Ragnarok Battle Offline
CAUTION!
- Sara was here.
- She knows where you live.
- For goodness sake, GET OUT OF THERE!
—Quote displayed on English-Patched loadup. What it means? Probably no one knows.
Or all the fun of Ragnarok Online except offline and as a Fighting Game.
Ragnarok Battle Offline is a Beat'Em Up Fighting Game made by doujin developer French-Bread. Designed as a homage and a spoof of the MMORPG Ragnarok Online, it is notable in that it is amongst one of the few fan-made Spin-Off games that have been given an official release by the developers of the original game.
Given its origins, the story can be best summed up with a Plot What Plot? You take control of one of 14 different adventurers (seven classes (Swordsman, Archer, Acolyte, Magician, Merchant, Thief, Novice) with a male and a female variant of each class) and you go and... beat up monsters.
However, that really shouldn't matter. Why? Because it's fun!
A translation patch for the Japanese version is available here and has a wiki here.
- Ass Kicks You: Male Merchant can do a hip press.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Plenty of monsters are invulnerable except for that one spot. Most notably, the Scorpions.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Jakk of Stage 4, Geffen Dungeon, wears a tuxedo, top hat and uses a cane to fight you.
- Beating a Dead Player: Actually you can use it to learn and understand the pattern of the enemy, boss that creamed you. Sadly this is especially useful on the Stage 8 or Arena Modes...
- Boss Rush: Stage 8 is this. Hope you memorized all bosses pattern.
- Arena Mode is Up to Eleven, there you are very likely to fight mid-bosses and bosses altogether and sometimes even FIVE bosses at same time. Needless to say some Arenas are insanely difficult to beat alone.
- Breath Weapon / Death of a Thousand Cuts: The most dangerous attacks from enemies are made of this since they give you absolutely no time to react, recover or get the hell out of the way.
- Bullfight Boss: A very unusual version of it in the very first level: You fight a horde of Porings chasing Richard, the Knight who presumably Provoked them on purpose. Richard himself can ram you mounted on his Peco Peco and is immune to damage (you can do Scratch Damage to him after you finish the "fight") so you must kill all Porings which bothers him.
- Blank White Eyes: Practically every playable character's default expression.
- Brutal Bonus Level: The Ex Scenarios. The first one, the Prontera culvert, is nothing compared to even the second one, the ghost ship, also housing one of the game's most infamous bosses, Drake. And then, there's the final EX stage, which makes the easier ones seem like the Prontera grounds.
- Calling Your Attacks: In the form of textboxes.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: Maya, the boss of Ant Hell, is the opposite, after destroying her exoskeleton she'll Turn Red and her attacks will do far more damage and one of them, at that point, can combo you to death.
- Stage 7 boss, Baphomet. He gets A LOT easier once he enters in the second stage of the fight, however that doesn't mean his attacks hurts any less.
- Cluster F-Bomb: Antonio launches one after Stormy Knight is defeated.
- Combat Medic: The Acolytes, focus more on the "combat".
- Competitive Balance
- Lightning Bruiser: Swordman. Fast and quick while having strong skills also being able to endure decent amounts of punishment.
- Fragile Speedster: Thieves with their lighting fast movement and combos, but one strong hit tears apart half of their health and combos almost always mean instant death. However with Double Attack skill they border on Glass Cannon if not outright become one.
- Glass Cannon: Magicians, they can wipe entire screens with a well placed spell but die incredibly fast if you play sloppy with them.
- Archer hovers between Fragile Speedster and Glass Cannon having high damage potential, but with very costly skills, and being very swift nearly as fast as Thief class and both can stay for a huge period of time airborne to avoid hazard.
- Mighty Glacier: Merchants, hits like a truck, moves like a starting one.
- Joke Character: Novice. What did you expect? But if used correctly it then becomes a Lethal Joke Character.
- Conservation of Ninjitsu: Especially done in the Stage 3, Orc Village, where after raiding it to save a little girl kidnapped you leave a house and one lonely orc outside runs panicked from you (and your partners).
- Cute Monster Girl: Several even those who were on the verge of Nightmare Fuel, Sohee, becomes this, but Moonlight Flower takes the cake. If you count Possessed Kafra she is one too.
- Cutscene: A lot of them scattered through the Stages, a bit annoying after repeating the same level twice, thrice since you can't skip any and some of them lasts longer than they should.
- Degraded Boss: Several enemies, some of this can be cruel since there are ones who are Boss in Mook Clothing.
- Death From Above: Deviace can spit a pillar upward which will soon fall causing some heavy damage.
