in the past, so this is uncharted territory for me. However, I have played titles like Monster Hunter, which Ragnarok Odyssey ACE is definitely inspired by.

There are no levels to earn through experience points, or even experience points for that matter, now that I think of it. Instead, you defeat enemies and bosses and they drop various items that can be crafted into new weapons, armor, and headgear, the latter of which is purely cosmetic. These weapons and armor can be upgraded for a price (money and items) to extend power, defense, and upgrade how many cards you can equip to a given piece of armor.

Cards are the collectibles of the game, each representing a monster within Ragnarok Odyssey ACE. These can be equipped to armor as long as you have enough card slots available. Some cards take up 5 slots, 10 slots, 15 slots, etc of a limited amount of slots you have for your armor. Cards give boosts to attack, defense, HP, AP, and do other benefits like lessen knockback damage, add an element to your attacks, and so forth.

Ragnarok Odyssey ACE has multiple chapters for solo and multiplayer play. All of the solo quests can have you hire up to AI mercenaries to assist you in battle (i.e. let them run around taking damage and being otherwise bait for enemies). I've done some online play, but I haven't really needed much help on most quests that I couldn't just do by myself. I did, however, need assistance with some of the giants in the game. Funny story, one quest has you taking on a powerful giant before it can reach the fort's gate. It took me close to 15 minutes to take off enough damage to stop the giant's advance. When I went online and played with another owner of the game, that player took out the giant within 30 seconds!

I'm currently a Sword Master in the game. Unlike Monster Hunter, however, Ragnarok Odyssey ACE is much less harsher on the player, which is somewhat disappointing. There's less skill involved. Many times I could just stand still and mash on the attack button until an ordinary monster was defeated. There's no need to time attacks as you don't move as slowly as in Monster Hunter. Bosses require more finesse, but there's lots of openings where you can just button mash, which is sometimes fun if you just want something mindless but other times it's just tedious.

I like how Ragnarok Odyssey ACE has an enraged mode. I forget the name, but it, like many terms and names in the game, is based on Norse mythology and culture. It allows you to boost your attack for a limited amount of time and not be affected by enemy attacks. That said, your HP is constantly draining, but you can keep it up through consistently assaulting monsters and enemies. While being able to mindlessly hack at enemies is fun without being fazed by their attacks, it makes for a dangerous situation. Many bosses have attacks that would ordinarily hit you backward. With the rage mode activated, these attacks don't do that. Instead, you just stand there and get combo'd to death quite easily.

On the presentation side, I like the music a lot. Turns it out the majority of it was composed by Kumi Tanioka of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles fame, one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, so it was a pleasure to hear her new works in this game. Levels aren't that impressive, most of which are extremely linear in the latter half of the game.

I do find it funny how this entire kingdom seems to be counting on me and me only. The guy who gives out orders pretty much has me doing all of the work, with him and everyone else standing safely back at Fort Farthest, the hub of the game, doing absolutely nothing to help me.

Overall, I'm really liking what I'm playing of Ragnarok Odyssey ACE. It's also available on the PS3, but I wanted a version I could put in sleep mode and something portable. I'm looking for online friends to play with, if anyone is interested. My PSN is SuperPhillip.

Anyway, I conclude this opening post with some screenshots!

(Did I do okay on my first LTTP thread?)

 

[Faustek]

You did good

The game is in my backlist but due to the fact that I played the first I'm not really sure when I'll come around to play it.

 

[upandaway]

I got this a couple weeks ago, ordered from Amazon and they gave me the launch edition for some reason. What I've seen of it looks really fun. Based on your description, I'll love it.

 

[redcrayon]

I've just finished the SP mode, and agree with pretty much everything in the OP.

It does remind me of Monster Hunter, in that while the offline quests have the monsters with less HP, go online and you'll find players who have put the hours in to forge the best weapons and learn each boss's attack pattern, and they can kill things very quickly.

I did like the weapon upgrades- you can upgrade them ten times with money and materials, and often an older weapon that's been upgraded is better than a new one until you can find the required rare materials to increase it's power.

Armour doesn't have defensive properties, it's just a matter of expanding it's card slots, but it is interesting having it as almost entirely visual- online you see people with a wide variety of gear chosen for looks alone. I rock the grey Holy Avenger coat with a nice bobble hat to keep my ears warm

That reminds me of monster hunter too, in that often I'd see people wearing what they thought looked best or funniest if the quest wasn't much of a threat. The difference is that then we'd tackle something tough and everyone turns up looking similar!

 

[Butterfly Witch]

I've spent many hours on this game and I have to say that I quite enjoy it.

The single player experience can be quite good with some missions being more atypical than the average game and where it's not just all about killing everything that walks. There's also good monster variety and you have to learn monster attack patterns or risk getting cornered and be stomped on, specially with giants.

As the game opens up it offers a lot of customization through the card system and the weapon upgrades, which you can selectively tailor specific upgrades and stats therefore being able to create a weapon that better suits your personal play style.

The game is obviously a lot harder by yourself and you have both normal and hard mode depending on where you pick up your mission (tavern VS tower) and going online can be helpful, specially on the last few bosses that can be quite a pain in the ass to defeat.

It'll make you think for sure and you can also try out the various classes on a single character without having to reroll completely or start over from nothing, although that is an option.

It has a lot of Ragnarok elements such as the mobs, emoticons and general look and feel but don't expect a variation of RO, think more Phantasy Star Online style of game.

 

[Sora_N]

I wish I got this on sale now

 

[Garrett Hawke]

Is it true that the servers are region locked?

