I have been testing a lot of Chinese MMORPG's lately and recently had a chance to test one of the most anticipated upcoming title by Netease called Revelation Online. I wasn't all that pleased with the previous title I tested from Netease, so I was a bit skeptical in trying this new one out. Putting those feeling aside, I decided to give it a chance and eventually ended up having a great time!

Character Creation and Playable Classes - Customization Frenzy

The game offers a ton of hairstyles for both male and female characters along with various sliders to adjust facial features, limbs, body, chest, and more. Yes, there are two to three sliders just for boobs alone, if you really must know. I noticed that the hairstyles for the various classes is shared between all of the races. All of the Human Female hairstyles is also available for the small Tera Elin or Blade & Soul Lyn like little girl race, no idea what's it's called in this game. Seems like Loli characters is becoming standard in every Asian MMORPG lately. Dwarves? Not in this game. Check out the two lengthy character creation videos below.

The playable classes aren't gender locked which should be a big plus for the picky users out there. However, some of the classes are locked to certain races. The beta offers six playable classes which are Gunslinger, Sword Dancer, Summoner, Light Blade, Paladin, and Dark/Holy Magician class.

Gameplay and Controls - Action or Classic?

After testing various Chinese MMORPG's I have noticed that most of them offers three different kinds of combat controls. In this day of age, non-targeting Action combat is starting to become standard and most games try to implement some form of it. Players are given a choice on which kind of controls settings they prefer in Revelation Online. If you're the type of person that enjoys the classic normal tab target and point clicking style maneuvers then you can choose Option A. If you want something in between Action MMORPG and tab targeting then your best bet is Option B. Lastly, Option C is for those that prefer a more Action MMORPG setting with an assisted targeting system similar to Blade & Soul.

With the various options to choose from most users are probably wondering which one is best. Honestly, it all depends on how you want to play the game. In most cases playing the classic controls with Option A is best for casters because it's going to be a lot harder healing players in your party or on the field, especially when some random player runs in front of your targeting reticle if you're playing in the Action MMORPG mode. Which option did I ended up picking? As of late, I always find myself playing MMORPG's with reticles so i ended up going with Option C. As for the skill activation nothing special to it, just drag the skills to the hotbar and start spamming that key. Each class gets one spammable skill, which is the "auto-attack" skill. If you're playing in Action mode it auto-rebinds this skill to the left mouse button. Unfortunately, the Closed Beta did not offer any form of mounted or aerial combat just yet which was a bit of a downer.

Stat and Skill System - FREE Distribution!

Players are able to reset their stats with a small cost and distribute them to what their class needs the most. For example, a physical damage class would most likely put points in STR and VIT while mages focuses on stats that increases their healing or offensive skills. The one cool feature about the skill system is that players are able to freely explore and master any skill they want as long they are out of combat. If they are going to start AoE grinding, then they can distribute skill points into AoE spells. If that player is planning on PvP'ing, then they can freely redistribute their points on AoE spells into skills suited for PvP. What does this mean? Revelation is one of those games where you can't gimp or mess up your character due to wrong skill choices. Although this feature may change in the future it has definitely saved me a lot during my beta experience.

Flight and Traveling - Freedom!

Revelation gives players total freedom when it comes down to exploring and endless flight feature. It's one of the biggest selling point for users that just want to roam the skies freely without having to worry about any flight timers or wings expiring during mid flight. Freedom doesn't just stop at skies alone because players can also explore underwater areas and guild castles. Flying around targets the more adventurous users because the game also offers waypoints, which means you can teleport to any location you want as long as you've unlocked that waypoint by interacting with it once. I almost forgot to mention that Revelations also offers various mounts ranging from normal horses, flying elephants, flying beasts, steam punk mechs, and more. Revelation is like the ultimate fantasy flying and exploring MMORPG. Players that are planning on playing this game in the future will receive their first set of wings automatically after hitting level 30, which should take less than a day.

The World Map - Seamless or Instance?