- One of the Doppelganger's move is jump and slam his sword on the ground, you'll get stunned if you are hit by this.
- Orc Lord has a body drop attack which hurts quite a bit if gets you.
- Difficult but Awesome: The Merchant class who is sluggish, but very powerful and has Discout, which if used properly will not only deny all damage as it will give you money.
- Novice is made purely of this. Using either gender effectively is incredibly difficult, but both have devastating potential.
- Difficulty Spike: It pokes you near the end of the normal game in the 7th Stage. It downright spikes you in the very first Stage EX-1, the jump between the 8th and EX-1 will scare people who think that unceasingly throwing attacks will make you win the game.
- Doppelganger Attack: Possesed Kafra, the boss of Stage 8 uses this.
- Dual Boss: You fight a pair of Golems midway through Stage 2.
- Munak and Bongun in the Payon Dungeon in Stage 3.
- The Dragons at the entrance of Mt. Mjolnir in Stage 7.
- Dynamic Difficulty: Enemies gets noticeably more tougher if you play on Co-op mode even more if one character is overleveled compared to the partners.
- Elemental Powers: Magicians have them to use with normal moves or skills.
- Evil Counterpart: The Doppelganger is this to the Male Swordman, they have the same moves, however Doppelganger's are always stronger or with an additional effect.
- Expansion Pack: This game has had 3 such released called "Extra Scenario"s.
- The first one contains the Prontera Culverts and the Sunken Ship.
- The second one contains the Lutie Toy Factory, the Pyramid, and the Sphinx.
- The third one contains the Amatsu Tatami Maze.
- Exposed to the Elements: Everyone can go ranging from deserts to polar regions with the same clothing. It's just an online game, though.
- Eyes Always Shut: The Male Archer. The Female Acolyte also while playing with her, she has "normal" eyes in her art, though.
- Five-Man Band:
- The Hero: Swordman.
- The Lancer: Thief.
- The Smart Guy: Magician.
- The Big Guy: Merchant.
- The Chick: Archer.
- The Medic: Acolyte.
- Tagalong Kid: Novice.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: You better get used to this especially if you are playing solo.
- Flunky Boss: Nearly every boss. Golden Thief Bug has the most annoying ones, though.
- Full-Contact Magic: Magicians can hit pretty hard even without their spells. Bonus to the Male Magician who can do a flashy flying kick.
- Some builds are especially made to keep melee and spell combat in accordance.
- Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: Quite a few.
- Good Old Fisticuffs: Many characters can also punch, kick, poke enemies aside of their weapon attacks.
- Guide Dang It: Several and some of them are pretty irritating.
- The game never mentions that you need a certain amount of status to unlock new moves which again the game gives absolutely no hint of how to do and that you even got them in first place, also the game gives absolutely no hint of how to perform skills, new moves and not even if said skill is merely passive.
- New players using Magicians in general will suffer a lot if they don't know how to build one properly. [1]
- Healing Shiv: Hilariously done with the Female Acolyte who slaps the Heal into the character.
- Hellish Horse: The Nightmare.
- Hero-Killer: In the end of Stage 7 you'll see that something made a lot of ravage before you got there...
- Hyperactive Metabolism: With foods and potion all around.
- Improbable Weapon User: Using swords, clubs, axes, bows, hammers, staves and knives to fight? Normal. Using your cargo cart to throw them at your opponent or simply ram them with it? Not so much.
- Also the Female Merchant can use a humongous bag of money to squash enemies.
- A monster example is Chepet of Stage EX-3 who uses a phosphorus stick to fight you and in the same stage the Christmas Jakk uses a candy cane.
- Instant Armor: Magicians' Safety Wall, the number of aggressions it can take depends on the level of the skill, it is also limited.
- Kid Samurai: The first phase of Incarnation Samurai.
- Launcher Move: Every character has this and it is highly recommended that you learn how to pull and use them properly or else when bigger waves of enemies comes you'll be in some real trouble.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Two NPCs, Richard, the Peco Knight and Merlin, the Magician, are fond of this. Both are beaten humorously in certain Stages of the game.
- Let's You and Him Fight: In Stage 8 a Kafra, storekeeper in the original game of all things.
- Magikarp Power: Magicians in general starts out with either hard to aim skills or which consume too much MP and have sluggish and awkward melee moves, but as soon they start upgrading their spells it won't be unusual to wipe the entire screen with a single cast.
- Thieves are this to some extent until they get Double Attack, of course they can hold up things a lot better than Magicians.
- Mascot Mook: Porings and Lunars especially.
