Risk Your Life 2: Path of the Emperor

Risk Your Life : Path of the Emperor
Closed Beta Review
In a short time the rest of the world will have the opportunity to experience what I have been for the past 7 days or so. Risk Your Life, North American Edition is undergoing an overhaul of sorts, and an expansion at the same time. For anyone that played RyL 1 as we’ll call it for now will be 90% familiar with the game controls, the graphics, and the style of gameplay to expect. The 10% that you aren’t going to recognize is what I’m going to focus on.

The game itself has not changed much in all honesty. Its concept is still the same as the base. Some will appreciate this, others will complain about it. I found it inviting and easy to get going from start up because of its familiarity from the previous game. The lack of Taiwanese to English translation was the only real barrier I encountered in the closed beta. There were some interesting and often times badly timed bugs, but for the most part I played the game without many problems.

On to the meat of the game, here’s my recommended system requirements.

Processor: Anything Pentium 3 1Ghz or above should be just fine. I played on a 800Mhz P3 and many other test systems to see what if any was a predominant difference. In all it didn’t seem to be that heavily dependant upon CPU.

Memory: 512MB minimum. Some will say 256 is fine, but on one system I had 256MB and I would get consistent buffer flush errors, and sometimes it would crash the game, other times it would not. This isn’t an ultimatum of sorts, guys have said if you bump your virtual memory settings up higher, it solves this problem. I personally dislike using a hard drive for system memory, and as such I’m recommending 512MB because it will give you the most enjoyable and fluid gameplay.

Video Card: Depending on your appreciation for graphics, and resolution, I played on a GF2 MX, a GF2 GTS 32MB, all the way up to a Radeon 9800. Obviously the higher the better, but I’d say anything that has the power of a GF4 MX or higher with 64MB of memory on it will be just fine for 800 X 600 X 32 bit gameplay. If you want higher resolutions, you’re going to need more power on your video card. But again, I played on all kinds of systems in order to give the most honest opinion and experiences with the game. The game doesn’t look terribly bad in 16 bit either, more than anything where it seems to matter is the ground and world textures. The monster texturing doesn’t change much for the most part, you’re too busy killing it to admire how cute it looks in the end really.

Resolution that is optimum: I played at 800 x 600, 1024 x 768 and 1600 x 1200. 1024 x 768 felt best to me, 1600 x 1200 while nice, and smooth on my Radeon 9800, I had a complicated time easily targeting enemies and monsters because it was almost too small. If I had to pick a perfect resolution, 1024 x 768 would be it (this is on a 19” Sony by the way, not a small screen).

On with the story shall we...

RyL for those that are unfamiliar with the game is a MMORPG based on the war of the Humans and the Ak’Kan (also commonly called the demons). In the original game it was just that, the Humans vs the Ak’Kan. The game is primarily focused on PvP. With the addition of an arena to flex your muscles and show your sides ability, it ends up being a very solid style of gameplay.

The gameplay is very wide open, you can solo yourself through the first 30 levels of the game without much trouble, after that you’re going to want to make an effort to consistently find a party of at least 1-2 others to help bolster your attack and defense abilities. The varying classes of characters all lend something to each other. A Warrior can do tremendous amounts of damage, but they also take a pounding in the beginning because of weak armors, they require the aid of a priest or a cleric or both, later in the game. So its beneficial to get used to what classes in the game are good for each other, and make friends early on with someone of a “supporting class” to level together.

Path of the Emperor is a change from the past. In the past as noted above it was Humans vs Ak’Kan. Now its Humans and Ak’Kan together in a union of sorts. The PvP element from the previous game comes into play later in the game more so than earlier. You now have to join a guild to fight other guilds. Once you are established as a guild, you can build guild forts, and command your legion of guild mates to help protect, and attack other guild forts, and other guilds.

Whats New?

There really is a lot of new potential in the game, and being this is the first Closed Beta, I imagine there is much much more to come to please the community. I will give Planetwide Games credit for their efforts. They are porting what is essentially a Taiwanese, and Malyasian based game to an English platform. That takes a lot of multilingual persons, and a lot of patience from the community. So far, they have been doing a wonderful job, and the Game Masters and Head Game Masters are constantly looking for input from the community to better shape the gameplay for the community.

