UP

Ragnarok Odyssey Ace

rating 7.5
Release Date: Apr 1st, 2013 USA
Genre: Action JRPG
Developer: XSEED
Review by: Luddite11

I'll just honest up front about this, I have never played Monster Hunter, and to my knowledge, Monster Hunter has never been on PS Vita (maybe Japan, but I'm not sure) so until the "original" comes out we have had various clones of the format of one tiny human using a weapon the size of a train car, fighting bosses the size of a football stadium.

The game starts out a very detailed character creation screen with your choice of the basic classes, like Hunter, Warrior, Mage, and then you are ushered into the story. It is now after the events of Ragnarok, and even though the Gods have been long gone, those pesky giants are still waging war on humanity with only a few humans with the skills and powers to stop them.

Ragnarok Odyssey Ace 02
Gigantic bosses VS tiny human char

Level Design:

Most missions in Ace boil down to a very well used equation: Your character goes to a location, kills a certain of monsters, or kill monsters to get a certain number of items in order to get the mission completed, and then the end of the chapter is always a giant boss with multiple weak points to break away for loot.

The combat system is very deep considering you only use the triangle and circle buttons to string together a good number of combos to help you in various situations like armored enemies or flying ones, however, this genre does fall into a simple equation, your character goes into an area, then proceed to beat the crap out of all the enemies until they turn into loot.

Ragnarok Odyssey Ace 03
Party Time

The game has added a nice system that can help customize your character in a number of events, every monster, including bosses, can drop a card that when equipped can boost your character in several ways: It can make you stronger, boost defense, add status effects to weapons, or boost agility to add you in battle.

But even though Ace does a nice job of changing things up by sending you to several different areas, and even though they recycle these areas, as you reach later chapters of the game, they manage to keep it fresh by peppering them with new monsters.

Ragnarok Odyssey Ace 04
Typical JRPG char design, cute girl with bunny headpiece :)

Ace is a tweaked, expansion-pack like improvement of the original Ragnarok Odyssey, and everything they added has made it all the better. The best addition was that of the A.I. Mercenary system. For a small fraction of the end reward cash, you are allowed 2 computer controlled helper monkeys to help you with missions, and you pick from any the available classes, so you can have a damage dealer, and then a cleric for healing. Another reason the mercs are helpful is that you are only are allotted three lives, but the mercs can die an infinite number of times, making this a boon for bosses, however, they are nothing but decoys and meat shields because the mercs are completely nerfed in damage output.

Also added was a brand new story and an accompanying dungeon that you can unlock after beating the original storyline. It is set inside a multi-tier tower dungeon and gives characters multiple new weapons, armor, cards, bosses, and a nice way to farm creatures for drops.

Overview:

This game has a beautiful soundtrack, excellent boss fights, and straightforward gameplay, but even with the online option, this is a game that should be played in moderation, because you could make this title a little stale, before you finish all the new stuff.


Overall score: 7.5 /10


By

Luddite11


June 3rd 2014

Luddite11



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