Ragnarok Odyssey Ace is a third person action RPG set in a world inspired by Norse mythology. It is a revamped version of the original Ragnarok Odyssey but as I have not played it this review will be more about the overall package rather than what is new. Upon starting the game, we are tasked with building our own custom hero and choosing from one of 6 classes to play as. With that out of the way we are introduced into a mercenary band tasked with defending the last standing stronghold between humanity and vicious giants. As the newbie of the group it will be quite some time before we see these giants, instead we will be hunting down adorable animals for the opportunity to move up to bigger, badder targets.
When not on the field of battle we will be free to explore the fort which serves as a tiny hub-world where you can customize your character, accept quests and buy various items. There are fellow mercenaries stationed around the fort that you can interact with. Each character only has one or two short, uninteresting lines of text to speak so it is completely optional and you will not be missing out on anything if you decide to ignore everyone to stick to your hunting. Your room will be where you can change your clothes and weapons, as well as listen to music you’ve bought from stalls and later on this is where you will be able to change your class. The only other places of interest are the courtyard where the stores are located and both the tavern & command post to accept missions.
Both the Tavern and the Command Post have the same missions however the ones in the tavern are tailored to difficulty suited only towards multiplayer so you’ll have one whale of a time taking them on solo. The tavern is also where you can join and invite other players into your game but the community is completely dead, so unless you can get someone with a copy of the game to play with you, you won’t be playing multiplayer. Before accepting a mission, it is wise to stock up on potions to heal wounds and status effects as they can be devastating. Interestingly enough you can only carry three types of potions at any one time so reading up on the quest details may save you from accidentally taking a potion that prevents being frozen to a level located in the middle of a volcano.
Even if playing alone you can hire up to two mercenaries to accompany you on your travels, though they are mostly there to draw the attention of the enemies since they cannot competently fight the weakest of foes by themselves. You have one heavy & light attack, a dash button and one to jump. Sounds simple enough but you must really master the feel and flow of combat to stand a chance against the giant creatures you’ll be facing. Stamina is just as important as your health. It is used up by running, jumping and attacking. If you run out, you will have to wait a while for it to complete refill before you can do much of anything which can be a fatal mistake to make. Each class has their own special abilities that use your stamina though the Cleric and Swordmaster share one in common, the ability to block.
Each location you will be exploring is interconnected by small areas and there is little to no room to explore much. Pretty much every mission requires you to go in to destroy every creature in sight so after a while you don’t even look at what you need to complete the quest anymore. All the environments are gorgeous to look at which is a blessing considering how often you will be playing in the same area time and time again. Where the game really shines is in the sheer scale of bosses as well as the arenas they are found in. They are typically huge, giving you much room to maneuver around and flee from a rampaging beast. Most giants have multiple limbs in where you can attack them in, though sadly, other than one boss they are just to break off certain materials from them instead of affecting the fight such as wounding an arm or something similar.
There very rarely are significant framerate drops while fighting even the giants and their extremely flash move which is very impressive and often caused me to forget I was playing on a handheld. One of my favorite features when fighting a boss is that you suddenly gain the ability to repeatedly jump in the air until you reach massive heights and are able to smack it right in the face. It is obviously not the best of ideas to take a hit from a creature that weighs as much as a small mountain, more so while you are dozens of feet in the air. These situations are some of the most intense as you dash midair around it’s attacks and becomes a deadly dance between managing your stamina & taking any opening you can get.
It’s not all perfect however. For one the combat has this very annoying mechanic where an enemy charging up their attack will always be facing you as if guided by some unseen magnetic force that makes it near impossible to flank him. It feels quite cheap seeing an enemy in the squatting position to gather energy for an attack somehow sliding around to land his hit. Another issue is that there are no health bars so hacking away at a boss can feel like it takes an eternity. Mostly because it is, bosses can understandably take a bunch of hits as you smack them with a wooden staff but lacking that visible feedback to know how near death it is does make the fights feel laborious after some time. Your ace up the sleeve during a tough fight is your “dainsleif mode” which I will just call berserk from now on.
It is a very risky move to pull that has you glowing red in life eating energy but gives you great speed and infinite stamina as well as recovering some health the more you hurt your foes. Your health will rapidly decrease so taking a hit in this state can easily spell your doom but if you have the skills you can come back from the brink of death if you damage an enemy enough to restore your health significantly or even completely. Being left with no other choice but to risk it all by activating this mode is the most intense experience I have had gaming in quite some time and is an amazing mechanic that gives you more options during battle. As much as I enjoyed the combat, it can only carry the title so far. The game spreads it’s handful of environments out far too thin for its own good. There are only so many times you can see the same and conquer the same places before you get bored.
This problem multiplies towards the end of the game where the missions just throw wave after wave of enemies at you to defeat with a short time limit. You will also be taking on two of all the previously defeated bosses at the same time which would have been tolerable if they didn’t reuse bosses so much. It just tries to find ways to stretch out the game for as long as possible in the worst ways. This could have been made less frustrating if they had a decent crafting system but alas, the one here is mediocre. One of the main struggles you will be facing is figuring out just where in the world do you get the materials that you need. There are not even the tiniest hints to be found in-game so it’s best to have GameFaqs open and at the ready. More so it becomes pointless since every “chapter” of the story will grant you a new weapon that will not only likely be better then what you craft but can damage beasts that where formerly resistant to all your attacks.
The story certainly won’t be the one that pushes you forward to the end as all the characters are extremely uninteresting and rarely say anything of worthwhile the plot is as bare-bones as possible. Once again, that is nothing new to this genre but it somehow manages to a nuisance here due to the characters. Imagine having a group of “friends” that sit around all day, drinking and talking about how awesome they are while they refuse to call you by name because you haven’t proven yourself, despite being the only one actually doing anything. Moving on from that rant, after the terrible last chapter of the game, the Yggdrasil tree has a gate suddenly appear on it and that is where you can access the new randomly generated 400 level dungeon. Funnily enough this is when I started having some fun again. You are given randomly chosen objectives that yield rewards, every trek through it is different and there is some pretty awesome loot to be found.
The Yggdrasil tree is also a great way to test out classes. Be it Mage or Hunter (archer) you will still have to get in close and personal for your attacks to reach. You could probably spit further than the range your arrows can go and with the sub-par but manageable camera doesn’t make it the funnest of experiences. The only way to level up in this game is to complete a chapter which will then give you a slight boost to your health and stamina bars. Your main form of becoming a formidable warrior other than sheer skill is to combine cards. Cards are randomly dropped by every enemy which possess their attributes such as allowing you to attack with poison, buffing your defense or allowing you better movement while mid-air. You equip them by upgrading your costume enough to be able to withstand the power of the cards you want to combine and you can simply switch & match as you please. Quite a fun system and the only thing that made any of the loot exciting.
Ragnarok Odyssey Ace can be played on the PS TV for that big screen experience and it is cross-play compatible so you can play with a friend that has the PS3 version. Music is decent and there is extremely little voice acting to be found, all the story and conversations are via text. This game is one of both extremes. Sometimes moments of extreme boredom and others of extreme adrenaline. Unfortunately, the amount of boredom on offer really drags the entirety of it down. This title would have truly benefited from cutting down the filler and just offering them as extra quests instead of bombarding you with monotonous missions to the same area. While I certainly would not have finished this game if not for the fact that I planned on reviewing it, it cannot be denied that I did have plenty of fun the first half of the game. The 400 level procedurally generated post game dungeon is a good time waster as well but reaching that point is a pain. Ragnarok Odyssey Ace is a tough sell for a system with plenty of other games of the same genre but while it is occasionally boring it is not a bad game.
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