The flying features of this game wouldn't cut it alone if the world didn't have a nice beautiful looking areas to explore. I would have enjoyed exploring this game more if the world wasn't one big piece of land with the ocean located on the far east. Below you will find an image of the whole world map, as you can see it's very big and it looks like some of the areas haven't been unlocked yet. The blue circles on the map represents waypoint portals and the small red flags shows guilds castles occupied by the respective guild logo. No loading involved when traveling from area to area unless you teleport from one place to another. The world is one big seamless open zone. I'm not sure if they are planning on adding new areas in the future. Flying around from the far West to East in a straight line would probably take a good fifteen to twenty minutes or you can be lazy and just teleport to that location instantly. I'd also like to point out that dungeons in this game are instanced based. For those that were wondering.

Guild War PvP and Castle System - Zerg Rush

Totally clueless about the whole Guild War System, but would gladly share of what information I have learned so far. A total of ten guild castles spread throughout the whole world and monopolizing them is really easy as long as you have a zerg guild, lol. Looking at the world map, I have noticed that there are couple guilds who own two to three guild castles! Would be nice if they limited it to one per guild. Anyhow, some of these castles are very easy to take over while some impossible. For example, the underwater castle is one of the hardest castles to invade because you have to swim all the way down and then enter from one of two entrances or it might just be one.

The flying castle or the huge piece of rock is a bit harder to defend because there are no walls or doors it's just one big open space. Meaning the enemy can come invade from any direction, yikes! One of these days my small size guild is going to take one of them over! P.S I don't think they've noticed I am a Foreigner yet. I'm not sure what the benefits of owning castles have this game other than having your guild flag and guild NPC's all over the main city. It doesn't seem like there is any Open PvP available yet either, or no one wants to kill my cute character! Guild War Sieges takes place during a certain time frame so forget trying to Ninja a castle while your enemies are asleep. There are also other forms of PvP such as the AOS/MOBA mode shown in the video below.

{youtube}https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF_JXvmfPzY{/youtube}

Leveling Up and Questing - Newbie Friendly?

I've been playing this game casually so I can't really tell how fast the leveling pace should be, but it started slowing down a lot for me once I hit level 40 mainly because I was stuck on a lot of quests that I couldn't read especially the main story ones. I ended up doing a lot of side quests and daily quests and calling it a day. Revelation offers various kinds of quests to keep players busy ranging from daily quests, flying, delivery, boat rides, fishing, kill quests, event quests, field invasion missions, and more. Normally I would grind to the max level 60, but I usually just spend most of my time in the game exploring and doing random quests side quests. The questing system isn't that difficulty for a Foreigner due to the auto-run quest helper system that walks you to the places where your character needs to be. Unfortunately, not all of the quests makes use of this awesome feature so you will most likely end up skipping a few main story missions and side quests.

Graphics and Fashion - Massive Amounts of Costumes!

The graphics and teaser trailers for this game stays true to the content and isn't misleading like most Chinese MMORPG's. The game offers a lot of beautiful looking areas and structures that gives users a very pleasant experience while exploring. It's a shame that it doesn't offer any real-time day and night feature. The game offers all kinds of costumes ranging from awesome outfits, various wings, accessories, hats, cosmetics, eye patches, and doge mask. Doge what?! I would often lose a lot of FPS when there were a lot of players on the screen. Thankfully, I was able to turn off all the players by simply pressing the F10 button. The game currently offers max settings of very high with ultra high planned for the future.

Comparison Mode - What game is this like!?

Most players want to get a general idea of what they are jumping into, so if I had to compare this game to another MMORPG then it would most likely lean towards a mixture of Blade & Soul and Aion. I would recommend this oriental game to players who enjoy a fantasy anything goes themed MMORPG. Those that want a more realistic oriental game will probably end up enjoying Moonlight Blade better.

Conclusion - Would Recommend (='-')/")

Despite the crazy amount of content ripped off or inspired from other games, Revelation Online turned out to be enjoyable and I would recommend it. It's deiniftely a lot better than their previous game copy clone Dragon Sword Online. The flying features alone is worth the experience since not many MMORPG's gives you a total open seamless world and freedom when it comes down to flight features. Revelation Online is still in Closed Beta so there is a lot of room from improvement. Foreigners that want to play this game will have to wait a little bit longer for Open Beta or manage to dig up a beta key. Thanks for reading and following me on one of my many gaming MMORPG adventures and see you on the next one!

Game Site: http://tianyu.163.com/