With its first Open Beta phase coming to a close, Ravendawn Online developers were pleased with the support and constructive feedback the upcoming MMORPG received. In total, the indie MMORPG had more than 45,000 unique players in its month-long playtest and the Ravendawn team is already hard at work implementing a few of the requested changes as it gears up for the next round of testing.
If you haven’t heard of Ravendawn Online until this point, I wouldn’t feel too bad. Despite being in development since 2016, it’s been in a closed alpha state until recently and is being developed by the relatively small studio Tavernlight Games. As I only heard about the game shortly before the open beta began, I really wasn’t sure what to expect.
I honestly didn’t have very high hopes going into the open beta. I’ve seen a lot of indie studios pump out barely functioning shells of games and call it an open beta, but I was pleasantly surprised with what Ravendawn had to deliver. The game clearly knows what it wants to be and already does a good job at delivering that experience, and what that seems to be more than anything is a nostalgia engine.
Ravendawn borrows pieces from iconic games throughout history and sort of smashes them altogether. Based on my interview with CEO Nicolas Schrik, the game is heavily inspired by Ultima Online & Tibia, which is made very apparent with both the game’s top-down visual perspective and combat mechanics. The choice of color palette and artistic style also makes it hard not to feel like we’re in an old SNES RPG, such as Chrono Trigger or Illusion of Gaia. Then we’ve got the interactive crafting system reminiscent of EverQuest II.
Despite having seen most of what Ravendawn has to offer in other games, the developers have done a good job at making the game feel fresh, and honestly, I’d prefer to see systems that we know work instead of experimenting with convoluted ones that simply bog down the gameplay. That being said, Ravendawn isn’t perfect and won’t be for everyone.
After selecting your starting class, the game begins with a flashback to your childhood, which serves as the tutorial. After waking up from your dream, it’s finally time to leave your village for good and travel to the mainland. There isn’t really a lot to do here besides kill some bandits and get to your boat. The game even includes a detailed ship system, which is introduced by a brief fight with a tentacle monster, but later ships can be completely customized for war or fishing.
After crash landing on the beach, players can interact with the NPCs in the slums and choose how to help them. By this point it’s already clear that the developers care about substance. Most interactions with NPCs include a lot of context and have multiple dialogue options and choices. While this is mostly fluff, it’s nice to get some background as to why I need to kill 10 rats or find a particular item.
The combat and skill systems are also complex enough to be interesting while not so deep that the experience becomes cumbersome. The combat is classic tab-target with global cooldowns. Initially, this can be a little bit boring but it doesn’t take long to gain a couple of levels and always have something to do during a fight. Additionally, auto-attacking and most skills can be used when moving, so you aren’t just sitting there casting spells while getting hit in the face.
That being said, the current combat system in combination with the monster respawn rates can feel a bit clunky. Enemies seemed to be spawning at alarming rates and in many places, there wasn’t much space to maneuver. Multiple times, I ended up being surrounded by more than 5 enemies with no hope of escape or survival. The spawn rates might have been ramped up for the beta, but there were more than a few locations I’d be happy never to visit again.
Ravendawn has players select their initial archetype upon creating a character, but shortly after you’ll unlock your second archetype and eventually a third. With 8 unique archetypes and 3 archetypes per class, that leads to dozens of final class options, with iconic classes such as the Necromancer or Sage but also some unique ones like the Soulknife (essentially a mage-rogue). Each archetype also has access to 12 active and 6 passive skills, which makes for a ton of combinations.
If going out and just killing things or completing quests isn’t enough, Ravendawn has you covered. Crafting is a big deal in Ravendawn with 10 professions that utilize the crafting skill system and mini-game that allow players to produce better goods as they skill up.
Additionally, crafting is important for making tradepacks, which can be delivered all over the world to earn a good amount of silver. You can also build your own house, grow vegetables, and raise livestock. Most of these systems are introduced in the early portions of the game and the main city offers public plots of lands for players to get started growing plants and animals right away. Farming also isn’t just plant and forget; players need to water, weed, and feed their gardens as well.
Despite this being Ravendawn’s first open beta, the game already feels like it’s in a good state. For those players looking for that classic MMORPG experience, this one has a lot to offer. The development team also seems to be incredibly open to feedback and is already implementing changes based on the beta, such as improving the party experience, implementing a mentoring system, and tweaking crafting and combat stats. This is definitely one to keep an eye on and we should have more information on the next phase of testing, or possibly a release date, soon.
