Perfect World Entertainment’s Rusty Hearts just implanted their October patch that introduces a new character: the beautiful, busty gunbunny Natasha. The patch went live late last night and I jumped into the game to start my first Natasha in order to give the ogre community a first-look at how she plays. PWE brought Natasha in along with a lot of Halloween costumes and an entire event, so you might want to check that out. Not only has GameOgre gotten in the doors during the beta to bring you a first impressions of the game–but now RH has received a 9/10 rating for an excellent MMO in review.
Rusty Hearts is a dungeon crawler and brawler, also up-‘til-now most characters have been melee fighters with little range to them—Natasha is the opposite: she’s a ranged attacker with some melee strikes. Like most of the character she has two weapon modes: she starts with a pair of revolvers (or pistols) and can change over to a rifle (or musket.) I’ve only played her with the twin pistols; but I suspect that when wielding a musket she has a slower fire-rate but higher damage.
Oh yes, I’m sure that plenty of people will be making breast jokes about her “guns” from here on out so steel yourself for the onslaught.
Playing Natasha is an experience in timing attacks. Currently, she runs on an ammo system and she can run out of chambered rounds—although she immediately reloads, it does take a moment—weirdly I couldn’t figure out how to make her reload without exhausting all cylinders first. She also has a different type of dodge that spins backwards, away from the enemy by pressing the ‘C’ key aside from the ‘Z’ guard key. I ended up using this a lot to gain some distance to continue unloading with both barrels.
Natasha also has a great deal of combat animations: she can fire her guns with both feet on the ground, leaping into the air, and double-leaping, and also on-the-move.
After playing a character like Angela or Frantz, Natasha can create something of a learning-curve cliff–she plays in a manner totally different from the in-your-face melee characters, and the reload time can get frustrating. Also, the cylinders and bullets on the screen may at first seem a little confusing (and they also intersect with the chat window…) However, once I got a handle on when to be prepared to reload, I managed to time my blitz-attacks so that they’d devastate a monster and then fall back while she reloads.
It makes her a very fun character to play.
In the screenshot, I’m wearing parts of Natasha’s Halloween costume—which seems to involve cat-ears and a mask—the full costume is a bit more cait dubh than seen above, but I always enjoyed mix-and-match.
Rusty Hearts Halloween Events: Dare to send shivers down your spine and up your wardrobe
The upcoming Halloween events include costumes for all four major characters. The full-on European witch costume, of course, goes to Angela—a real witch in game—that sports a pointed, wide brim hat with orange and black trimming along her curves. Frantz has a masquerade-gentleman outfit including a vest, a tophat, and a mask—mostly purple and orange trimming for him. Finally, Tude will be wearing a bolt through his head, in what I suspect is a homage to Adam Frankenstein—the monster created by Victor Frankenstein in the eponymous novel by Mary Shelley.
Halloween quests are included that will deliver some lovely goodies in the form of rewards from Poison, the proprietor of the Castle Curtis bar (for those into toxic spirits and questionable alcohol.) They come in the form of “Poison’s Spooky Box” which can contain various food buffs, a spooky letter that leads to a quest, the skeleton costume, and even the Jack O’ Lantern title.
So prepare for a spooky season, Rusty Hearts has you covered.
Let me know what you’ve been doing in game, if you’ve been part of the Halloween events, throw a screenshot or two my way!
Well, Glad to see another Character being released, I quit after getting my fred to level 23, Just wasn’t the game for me. But i recommend it to all the action fans out there. I must have a game with no Gender Lock and no Instances. Freeworld, Action, heaps of character customization is the key for me :). TERA here i come.
I can see that, Noble, customization in Rusty Hearts is a little bit low — and that’s really what dinged it for me when it came to rating it a 10 on review.
Part of that might be because they’re a very new MMO and thus need more time to build up a lot more content. As the events unveil and they add more content that may start to shore up. On the basis, however, it’s a nice game to play casually. A few dungeons now and then and going in with friends.
That’s how I’d roll.