Also known as Ragnarok Online 2 or RO2, this is the second attempt by Gravity Corporation to make a proper sequel to Ragnarok Online, the MMORPG based on Myung-Jin Lee's Ragnarok (1997) graphic novel series. Development started back around July 2010, when Gravity announced that the previous sequel project, Ragnarok II: The Gate of the World, had been scrapped in favor of Ragnarok II: Legend of the Second, which sports a new game engine (Gamebryo instead of Unreal Engine), a new art direction, and a reworked story. The Korean version launched on March 26, 2012, with the Southeast Asian version following on January 3, 2013 and the international version on April 18, 2013. Also available on Steam.
Legend of the Second's story opens with the events of Ragnarok (1997), in which Chaos—Odin's reincarnated son and the god of light, Baldur—fought the goddess Freyja with the help of a band of heroes, seeking to prevent her from destroying all of Midgard. In a final cataclysmic battle known as the "Day of Despair," Freyja was finally sealed in Vanaheim. Three hundred years later, Freyja's followers—calling themselves the Freyjanity—kidnapped children all across the Rune-Midgarts Kingdom. Following an investigation discovering the location of their research facility, King Reinhart ordered the Knights of Prontera to eliminate the Freyjanity and rescue the children.
The Knights waged a bloody battle with the Freyjanity's monsters, but ultimately succeeded in their mission. Many of these children were orphaned by the Freyjanity's machinations—so Zeras Hyperion, leader of Prontera's Knights, stepped forward to raise the orphans himself. What none of the Knights realized, however, is that each and every one of the kidnapped children had within them the power of the Heart of Ymir—and the Freyjanity has not been truly exterminated.
Ten years later, the orphans have grown into teenagers preparing to graduate from the Elemento Academy, a Military School nestled deep within Mt. Mjolnir—and that's where the player's journey begins.
In November 2013, Gravity announced that the Korean RO2 servers would be closing down on December 23rd 2013
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Ragnarok II: Legend of the Second provides examples of:
- Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Culvert and Culvert of Abyss definitely qualify.
- Art Evolution: In-game character models are much closer in appearance to the art style from Ragnarok (1997) than they were in Ragnarok Online or Gate of the World.
- Instead of the minimalist white-and-blue UI style used in RO, Legend of the Second's UI looks as if it was crafted from leather.
- Big Good: Saintess Aione probably qualifies as this.
- Breakable Weapons: Unlike RO, weapons and armor have a durability gauge. They'll need to be repaired from time to time by a repairsmith.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: The game starts to turn a very pay-to-win color starting around the Darkwhisper area, where solo play becomes less than tenable unless you have highly upgraded armor or powerful healing. This gets exaggerated to a nearly comical degree in Forgotten Payon, where normal monsters can drop you with only a few hits if you have light armor (and heavy armor won't last that much longer without those upgrades), and absolutely beaten into the ground in Jawaii Ocean Island where getting oneshot from full HP is totally ordinary. While it could be argued that attempts were made to mitigate this by adding limited ways to get refinement materials (mainly Blessing Powder and Infinium) in-game, the quickest and easiest way to get them is still to shell out in the cash shop and it evidently never occurred to anyone before the development team was lost to just massively nerf the offending monsters and solve the problem that way.
- Character Class System: Although Legend of the Second pays homage to Ragnarok Online's class system, it is much different here. For one thing, there are no Novices; characters start off as what would have been their first tier class in RO. There are also no Merchant or Merchant-derived classes—instead, Legend of the Second has a Dual-Life System, in which all characters have both a combat class and a crafting class, and have the ability to vend items like a RO Merchant.
- Christianity is Catholic: Like in RO, Acolytes, Priests, and Monks have a strong Catholic flavor to their skills. Goes hand in hand with being members of the Odin Orthodoxy (see below).
- Continuity Nod:
- Chaos, the protagonist of the original manhwa, appears as a cameo in the opening movie that plays after creating a character.
- At Elemento Academy, History Professor Othello will quiz you on the events covered in the introduction. This is where you first hear about Chaos in-game and his nature as Balder reincarnated.
