While a Korea-developed action MMORPG, Red Blood Online is apparently launching in Taiwan first with a Alpha test phase. Announced back in 2010, there were several awesome trailers over the past few years, seen in my previous posts. Honestly, the current Alpha version left me unimpressed.
Sorceress is the first class I played for about 30 minutes. Combat, as you can see in the footage below, is similar to TERA’s where movement isn’t allowed why attacking. I wasn’t really impressed, since my view of “action combat” actually consists of more fluid action. With that said, the movement animation is pretty damn weird for this character!
Fighter is the 2nd class I tried, and this gave me a much better experience, probably because of the need to jump straight in and face monsters. For all classes, there are 3 different skill trees to choose from, with neither being restricted. A fighter can focus on the damage tree, while adding a few skill points to the defensive tree as well. Not a really innovative feature, but it helps to customize and differentiate from other.
Red Blood Online disappoints with its graphics, UI design and art, certain parts of animation and also the lack of classes (there are 3 now, 1 more coming soon). With TERA going Free-to-Play worldwide and offering much better graphics and content, having just a randomize dungeon map system as the selling point isn’t going to make the cut in the long run. Being in the Alpha phase will allow some slack to be cut, but it is going to take a whole lot more to contest TERA.
