DISCLAIMER: This review covers both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita versions of the game.
Two years ago, Game Arts debuted its high-octane action-RPG, Ragnarok Odyssey, a quasi-successor to the decade old MMORPG, Ragnarok Online. In the hopes of mending the absence of a proven Monster Hunter-esque title on the PlayStation Vita, the Japanese developer showcased a satisfactory game that was met with relatively lukewarm reception. Now, the team has released an updated version of the base game for both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita: Ragnarok Odyssey ACE, a renewal that attempts to push past the common shortcomings of a standard expansion. Does ACE meet this lucrative goal, or does it fall short of asserting a bang for the buck?
If you’ve played the original, then ACE will feel right at home. The game’s premise is largely unchanged: engage in quests that will require you to eradicate large masses of monsters, collect materials and cards salvaged from said monsters, then use these materials to upgrade your equipment to better prepare yourself against bigger and badder monsters. The rinse and repeat cyclicality of the quest structure is still present, which may turn off newcomers taking a crack at the series. But if you’ve already logged hours upon hours of gameplay in Ragnarok Odyssey, then never fear, ACE allows you to import your Monster Cards and Weapon Cards. However, not all of your content will transfer – this includes cards received through the Near application. Veteran players will also have to start from the beginning of the campaign.
Rather than improving on the game’s original story, Game Arts focused on expanding the post-game narrative by providing a whole new realm of end-game content called the Tower of Yggdrasil. After acing the final chapter of the base story, you learn that a gaping hole has surfaced at the root of the legendary Nordic tree, Yggdrasil. Surely, many dangers await your arrival, but much like the original game, the expansion story treads shallow waters by also presenting itself through barricades of text that you can’t help but want to skip and trample over. The story accounting your voyage into the famed Yggdrasil is largely uninteresting, but thankfully the same cannot be said about the contents contained inside the end-game dungeon – at least not entirely.
In order to enter the Tower of Yggdrasil, you need “Yggdrasil Droplets.” These can be bought from a new in-game NPC, Norn, or by simply clearing quests in the dungeon itself. Droplets can also be used to purchase rare items through the Norn Exchange. Inside, you’ll tread a few hundred floors with a rest stop on every fifth floor called "The Power Room of Oblivion.” Here you can restock on items or switch to more suitable equipment. The most notable feature about the dungeon is how rewarding it can be for farming materials. This is accentuated through randomly generated trials called the “Ordeals of the Valkyries,” which are timed in-game challenges that will honor you with multiplied drop rates, attack, or defense boosts, among other various bestowments if successfully completed. To my severe disappointment, however, many of the dungeon’s enemies are recycled or re-skinned from the main campaign. Even with some of the new minions and bosses featured in the expansion, the monster palette still feels all too familiar and much too rehashed. This further overwhelms the repetitive nature of the original game – constantly going toe to toe with the same foes only reinforces the monotony.
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Fortunately, the game’s strength still lies in the gameplay, which is fast, fluid, and generally fun to master. This time around, the team has removed certain abilities to accommodate for several new job-specific powers called “ACE skills,” which you unlock by progressing through the main campaign. These skills do a fine job separating class roles more effectively, offering healing skills to Clerics or knockback and launch attacks to Hammersmiths, for example. Initiating these special skills requires the press of a button combination that is mapped to both the shoulder and face buttons. This can get very problematic when having to juggle with the lock-on feature, which feels broken and should be avoided all together, particularly during stages that are flooded with many enemies. In this respect, camera concerns are still present. This is especially true when things get tight and enemies crowd up against you, and the only real solution being that you button mash away or flee by jumping and dashing.
The game has not lost its love for monster hunting, because there sure is plenty of it. ACE does not abandon the card system for a traditional leveling progression, so repeatedly plowing through enemies to farm for materials and cards – which are equipped into armor slots and grants stat boosts, among other enhancements – is still very much the aim of the game. However, Game Arts has newly introduced “Halomonas” weapons, which render any other acquired weapon obsolete. These powerful weapons grow in strength by completing “Orders” sought out during quests. You can choose a branching path on the Halomonas tree then grow and customize your weapon as you see fit. You receive your first Halomonas weapon early in the game, which truthfully can be used to finish the main campaign and onward into post-game questing if you attend to it immediately. While much of the game’s original difficulty is alleviated because of this, it also enforces how pointless monster farming can be, principally concerning weapon drops that pale in comparison to Halomonas weapons.
For you multiplayer fanatics, online co-op feels much more class-based this time around, especially with the addition of ACE skills. Players fulfill their roles effortlessly with Clerics healing at will or with more offensive based classes tanking and luring enemies into submission. While the game can suffer lag spikes during moments of intense onscreen action, online multiplayer generally runs quite smoothly. That being said, this still feels like a pick-up-and-play title that you should experience with friends or online strangers. Later chapters can feel awfully monotonous and dull when soloed, but if for some reason you’re seeking offline help, ACE introduces Mercenary Helpers – a dozen AI companions available for the player to recruit. You can employ two mercenaries at a time to accompany you on your journey. Surely, they take a cut of your monetary earnings and they’re not particularly strong or reliable, but they do occupy the attention of elite minions and bosses that you’ll want off your back.
Visually, the game looks crisp and vivid on the compact PS Vita screen, sporting rich colors and lively cartoonish animations. The same cannot be said about the PlayStation 3 version, which does not impress with the same graphical impact that its portable counterpart expresses, but this is taking into account the software competition imposed on the console market. In that respect, both versions look and run identically. On the topic of accessibility between both platforms, ACE sports a nifty cross-save feature, but since the game is not cross-buy, it’s not particularly useful. The soundtrack covers a decent range of fantastical music, but its repetitiveness can tire you out, specifically during some of the longer boss fights. In any case, you can purchase music tracks from a merchant with in-game cash and select which song you want to have playing in the background.
The updates applied to ACE are fundamentally clear: additional quest lines, new weapons and skills, gameplay tweaks that improve accessibility, etc. However, the game does not stray away from its highly repetitive mission structure and many of the additions are just re-skinned nuances of old in-game assets. Nevertheless, newcomers to the series will be welcomed with plentiful hours of content. Ragnarok Odyssey ACE is more of the same – a lot more of the same – and the current assortment of new content and gameplay improvements may not be enough to warrant the steep $40 price tag, even for veteran aficionados of the cult action-RPG series.