Crafting

Yes, we all know that the blacksmith upgrades armors, and talks a pretty good story sometimes also. But he now has a new ability that is what I consider the single best element of RYL:Path of the Emperor. Weapons, and armor, and items are no longer stats based completely, they all have a grade rating. From “F” (the worst and generally basic stats) to A being the best and essentially a godlike item. Well, say for example you have a D+ Axe. If during your hunting and killing of monsters you acquire another axe of the same type, with really good stats, that garners a D++++ rating. Well you look it over, and its lacking 1 element, and that element exists on the weapon you are currently wielding. You can now transfer elements from one item to the next. This sacrificial process leads to what I would consider an almost endless potential for equipment. It takes the game and the items possession out of the players hands. No longer is there a few godly items, now you can upgrade to the point where you yourself can have godly items, or at least pretty darn good ones.

I tried this process on a Sorceress staff, and essentially I started with an Item with a D ++ rating, I ended up with an item of D +++++ rating. The stats and some of their uses I was not completely sure of their effects. Electricity damage was one that I couldn’t quite comprehend, but if I had to guess, it had to do with extra damage, because in RyL 1 you could craft lightning potions and do extra damage when using them, and based on that, I draw my conclusion as such.

The item upgrade process has changed from my understanding of it. It is no longer the +1 - +9 from the old game. Its now +1 - + 5 is stats upgrades only. In the previous game if you failed, you went back to +0. Now if you fail, you only lose a single level. Your +5 item will not be a +0, it will be a +4 upon failure. Upgrades +6 through +10 give sockets to items. That’s the good news. The bad news is, each upgrade level takes 10 silvin, 10 mitheral, or 10 iternium. No longer the 3/6/9 upgrade process from the past, so save those metals for the long haul, you’re going to need them when you find a good enough armor or item good enough to put through the upgrade process.

The Stores, and Black Markets

Shopping, it's something we all enjoy doing and sometimes have to do. Well now you’re going to see some differences in the shops also. No longer do you just buy the base item and live with it. The shops are like a mini-black market. From the Armor and Weapons merchants you can buy F through D grade items. Depending upon what that shop owner has for sale. If you purchase the item showing, you will see it immediately generates a new item of the same type, with differing stats. This can lead to a euphoria of purchasing because you buy an item and the next one in line has better stats, so you buy that one too. Money can be consumed at incredibly high rates this way, because combined with the aforementioned sacrificial upgrade process, you can really get involved in crafting your own items.

The Black Market is pretty much unchanged, you still gamble your money away, but in the time I tried, I was able to get a “C” grade robe, compared to shop owners that’s a huge jump, and later in the game, I could take on the process of upgrading it or sacrificing other items into it.

Items I saw missing from the stores were, teleport scrolls. Granted I did not have the time nor ability to get very deep into the game, the questing aspect of the game I largely ignored in favor of trying to take in most of the changes in the game as possible. Perhaps if I quested more, I would have attained the ability to purchase portal scrolls. Regardless that was the only item lacking that I noticed.
In RYL: Path of the Emperor, the forts acts as a save point to alleviate walking needs. You use these scrolls whenever you want to move to any of the "saved" points/forts.

Skills, their changes and what it means for the game

If you played RyL 1 you know that skill upgrades were plentiful for levels 1 and 2, you could purchase them at any trainer for your associated class. That aspect has not changed, but what has is the following.
You can now buy level 3 and level 4 books at those trainers. This will be removed on next patch.
You can now buy level 3 and level 4 books at those trainers. This sounds great on the surface right? Till you realize that book usage is now on a 10/20/30 scale. Level 1 books require more in the respected category than they did previously. This is not to be a turn off, considering the maximum level is supposedly 150. Consider it like this, RyL: Path of the Emperor level 50 = RyL 1 lvl 30. So whatever skills you could acquire and use at level 30 in the previous, are pretty much in line with what a level 50 would use now.
In my experiences, I played a sorceress, because it was the class rumored to have the most dramatic changes to it. This was true in some aspect I suppose, but not to the degree that some players panicked about. The sorceress is still a dominant PvM class, its not nor was it every really a dominant PvP class. Its damage ratio far exceeds that of other classes. In the time it takes a melee guy to dish out 150-200 damage a sorc can rip off 3-4 spells and have a monster dead. That hasn’t changed. But I am level 33 currently, and I have fire at a 2-3 level, ice at a 2-3 level and death call at a 2-2 level. The INT required for level 3 is approximately 150-160 INT, and I am not quite there just yet.

The sorceress was destroyed on this basis alone, no more CON items for sorc’s, at all, period. Most items have a class restriction, and for sorc’s they are limited to INT and DEX based items. No more shields for sorc’s, no more reason to pump CON to bolster your life. You’re going to get low HP, and high MP, and you’re going to be a sitting duck for a melee character with any skill now.

Does that mean the sorc has been put out of business? Of course not. We still farm items faster than any other class, and because of that, our job may now be more essential than ever *grin*.