- Marathon Level: The 6th and 7th Stages are glaring examples, you might take 15 minutes on the 6th and over 20 at the 7th with a character at right level if it is suited for solo plays or else it can take even longer. I.e: Swordman, Thief.
- Megaton Punch: Female Acolyte's Lunar Lariat Buster.
- Meido: The Kafras.
- More Dakka: Arrow Shower from Archers.
- Stormy Knight has this with his shield, get caught by it and you're dead.
- Shinobi enemy from Stage EX-6 has this with shurikens.
- Mugging the Monster: Literal trope which can be done by the Thieves.
- Merchants also does this by literally grab the monster and mugged out 5 coins for it
- One-Hit Polykill: Several attack that you and the enemy, mind bosses and sub-bosses, can do this.
- One-Man Army: Your character is practically this.
- Palette Swap: With few enemies. It is averted on co-op, though since you can't choose the same gender of the same class.
- Purely Aesthetic Gender: Averted. In general, males have more HP and females have more SP. There are also minor variations and requirements for various special moves but the gender differences is glaring when it comes down to gameplay, although similar in some ways each classes are unique.
- Rain of Arrows: Archers' Arrow Shower skill.
- Religious Bruiser: The Acolytes, natch.
- Right Behind Me: How the Doppelganger battle starts.
- RPG Elements
- Schrodinger Fu: Part of the Novice's fighting style is made of this.
- Shrinking Violet: The Female Novice.
- Shy Blue-Haired Girl: Averted with the Female Magician who seems to be the opposite, her Stripperific outfit doesn't help either.
- Shout-Out: The entire game is practically a Beat'Em Up version of Ragnarok Online. That's how many there are. They can be seem as Fridge Brilliance too.
- If you stay sit, pressing down, your character will recover HP and SP gradually faster.
- Drake can use Waterball since where you fight him there's water on the floor.
- Most bosses are Flunky Boss because they spam enemies too in their Online counterparts.
- If you happen to have a Merchant with Increase Weight Limit skill tagged with an Archer you'll be able to carry more arrows.
- Sinister Scythe: Baphomet carries one and it isn't just for show.
- Savvy Guy, Energetic Girl: The Male Archer and Female Archer.
- The Male Acolyte and Female Acolyte.
- Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Averted and how. The levels and difficulty of the monsters with you fight in the Online counterpart has absolutely nothing to do here.
- Sword Beam: Averted with both Swordman, played straight with the Doppelganger
- Synchronization: One can play with multiple characters by configuring two or three, controls at same time. Playing like this however is exceptionally hard since every character has different pace and commands, but still possible.
- Theres No Kill Like Overkill: Two Magicians with any maxed spell, especially if it's Thunderstorm.
- Enemies, especially bosses, have attacks like this.
- Turns Red: The earliest example you get is Maya, but then most bosses from Stage 5 and forward will change their attack pattern when damaged enough.
- A better example is Stormy Knight who literally gets this on his second phase.
- Unlockable Content: Novice is unlocked by clearing the game with every other class.
- The final part of the Arena mode is unlocked by clearing all of the unlocked ones with 10 different classes.
- As of the second expansion, the requirement has been lessened into two characters.
- The final part of the Arena mode is unlocked by clearing all of the unlocked ones with 10 different classes.
- Victory Pose: Many of them, if not all, consist of the character celebrate and then sit resting.
- We Cannot Go on Without You: A weird variation, if playing in co-op and one loses the last life the partner will also die. This can get irritating if your partner screws up in That One Boss, especially in Stage 6 or 7 where it is LONG.
- Weapon of Choice: Every class in a Shout-Out to the original game.
- Cool Sword: Swordman, both Female and Male.
- Simple Staff: Female Magician, surprisingly enough the Male doesn't sports one.
- Knife Nut: Thieves, both genders. Also the Male Magician uses one.
- An Axe to Grind: The Female Merchant uses one.
- Drop the Hammer: The Male Merchant carries one and even uses as a seat in its Victory Pose.
- Carry a Big Stick: Female Acolyte carries one on her belt.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: The Male Acolyte uses nothing but his own fists and feet as weapons.
- The Archer: Is it really needed to explain?
- World of Badass: It's Ragnarok, most NPCs you see are "players" even though you always see them doing ridiculously slow damage if any at all.
- Wrestler in All of Us
- The Female Acolyte can do a strong lariat rush.
- The Female Merchant can do a drop kick.
- ↑ it's highly recommended to get Fire Bolt first since it has a very low SP Cost is decently fast and the strongest of the Bolt spells.