Rusty Hearts (Phase 1 Beta) Review

First off, let me just start off by saying that I love beta's. They give me a chance to play the games I can't wait to play, before they're released to the public. I get a free test drive that will in turn help the developer polish their game into the final product. Where's the downside in that? Well I guess this experience isn't for everyone, especially those lacking patience and who are easily irritated by bugs and imperfections. I assure you, there will be monsters running through walls, shooting through walls, disappearing and reappearing for no apparent reason. Servers will come down for hours at a time just when you start really getting into the game and you just have to accept it because it's an integral part of the game testing process.

Character Options
All right, on to the game. There are currently 3 characters to choose from (if you're looking for character customization, this is the first area that Rusty Hearts will disappoint). Each character is just that, a character with their own appearance and abilities unique to them. The only thing that sets you apart from another person playing the same character, is your name. First off we have Frantz (the character I played primarily),  who's your basic fighter type, he wears heavy armor and wields either a sword or an axe. If you enjoy literally 'hacking and slashing' your enemies in aerial combat, Frantz is your man. Next up is Tude, who specializes in the use of fist weapons, either the gauntlet or the claw (the claw being the slower but more deadly of the two). He wears leather armor and most resembles the rogue class from other MMO's. Angela, is currently the lone female (another female character will be introduced later on) as well as spell caster, in Rusty Hearts. While she is a cloth wearer, she can also deal considerable melee damage. Angela's weapons of choice include the magic sword or the scythe, with the latter of the two being the '2-handed' option. The 'yet to be fully revealed' fourth character, if we follow the pretty clear trend, is likely going to be sporting a set of chain armor. Oh, and her name is Natasha (don't you feel like you know her now?).

Gameplay

Game interface with some explanation

So now that you've chosen your 'hero' what are you going to do? After you create your character you're given a choice of whether or not you want to run through the tutorial. It has a fair amount of dialog so if you're ready to play and dialog isn't your thing then you'll be fine to just skip it and start running dungeons asap. Dungeons in Rusty Hearts utilize a grading system based on a number of different factors, including but certainly not limited to, the time it takes you to kill the mobs in an 'area', chain kills (killing multiple enemies simultaneously), chain hits (consecutive hits) and the number of hits you take. Those are just a few of many things that will  affect which of these grades you will ultimately end up with: F , D , C , B , A , S , SS or SSS. Understandably, the higher your rank is at the end of your run, the more experience you'll be awarded. There are also certain quests that will require you to finish with a specific rank (for example, quests will often ask you to complete 'instance x' with 'A' Rank or higher). In addition to this grading system, (most) dungeons have 4 different difficulty levels beginning with normal. From there you can progress after clearing each previous mode with a 'D' grade or better to the hard, very hard and blood modes (blood mode isn't available for lower level dungeons and requires 5 'keys' attained from hard/very hard modes) for more experience and more importantly, better loot!

PvP

Once you reach level 10 you have the option to participate in the PvP arena. Even with some significant imbalances in the PvP aspect of the game, I was surprised to find myself still participating in it. What kept me interested more than anything were the unique PvP modes that were offered.  You have several options when it comes to the RH arena, the various types of matches include: solo survival, team survival, tag team, death match or a leader match. Solo survival should be pretty self explanatory, it's a free for all duel to the death or until time is up between all players. Team survival allows straight up 2v2, 3v3, and 4v4 matches between players. In a tag team match, the order that players will fight is randomly selected at the beginning. From there it will keep going down each team's list of players until every player from one team has been defeated. A death match is similar to team survival except that players will respawn after they are killed until either 1) One team has reached a certain number of kills or 2) Time runs out. The last option is a leader match, where one player from each team is designated to be the 'leader' prior to the match and once either leader is defeated, the other team is victorious.

Pros
-It's 100% free to play, not just the beta, but the actual game itself will be free when it's released. So really you have nothing to lose by giving Rusty Hearts a test run
-Brings together the addictive qualities of an MMO as well as your typical dungeon crawl
-(Should be a pro, if it works) Like every half decent hack-n-slash game should, RH allows you to play with a console controller! (Unfortunately I wasn't able to because I don't have a wired controller)
-Each character has a set of unique and visually impressive skills
-Clearing instances with a friend is loads of fun, the runs become a lot faster, it allows you to take on more challenging enemies (for better loot) and you get a great group experience bonus at the end
-This is only the first phase of beta, there is still plenty more content yet to be released and fully tested before the official game's release

I guess that's sorta maybe kinda cool.. maybe

Cons
-Only being able to run the similarly styled dungeons over and over can start to feel like that dreaded repetitive grind
-There's zero character customization
-Dungeon grading system can be rather unforgiving at times (There were times where I was expecting my rank to go up after an area but instead it dropped two or three for no apparent reason)
-Current 'Stamina' system that's in place doesn't allow players to do quests or gain experience once they're stamina bar is empty. It also doesn't give you a warning if you turn in quests while your stamina is depleted, which can cause you to lose a substantial amount of experience and become a sad panda :(
-Key-binding options are very limited, for example you can't use modifiers like shift, ctrl and alt to bind with other keys. This is a huge downside for me, especially as the number of skills increase past level 20.
-Once you choose a weapon specialization (at level 20) there is no way for you to change it. The same is true for skills and abilities. There needs to be some sort of reset option.
-In dungeons that have locked doors, there's no confirmation before your key is used to open a door if you accidentally wander too close to it. There were too many times where I had my keys wasted opening doors I didn't want to open.

Best item description... ever.

Bugs and issues I ran into:
-A few times when I logged into the game, the shortcut keys to open my inventory, character screen or any other interface menu wouldn't weren't responsive. However, my skills and abilities would still activate properly. Each time this occurred I was able to resolve it by exiting and restarting my game client
-Early in the game when I was running the 2nd instance on hard mode one of the skeleton archers right before the final boss had managed to walk through the final 'barrier' into the bosses room, this was a problem because the barrier wouldn't let me pass until all the mobs prior to it were cleared. After a minute or so though, the 'runaway' skeleton reappeared in front of me and I was able to successfully complete the instance.
-There were a number of times where I would leave an instance (no particular instance, it happened to me in a few different dungeons) after I had finished it and my screen would go black and stay that way. This forced me to manually close the game and then wait around 5 minutes till I could log back on to my character again.
-This

Hmmm, it's dark in here.

Grade (0-100)
-N/A  (Can't grade a rough draft)