Too much of a grind, not much variation and mainly just damn boring
So, to start off, in a nutshell, RF online is about the collision wars going on between 3 factions over resources within the world the game is set in. You start off by choosing which faction you'd like to be apart of; The Bellato Union, The Holy Alliance Cora and The Accretia Empire being the choices, and then you select your desired subclass. Here, the game really doesn't differ from most other Online RPG games, giving you the class choices: A warrior (self explanatory), A ranger (ranged melee class) A spiritualist (basically a cross between a priest and a mage) and the Specialist class (this being a hybrid of all the classes combined). There's not too much variation in terms of the looks you can choose for you character, so expect to be running into other versions of yourself early on within the game.
Once the game actually starts, you run through a rather basic and somewhat pointless tutorial. I'm obviously going to be slightly biased on this point, as I'm a casual MMORPG player so I pretty much know the basics anyway. For new players: OK, it will suffice to show you how to play the game, but it drags on for those who want to just jump in and play. Thankfully, however, there is the option to skip the tutorial and get into the main game.
Depending on your chosen faction, you will start off within a different looking zone to most others. After a basic dialogue box which sets you off on your first quest, with a weapon of choice, you're then free to start setting up your games interface. You have to manually drag and drop your spells/moves onto the bar provided, which is kind of annoying but nothing major. The look of the interface itself isn't that bad but it would be nice to be able to set some kind of scale to it without effecting the resolution of the entire game. Overall the games interface and windows, again, don't differ that much from the setup of most other MMORPGs nowadays, so there's not much to say on this note. The control scheme to couple with the games interface isn't exactly amazing though. You cannot assign new keys to your hotbar, and to enable you to use the number buttons for your spells and actions, you are required to manually press a button every time you go in game. The same goes for movement; point and click is the movement scheme here, although you can use the WSAD controls if you wish, although, again, you must press a button upon starting the game to enable you to do this.
With your quest lined up and with your new shiny weapon, you go to your location, which is nicely pointed out to you on the mini ma.... oh wait, no it isn't. I'll point this out now: The game does nothing for you. Everything has to be done manually. You have to wander around a world you're not even vaguely familiar with trying to find the creatures you have to kill. And in terms of questing (for the amount of time I played this game) this is all i did. Killing creatures. Finally, after finishing my first quest, I'd progressed to level 2. I was there expecting another quest to present itself. It didn't. So, I thought of the next best thing: Quest NPCs. Are there any? No. The only way I could see to progress in this game at this stage, was to grind it out. So I did, till level 3 when, finally, another quest was available to me. Again, I had to kill some more creatures, only this time it was different. This time, the creatures I had to kill were far too hard for me; possibly 4+ levels above me. Back to grinding I guess. Most people say that the game starts when you hit level 20. But to get to level 20, you pretty much need to grind it out, and considering that you need to earn more experience per level, this can get extremely tedious indeed.
The in game graphics didn't hinder my experience, but they didn't improve it either. They were sort of dated and had a very Lineage II like feel to them. The scenery was very bland and minimalistic, least to say it was repetative. If the developers had made the world feel more epic, instead of uninspired, then they probably would have scored higher.
The games sound is not that bad considering the other aspects of the game didn't live up to expectation. The opening music is fairly cheesy, and sounds like it belongs in an anime programme on kids TV, but the in game music isn't too bad albeit repetitive.
All in all, this game certainly didn't impress and I was even more disappointed with it as I'd been tracking it here on Gamespot since it was first announced. I don't think enough time and effort was mulled into the games design, nor do I think the developers have played other MMORPGs on the market. I genuinely wish I could have played the game more to see what higher level gameplay offered and also to take a look at what the PVP action is like, but in order to do that you have to play a game which was way too much of a grind, a game that didn't have much variation and a game that was mainly just damn boring.