Rusty Hearts Review for PC

World Of Beat-’em-Up

In the half-decade quest to create the next World of Warcraft, no developer has succeeded—but some have made significant improvements to the MMO juggernaut’s model. Perhaps the most impressive are games that replace WoW’s lackluster combat with tight beat ’em up or hack ‘n’ slash mechanics. Rusty Hearts is the latest entry in this arcade-based tradition, and while it has plenty of flaws, it offers hours of button-mashing carnage in a gothic setting for no charge.

The first thing you’ll notice when you boot up Rusty Hearts is its unique vibe. The music is a spooky medley of acoustic guitar, piano, and metal tracks. The aesthetic is an interesting blend of photorealism and anime—the environments look like they came out of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, complete with the haunted castles and undead enemies, while the characters are cel-shaded and dressed in a Final Fantasy-ish emo style.

Speaking of characters, your first task will be to choose from among three of them (a fourth, a very attractive lady, will become available soon). While there’s no customization to speak of until you start finding gear, each character has their own backstory and a unique look. I went with Angela, a spunky redhead with magical powers who swings her weapons in a slow (but powerful and wide) arc. Those who prefer MMO characters to be anonymous might find it offputting, but to me it was a nice change of pace.

Once you hit the street, the purpose of the game is to invade Castle Curtis and take down the evil vampire Vlad, and frequent but short cutscenes place your quests in the context of an unfolding plot. The quests are divided into story, normal, and random types, but they almost always involve going into a section of dungeon for some reason or another. You’ll go to that section, fight through it, kill the final boss, and then get a new quest—which very well may send you back to the same section of dungeon to do something else. Yes, Rusty Hearts wrings every hour of gameplay it can out of its in-game real estate.

In between quests, you’ll do a variety of things—repair your gear (do not forget to do this regularly), trade, buy weapons and armor, bring raw materials to businesses that do crafting—but these feel more like routine chores than a core part of the experience. The message is clear: Rusty Hearts is all about the dungeons, not about a big, persistent world that you can get lost exploring. Even when the hub city of Bramunez opens up a little, you’ll spend as little time in it as possible.

The dungeons themselves are unapologetically linear. Like God of War and its countless clones, they place you in a room, throw some enemies at you, and then unlock the next room when the enemies are all dead. Rusty Hearts is shameless about repeating this process hundreds of times—the rooms are all separated by plant-like walls that disappear when the enemies die; there is no effort to make the breaks between rooms seem realistic or natural.

As far as combat goes, while the environment is 3D, Rusty Hearts is still basically a side-scroller like Streets of Rage, complete with the ability to juggle multiple enemies with the same combos. In the default control setup, you move with the arrow keys, and when confronting enemies you can attack, grab, block, use any magical skills you’ve acquired, and consume your power-ups. Personally, though, I preferred a USB controller, because I’ve never found the arrow keys very effective in 3D games.

Further, the difficulty is low enough at first that unless you play quests well above your level, it doesn’t really matter what you do until you get to the boss fights—as long as you keep hammering buttons, you’ll be fine. This is fun enough for a while, but eventually you start to wish you had more of an incentive to truly master the game’s impressive combo system, which the game doesn’t deliver until you’ve put in many hours of play time.

Unsurprisingly, Rusty Hearts has plenty of multiplayer components for those who get bored of questing solo. You can tackle a dungeon in a group, though I found this tends to make the game even easier and more repetitive unless the dungeon’s difficulty is set very high. There’s also PvP action to be had if you’re Level 10 or higher, but this is also a button-mashing fest, my character’s slow movements didn’t seem suited for it, and there weren’t enough players around to match everyone up well. (My first fight found me, at Level 10, facing an opponent at the level cap of 25.) For modes, there’s deathmatch, survival, tag team, and “VIP” (in which the game ends when your team’s leader dies). Survival and tag team seem to be the most common on the servers.

Of course, Rusty Hearts being a “free to play” game, it’s worth asking whether you can actually play it for free. The answer is yes, though you’ll miss out on a few things. One setback to keeping your wallet closed is that you’ll be limited to five “resurrection scrolls,” which refill your health when it runs out, each day. You’ll also be unable to access items from the Cash Store, including better-looking gear. And you’ll miss your chance to buy your way to a higher level by picking up EXP boosts. Only time will tell whether purchasable items and bonuses will unbalance the game, but I didn’t notice any problems in my time with it.

A few quick notes on technical issues. While the voice acting is pretty good during cutscenes, some of the dialogue clips played on top of each other instead of in succession, and the volume was inconsistent. Also, the installer crashed my computer once, though it worked fine the second time.

This brings me to the bottom line, which is always hard with an MMO. Rusty Hearts is changing constantly, with a steady stream of updates, bug fixes, and new material—the “stamina” system, which limited play time during the closed beta, is already gone, and a big expansion, Awakening, will arrive in just two weeks. So, the game available to you right now might be different than the one I played. However, on the plus side, I had a fun time bludgeoning my way through the dungeons for a while, and I love this game’s unique look. On the downside, the gameplay gets repetitive after the first few hours, and it lacks the huge and lush world that other MMOs offer. I can’t imagine getting lost in Rusty Hearts for months.

If you hate MMOs that give your character a backstory, lack a good experience outside of the dungeons, or let you get away with too much button mashing, Rusty Hearts isn’t for you. If you relish the thought of slicing through supernatural enemies without paying for it, though, this might be your cup of tea. At the very least, it’s worth downloading and trying.

RATING OUT OF 5 RATING DESCRIPTION 4.1 Graphics
An interesting blend of anime and realism. 3.8 Control
The town controls are clunky, and the dungeon controls aren’t great on a keyboard, but a gamepad works well. 4.7 Music / Sound FX / Voice Acting
A spooky blend of acoustic guitar, piano, and metal tracks. 3.5 Play Value
It’s free and polished, but it gets repetitive quickly. 3.7 Overall Rating – Good
Not an average. See Rating legend below for a final score breakdown.