- RO veterans might have a heart attack when they find Eremes Guile coming to their aid while on a quest to rescue Saintess Aione.
- Class uniforms from RO are also available to wear, for that extra nostalgic feeling.
- The Blacksmith crafting class looks much like the Blacksmith of RO. Repairsmith NPCs also wear this uniform.
- Crystal Dragon Jesus: The Odin Orthodoxy takes after the Catholic Church in many respects. It's most easily seen in the Acolyte and Acolyte-derived player classes (see above).
- Dark Is Not Evil: Crescentia, one of the Noel advanced classes, uses a lot of dark element spells.
- Disc-One Nuke: Weapons obtained from Pandora's Box, provided they are correct for your character's class. In particular each first class is capable of using one of their second class' Pandora's Weapons (Swordmen can use the Sword, Acolytes can use the Mace, so on), so it's very possible to blunder into getting a blue-Rarity Pandora's weapon on a first-class character that can use it, and if you were intending to make them the second class that uses that weapon as well, you'll have something that won't be beaten until your level is in the 40s.
- Discontinuity Nod: The Recruit class from The Gate of the World lives on! Or at least, its uniform does—as a purchasable costume. The item description even mentions the Dampf Flinte steam guns Recruits use. The Executioner Meister's card also states him as being a Dimago from the same game.
- Dungeon Bypass: Warriors have access to the Battle Leap skill, which gives them mobility unheard of to other classes. There are cases where tricky jumps can be utilized to get out of bounds, with the Wonderland dungeon in particular being an example where it's possible to skip from near the start to the final room by using Battle Leap a few times to scale a wall, though this is questionably practical as the Normal and Hard versions are made for parties, while the Easy version is so trivial that it's hardly necessary unless you just hate getting constantly stunned that much.
- Gold–Silver–Copper Standard: Legend of the Second carries over the subdivision introduced in The Gate of the World, with Zeny represented as gold coins and Rupees as silver coins. 1,000 Rupees equal 1 Zeny.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: What happened to Roshia once he learned what the Rite of Passage for Noels entails.
- Growing Up Sucks: Noels, due to the loss of their immortality, have to inherit a Ymir's Heart medallion from their godparents once they reach a certain age. This kills the godparent in the process. The player character strongly objects to this idea, and wants to find a way to end it.
- I'm Dying, Please Take My MacGuffin: Lanuwen in the Noel prologue.
- Justified Tutorial: Each new character starts out as a teenager who's just about to graduate from a Military School.
- Last Lousy Point: Two Kharas in particular stick out. One for Acolytes to use the Resurrection skill ten times, and one for all classes to summon their Guardian fifty times (on top of the thirteen required to clear two other missions to access this one in the first place). The problem is that Resurrection has at best a base cooldown time of thirty minutes and requires another player to have gotten knocked down to use it, and Guardians have a flat thirty minute cooldown that cannot be reduced by any means, meaning that both of these are doomed to take an eternity. The former is especially bad for Acolytes planning to become Monks, as Monks can't cast Resurrection at all, meaning if they didn't complete the mission while they were an Acolyte, they're shit outta luck.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Kalain the Knight, a groundskeeper at Elemento Academy, will joke that if a character doesn't know where to go next, to look at their world map—"some almighty being upstairs" will show them the way.
- Lethal Joke Weapon: The Capture Mallet series of weapons, plastic mallets used in several different quests for capturing monsters. They're only a tenth as durable as most gear, but they have a huge attack power rating for the level range in which they're received.
- Military School: Elemento Academy, though it's more of a Mildly Military sort.
- The Mole: Oh, many Freyjanity does that.
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Baphomet.
- Also, the Queen of Destruction, Ungoliant of Despair, and Dimension Immortal.
- No-Sell: On the enemy side, some bosses turn invincible using a -100% damage taken buff, though this is unintentionally subverted as there are player-accessible skills that increase damage damage by a percentage, which makes the boss not quite invincible. On the player side, the Easy version of the Wonderland dungeon provides a flat 90% reduction to damage taken, resulting in near invincibility. If one should get an additional 10% damage reduction, either by being a Knight and being able to equip a shield which provides this or through an Armor Rune which is placed into body armor and can reduce damage taken by up to 12.5%, then that will be additive to the dungeon's buff, making them actually invincible, though sadly not so much to being stunned.