Don’t think this restriction just affects sorceress though. There are item and class restrictions on other items too. So the hybrid characters that some people took up in RyL 1, are pretty much a dead cause now. Experimentation with class types and variance of those classes is pretty much a wash.

Items Galore

aBecause of the F to A grading scale, you’re going to see an almost endless supply of items and item types. There’s more stats per item, there’s more different types of stat combinations, and there’s an even larger variance in item ratings. Considering you can have a D grade sword and an A grade sword of the same type, and everything in between. The ability for someone to catalog all the potential item ratings and what their associated stats would be is probably as close to impossible as one could imagine. This lets every player enjoy the game in my opinion. It leaves the players abilities and skills up to the player, not to another player that found 30 of that item and is selling them at 1000% of what they should be worth in essence.

The world that we live in, is not the same world we once knew

I only explored the first island. It's vast, it's expansive, and it's ALL NEW. New monsters, new mini-bosses, and some huge monsters. By huge I mean they take up the entire screen, and my lowly sorceress did about 40 damage with a spell that did 300-500 to other characters. I can only assume the drops from a monster that size would be good, and excessive in quantity.

From the cute mushroom world (I had this urge to grow a tail and bounce on the mushrooms while killing the monsters) to the various encampments of gavials and others the world is completely new on the first island. It's not just that aspect though. Cause you can throw together some new area’s. but it doesn’t feel right. In the first game, I sometimes questioned why a character was in a large concentration in certain spots, it just seemed very misplaced and somewhat lacking in thought. This time around, that is so far from the case. When you enter the Gavial swamp, with the Gavial fighters and their associated brethren, you feel immersed in the swamp. It feels more original, and much more inviting to the gamer. The ambience of each area lends itself to the monsters in that area. It doesn’t feel so thrown together. I liked and welcomed this change with open arms. It made the game feel more true, and more complete in its presentation.

Despite all that has changed, one thing has not changed

The fun factor of the game is still there. Leveling is nowhere near what it was in RyL 1, you don’t have to grind for 2-3 hours to get a level in the 30’s. I was gaining levels every 5-10 minutes in the 30’s. It's a definite change.
The XP in the closed beta is boosted 120% over normal, but leveling is still assumed to be quicker.
It's going to get harder in the 70-90 range when it's equivalent to 40-60 in RyL 1. But I have been told it's still nowhere near as hard. In a group you will level in a reasonable amount of time.

The Humans vs. Ak’Kan war will rage on. Sure we can now party with each other. But that doesn’t mean you still can’t run through the enemy with your sword a blazing and your war cry active. It will feel foreign to have an Ak’Kan stand beside me and me not have the urge to kill him out of instinct, but I’m sure in due time, that won’t be a problem either way. Because once you join a guild, you leave the peace party and you’re as good as a deer on the first day of deer season. 10,000 people looking to kill you, and you left to guard a fort with nothing but your guts, and your guilds glory on the line.

In Closing, my final thoughts

All in all I give the game a 4 out of 5. It's not perfect, it's far from it as I viewed it in Closed Beta and the bug list grew larger every day from others accounts of the game. But that does not fault the creator. They are putting large amounts of time, and effort into making it right. I don’t think they will fail in this aspect because they have the gamers for input and guidance. This game is unlike others I played, I never had the chance to party with the head developer, or one of the head Game Masters. I never ran alongside them as they treated me with respect and admiration for my playing their game. The staff at Planetwide Games, and their volunteer staff is top notch and deserve a pat on the back for the effort they are putting into the game.

I think once the game is ready for Pay to Play, it will be polished, and have a 95% complete feel to it. That doesn’t mean this is the end of the road for RyL or PWG or anything like that. It’s simply a recreation of each individually and together. It’s a new beginning for a world that’s addicted many as it's moved away from the norm in MMORPG’s and embraced it's own solid style and story.

I’d like to personally thank Rob for giving me the opportunity to write this mini-review. By no means is this meant to be an end all be all review and guide. I didn’t have the time to devote to an all out play-fest on the game because of the short amount of time the Closed Beta has. But in the time I did play I can say I’m pleasantly surprised with the changes, and anticipating the future of Risk Your Life, in any form it may develop into.

I’d also like to thank PWG and it's staff, for making me feel welcome and making me feel like the fact I chose their game is not a lost choice. They do care about what they are giving you, they do want you to enjoy it, and they stand side by side, in their forums on ryl.net, and in game to make sure your experience and eventually the money you pay to play the game will be a worthwhile and enjoyable cause.

Matthew Stiltner
a.k.a MtS_Alien on ryl.net forums.
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