 

[Seraphis Cain]

I should like this game a lot more than I do. I mean, it's a grind-heavy PSO/Monster Hunter hybrid. It seems like it's MADE for me. But I...really don't like it that much at all. And I've played a lot of it. Like, I finished the main story and am up to the new ACE content. So I've put a good 40-50 hours into it. The combat lacks any sort of weight and feels unsatisfying. The difficulty isn't properly balanced for single-player. The camera when fighting giants is AWFUL. The AI for your partners is awful and they're more like meat shields than actual partners.

I think my biggest complaint is the difficulty when playing solo, though. Specifically Hrungnir. That fucking asshole ruins the game for me every time he shows up. You have to hit his shoulder weak points until they break to get rid of the shield around his head, which is his real weak point. But the shoulders are stupidly hard to reach without the camera making it impossible to see where you're aiming, and by the time you do enough damage to both of them to be able to hit his head, one respawns and you're right back to square one. This is a boss that was obviously designed for multiplayer and, again, not properly balanced for single-player. It's especially bad when he shows up as the boss at the end of Yggdrasil Tower and kills you, making that half hour-45 minutes you spent getting to the top completely pointless. Aaaaargh.

I dunno, maybe I'm just shit at the game. I WANT to love it, I really do. But I don't and that really sucks. =/

 

[forms]

I bought Ys, and then, when I tried Ragnarok, I found that I enjoyed that combat system way more. Oh well.

 

[Malio]

This is definitely a fun game, but once you reach a certain point most of your time with it will have to be online...it just becomes too difficult for solo. And finding folks who need the same things you do in the game, can be quite challenging. I've finished the main game and the first "Ace Quest" line, and I'm stuck as I can never find many people to play online with.

 

[ss_lemonade]

What's the difference between this and the previous Ragnarok Odyssey game? Those screenshots look nearly identical.

I remember buying the first one only because I knew you could unlock classic Rangarok Online BGM lol. So much nostalgia

 

[redcrayon]

I should like this game a lot more than I do. I mean, it's a grind-heavy PSO/Monster Hunter hybrid. It seems like it's MADE for me. But I...really don't like it that much at all. And I've played a lot of it. Like, I finished the main story and am up to the new ACE content. So I've put a good 40-50 hours into it. The combat lacks any sort of weight and feels unsatisfying. The difficulty isn't properly balanced for single-player. The camera when fighting giants is AWFUL. The AI for your partners is awful and they're more like meat shields than actual partners.

I think my biggest complaint is the difficulty when playing solo, though. Specifically Hrungnir. That fucking asshole ruins the game for me every time he shows up. You have to hit his shoulder weak points until they break to get rid of the shield around his head, which is his real weak point. But the shoulders are stupidly hard to reach without the camera making it impossible to see where you're aiming, and by the time you do enough damage to both of them to be able to hit his head, one respawns and you're right back to square one. This is a boss that was obviously designed for multiplayer and, again, not properly balanced for single-player. It's especially bad when he shows up as the boss at the end of Yggdrasil Tower and kills you, making that half hour-45 minutes you spent getting to the top completely pointless. Aaaaargh.

I dunno, maybe I'm just shit at the game. I WANT to love it, I really do. But I don't and that really sucks. =/

I also find SP Hrungnir easily the most annoying boss because of his regenerating shoulder spikes.

Once you've destroyed both, you have a short period of time where the head is vulnerable, but he also has a habit of then summoning a whirlwind, stopping you being able to take advantage of it. He also kept tediously doing that whenever I entered dainsleif mode, leaving me low on health and wasting my hard work.

The key is not to focus on one shoulder, as you need both to be broken and the first is counting down to its reappearance even while you are breaking the second. What I did was to count the damage I inflicted on one until I could reliably get it close to breaking without actually breaking, usually around 5k damage. Then I broke the other, dashed back and immediately broke the first, leaving me the widest possible window to pile damage on the head, preferably from behind.

Head damage isn't essential, it just makes killing him faster. The trick is not to get greedy, it's better to top up on health and restart the process, then go back to safely battering the spikes than be in front of his head when the spikes regenerate. Also, you can block the whirlwinds he throws at you.

You also need to keep some energy back as when he takes off, you need to be up in the air too!

I'm sure you've worked all that out already but thought I might add it for others! He's the only one that can take me more than a couple of tries to beat, even the SP end boss isn't as tough due to not requiring so much effort to actually inflict damage on him.

Agree that the camera is a bit rubbish- my biggest cause of death when fighting Hrungnir is the camera blocking my vision as he turns while I'm battering his shoulders, leaving me in front of his face and almost certain death. Somehow he has a turning circle of practically zero which seems silly for something so big.

There is something quite cool about fighting a giant four stories up in the air, but the spike regen time needs to be longer for SP as you can't rely on your helpers to be anything other than bait, whereas in multiplayer you can have several waiting to go full dainsleif mode on his head when the spikes are down.

It's still a good game for single player though, it's just that Hrungnir is a bit of a difficulty spike and one of the few creatures that requires tactics beyond getting in close on the flanks and going apeshit on them.

 

[EdwardTeach]

Pretty certain I got this through ps+? Not checked it out yet though.

 

[Seraphis Cain]

Pretty certain I got this through ps+? Not checked it out yet though.

That was the original, not ACE.

 

[Phil S.]

What's the difference between this and the previous Ragnarok Odyssey game? Those screenshots look nearly identical.

I remember buying the first one only because I knew you could unlock classic Rangarok Online BGM lol. So much nostalgia

I never played the original Ragnarok Odyssey, but I believe ACE has an exclusive, whole new Yggdrasil Tower dungeon. I'm unsure if anything else is new.