Realm of the Mad God - Free to Play Game

Co-op Fantasy MMO Shooter, a genre that caters to more people than you'd think.

Realm of the Mad God
PC, Free-to-Play

Realm of the Mad God (RotMG) is a pretty straight forward 8-bit styled co-op shooter wrapped up in a microtransaction based MMO. While free to play you can choose to spend real money on upgrades to your character, or even account (E.G. being able to keep more than one character available at a time), but really it's not necessary, as the game is just as fun without having to spend a dime.

Using the most basic of commands (W,A,S,D to move, mouse button 1 fires, and a few other buttons to chat, toggle sounds, etc.), Realm of the Mad God is easy to jump into. It's simple yet stylish graphics certainly get the job done, and then some, and its music really highlight the graphical style. However being easy to jump into and being an easy game are two completely different things.

Choo Choo! 

Source: Facepunch 

The thing is Realm of the Mad God is kind of hard. And when I say hard, I mean this game is on the "you will not be able to take this game on by yourself, and expect to die and start over repeatedly if you even try to do so; even then you're probably going to die a lot" level of difficulty. This game was clearly designed to be played multiplayer only, and as you gain levels you'll notice you have no choice but join a party to kill a particular enemy or boss, or even hop on a "train" and tear through the game with dozens of other players; something of an experience in and of itself.

In addition to being designed for mutliplayer only RotMG is deceptively complicated. First off, RotMG doesn't bother to really explain much. The tutorial is short, explains the basic controls, lets you kill a few monsters, and then you're off on your own. Second, RotMG is big; really big actually. Really, really, really big. Massive even. It's large enough that wandering across every environment in the game doesn't just seem intimidating, it seems overwhelming. Thankfully there is a teleport system that allows you to click on the yellow symbols that represent other players and transport to fights; additionally pressing F5 is a panic-button of sorts that will automatically take you back to The Nexus (game hub), in case you're about to die, or just want to quit without getting totally hosed. Both are really nice features, and you'll end up using them a lot when playing.

I was able to gather this fellow was an Undead Hobbit Archer, but that's about it.
Storyline isn't RotMG's strong suit.

The storyline is easily passed by, but consists of the players battling the minions of an evil god, who only appears after every quest is completed, and 25,000 of his minions are killed. I could have the number or story wrong there, but I'm pretty sure that's correct. As you can tell storyline wasn't what drew me to this title. Regardless of the weak storyline Realm of the Mad God is an entertaining romp, just not one with much dramatic depth.

Going back to how easy it is to jump into RotMG though, you don't even have to download the game, or create an account; you can simply play online via your browser here. How cool is that? A game you don't even have to download. Neat. I would recommend either creating an account, or connecting through Steam however, as you'll be able to access your character from multiple devices/locations, and not have to worry about accidentally erasing your character.

All in all Realm of the Mad God is an entertaining title, and one that has brought me back repeatedly since I first discovered its siren call of multiplayer insanity about a year ago. I give Realm of the Mad God 4 out of 5 stars, and hope you'll all try out this great little time waster.