Is Revelation Online Worth Playing?

Revelation Online is an mmorpg from China. Ever since it was released, it gained popularity, not just in China but worldwide, and the developer, NetEase, got a huge amount of requests from many mmorpg lovers to release Revelation Online in the west.

It was rumored that Revelation is sure to top any upcoming mmorpg in 2017, but did it live up to expectations? We can't say if Revelation Online is going to be top mmorpg by the end of the year, but this review should give you some insight on what to expect from it.

Story

In the world of Nuanor there is a war going on, the fight between Demons and Demonslayers. Will evil prevail or will order be restored? It’s up to you to decide, and the fate of Nuanor is in your hands.
Revelation’s story starts with our protagonist going on a village sea festival. The player works for Aria – a short tempered girl, but kind-hearted with lots of fighting spirit. The protagonist is late for the sea festival, so they have to make it up to Aria. They do this by helping with preparations in their village, named Enthul.
In the meantime, young and enthusiastic Demonslayer Akuta comes from the ship and meets the protagonist. They make friends but while they were busy Darkscale demons show up, and together they manage to hold the demons back.
After the battle, they find a mysterious man controlling an enormous creature and they try to fight it. Protagonist almost dies, but some mystical power saves him and grants him immense power and with that power they were able to fight demons off, for now at least. That’s where the journey begins, the player’s road to greatness and power.

Cinematics

Some of the cinematics in Revelation Online feature a unique experience for an mmorpg. They have quick-time events, like pressing keys in order to dodge, bring out the wings, etc. Regardless of audio in them not being translated, they make a movie-like ambient, with flashy effects and catchy music.

Adventure

Revelation offers many adventuring aspects, from casual exploring to raiding a dungeon. There are quite a few dungeons that are very detailed. There are also open world bosses that everyone can fight together for various loot. Almost every part of world has gorgeous graphical details and offers lots of beautiful landscapes to explore, especially the hidden areas that are otherwise unreachable without wings.
The thing that caught my attention the most in my adventure is the ability to have relationships with other players. This game has unique system of relationship, where you can make friends, lovers or enemies. Relationships make a big part of the experience, be it having ceremony with  a beloved one or provoking a battle against enemies.

The world can be explored in many ways, from riding a horse to flying with your own wings.

Quests

The Quest system in Revelation Online brings nothing outside the box, it’s a classic mmorpg system – Get a quest from the quest giver, kill this amount of that mobs and then go back to quest giver, it’s really generic. What I found funny about this system is that they added optional auto pathfinding for quests so you don’t have to walk to quest locations, like it’s not meant to explore the area, but that feature can come in handy because most of quests are just go from this location to that location and they get really repetitive.

World

The Map in Revelation Online feels quite a bit smaller than those of other mmorpgs, but it offers some hidden areas for exploration and there’s also pathways that lead to little out of the way shrines and such that are very picturesque. The World’s graphic look vibrant and very detailed with lots of decorations, but there are quite a few low resolution textures used that ruin the world’s immersion. Overall, the world is well-made but not refined to look great.

The vast world of Revelation Online is filled with beautiful areas, such as shrines, panoramic meadows full of flowers and gorgeous mountains full of trees.

Combat

The Combat system in Revelation Online is very traditional, it isn’t as fast paced as in other mmorpgs, which gives time for a more strategic playstyle. The part of combat I didn’t like is that it makes the return of trinity roles in PvE – you put tanks in front of bosses, damage dealers and healers in back, and everyone just does their skill rotations and that makes it really dull for me. On the other hand, fluid animations make combat more interesting by a ton, they are rather unique and flashy but some of them are pretty long and lock you in one place, but it’s worth the cool pose right?

Sound

The sound effects are vivid and refreshing, especially in combat. The music adds a layer of depth of the game. Music in-game is simple in a sense that it doesn’t annoy you and it’s relaxing. On the other hand dialogues aren’t voiced, instead we get just a text box of NPC’s ‘talking’ to us, not so immersive in my opinion.

Characters

NPCs in Revelation Online neither intrigued me nor were any of the characters memorable. It feels like they are there just because developers didn’t want to make the game feel empty. Gameplay is pretty generic as the Protagonist. You are on the way to achieve power, how great. Same goes for enemies, they don’t bring anything exciting to adventure.

Graphics

Graphics are gorgeous, from sparks made by blades in a duel to enormous amounts of breathtaking landscapes. All the effects used really add a graphical layer of beauty, like in sprinting or air dashing. The depth in customization of characters is a great add-on to breathtaking world’s graphics.

The world offers many breathtaking views around every corner.

Price

Revelation Online is free to play, although many consider it to have a “pay to win” element, since players can buy powerful items from the in game shop, paid with real currency. This greatly enhances gear, but there is also a way to grind those items, although very hard and time consuming, some players may find that way better than to spend money.

Final score

As a final verdict, I would give Revelation Online a score of 6 out of 10, while it has a really beautiful world, with amazingly fluid animations, be it combat or flying,  it is lackluster in its sense of story, characters aren’t intriguing, you don’t have a real point of following it, and another huge turn off is the quest system, it’s really fast to level up, really generic and with repetitive quests. Also a huge disappointment is that the storyline quests can only be done solo, for instance if you are in a party, you are still forced to go solo in dungeon.
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