Five Amazingly Bad RO Monsters

I'm guessing every kid in the videogames-is-where-its-shitting generation dreams of working for game design companies. We all wanted a work that involves thinking of epic video game concepts and designing jaw-drop graphics for characters sporting barely covered female parts.

Unfortunately, most of those kids end up getting too addicted to videogames. flunk out, and end up mixing cement or selling balut during nightshifts to those who mix the cement. The lucky few that do get past that point to actually work for game companies either end up designing shitty games for the mobile phone or get too mired with the "adult stuff" to remember what made games awesome in the first place.

Actually that intro isn't even related to what I'll be writing about today, I just wanted to get that out of my head. Anyway Ragnarok Online(RO) is an online RPG game, loved by people for its simplistic design and low PC requirements. I've started playing again recently and decided that some monsters of that game are cool, and were probably made with "cool" in mind. But then again, there are others that were probably added in towards the end of the design phase, assumingly by coffee-drowned people sitting in a meeting room for two hours and too occupied struggling to hold their urine in. Out of desperation they made really crappy monsters just so they could meet their monster-creating quota.

This article is the first of that list of "latak" monsters. Without further ado, we start with our first monster:

Geographer



What it's supposed to be:
It's a mutated plant that harasses all nearby warriors by attacking it with vicious appendages.

Why it sucks:
It's a plant that looks like a sunflower. A sunflower, provided you don't have any allergies pose as much a threat to you as Philippines would to, say, Russia (unless theyre all allergic to Filipinos there). I can't think of a situation where you'll be proud to say you gained the strength of a hunter by shooting flowers. That doesn't make you a hunter. It makes you a flower picking hippie, or a farmer at best. The monster can't move, with its only skill being healing - making it about as threatening as an NPC. The only challenge it presents is the alarming number of other players who want to kill it faster than you. Damn hippies.

Enchanted Soil, Mi Gao



What it's supposed to be:
It's magically animated soil controlled by the spirit of the guardians of Louyang to prevent foreigners from entering their cursed country.

Why it sucks:
My girlfriend told me the soils look like menacing empanadas. That's already going out of the way to describe them, considering they actually look like semicircles that try to kill you. I remember we already had something like this before. Yeah, I think the dots from Pacman looked like Mi Gaos. I thought semicircles went out of fashion already after we learned to use 8bits for computer games. I guess I'm wrong.

Mysteltainn

What it's supposed to be:
Sentient sword of darkness forged by a legendary black smith, using the very twig that killed the God of Light, Baldur.



Why it sucks:
Look at the description. I slightly wet my pants thinking how awesome something with that description can get. The mysteltainn is supposed to be a godkilling sword that thinks for itself. You'd think people won't get stuff like that wrong anymore. I did, and I thought wrong. Take a look at the RO monster. It has something I never thought anybody would attach to an inanimate object outside a cheaply made battery commercial: STICK ARMS AND LEGS. What the fuck were they thinking? "Oooh a sword that comes to life. I know something similar that we might base our art on. Pinnochio!" The end product is a sword that has a very long body and very thin arms, with the tip of the sword extending down his legs in a disproportionate manner that remotely suggests a dangling penis. And then how does it attack? It swings its body towards you like it wants to teabag you or something. From godkiller to awkward teabagger - save the career of Ashley Simpson, there's no failure bigger than that.

Rocker

What it's supposed to be:
Oversized grasshopper monster that kills people for fun. ... ... ... Yes, I'm trying very hard here.



Why it sucks:
It's a grasshopper. It's larger than a man. It has a guitar a funny hat and occasionally, it has eyeglasses. In the artworld we call it surrealist bullshit. If M.C. Escher's paintings have citizens the Rocker would probably be the town mayor. I'm pretty sure it took more than just an enlarged gallbladder to convince people that a monster like this should be in a game like Ragnarok Online. The only way to appreciate the Rocker is to be as high in weed as the game designers who made this horrible enemy. I tried to find sense in this monster, I really did. I ended up just wasting an hour of my life over nothing. The Rocker should be the textbook example to the kids who dream to become game designers in the future. "Here it is kids," says the preschool teacher, "proof that you can do better."

Boiled Rice


What it's supposed to be:
We here at Public Static have no idea whatsoever. Staple Korean food?

Why it sucks:
Stop the presses, we have a winner. Rice. Not just rice. Boiled rice. I wonder if fried rice would be somewhat more intimidating, all that oil might be good for something sinister. I guess fighting boiled rice is awesome, since you're actually fighting 2000 rice grains uniting against you. But then again, if you did win against it, you'll have this voice at the back of your head whispering "You're wasting perfectly good grace there." and you'd probably see images of your parents getting ready to beat your ass. Lose-lose situation. Okay, let me just let this out. WHO IN HIS RIGHT MIND WOULD THINK OF COOKED RICE AS SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE FOUGHT WITH BRUTE FORCE? Really. WHO?

I'd like to think Boiled Rice was a mistake. Like it's supposed to be an item and then accidentally got put into the suggested monsters list. Maybe the gamedesigners weren't being lazy, they were just being careless. I don't know.

Let's just put it this way. If somebody asks you to think of a good qualities of an RPG monster and then you start thinking that being a potential sources of carbohydrates as a sinister trait, you're missing the fucking point. By miles. You should try getting another job, preferably one that does not involve making calls that affect the mental capacity of other people.
That or go play in traffic blindfolded.