- Older Than They Look: Noels. They look no older than human children, but they can potentially outlive humans in terms of lifespan.
- Olympus Mons: Many five-star monster summons qualify, as well as a good amount of four-star monster summons.
- Orphaned Series: While the game itself hasn't been shut down at the time of this writing, the development team assigned to it was removed following the game's investors pulling out. Though still playable, there are currently no updates planned and still many outstanding problems, the likelyhood of them ever being addressed being less than ideal.
- Our Elves Are Different: The Noel, the first new playable species. They were once elves in the more 'traditional' sense, but were corrupted by Freyja's magic, transforming them into demons. The Noel are the result of this process finally beginning to reverse, though they now permanently resemble children, complete with horns.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: The Saintess Escort groups from Maple Forest to Divided Plain, the Saintess wear a different outfit while the rest were just wearing a peco hat. The Player Character and Eremes know who they were anyway.
- Point Build System: RO2 has one that is similar to what RO had, albeit with a few stat changes. Character combat class skills also have a point build system similar to RO.
- Power Creep: The game has it real bad. The first case is when shifting from Master Levels, as the initial gear for those hopelessly outclasses whatever you had up to that point, as well as the raid equipment that exists from before Master Levels were implemented. It happens again with Osiris equipment being a sharp power increase from the next best thing (Joser), and again but even harder with Eddga equipment, as that is where the Honing system becomes relevant, on top of being the first set to use Purple Runeholes (which can use a Rune that confers +80 to STR, INT, or AGI while earlier items can only use a +50 verison) and Gold Runeholes (which can use Cards dropped from MVPs instead of Runes, though those were added well after the Gold Runeholes were).
- Rainbow Pimp Gear: Steps were taken to avert this such as dyes and costumes, but this is still likely at early levels. Unless you're the kind of person who buys Kafra Shop items right out of the gate.
- Recycled Soundtrack: Although there are plenty of new songs, Legend of the Second also reuses some of the music composed for Gate of the World. This isn't a bad thing—after all, it's Yoko Kanno's music we're talking about here.
- The song used at the login and character selection menus is the same from The Gate of the World.
- The music that plays during the opening cinematic after creating a character is "Hold Your Life" from The Gate of the World.
- Prontera's music is actually a song from The Gate of the World called "King's Joy."
- Religion of Evil: The Freyjanity.
- Schizophrenic Difficulty: Localized in the final area of the game, Jawaii. The Ocean Island field map has monsters that will merrily oneshot you if you don't have enormous investment into your equipment, while the Normal and Hard versions of the Wonderland dungeon follow the same theme. The Easy version on the other hand, is a solo-only dungeon that gives you a 90% damage reduction buff which lasts until you leave the instance for free, with the kicker being that as outlined above, this buff is additive with other damage reduction effects, meaning that stacking it with an Armor 20 or higher Rune or a Knight's purple-rarity Master Level Shield will give you a 100% damage reduction, rendering you invincible to the enemies and making your victory a foregone conclusion as long as you can tolerate getting stunned on a constant basis and don't do anything stupid or strange that can result in self-damage, like spamming the Soulmaker's Sacrifice attack without healing or using the Warrior's Battle Leap skill to scale a wall and then falling in such a way that you take lethal fall damage.
- Shout-Out: RO2 has a few—
- Several times you'll meet up with a band of Rockers that call themselves Green Zeppelin. For bonus points, they're usually playing a song whose lyrics are very reminiscent of "Stairway to Heaven."
- Up in Bouquet Village in East Mt. Mjolnir, repairsmith Glain will ask you to get some Anti-Forever-Alone Pollen as a present for her brother.
- The Culverts has a plumber standing outside it named Mario. Every time you talk to him, he'll tell you he loves mushrooms.
- Vigilante Fiore of the Homewatchers' Southern Plains outpost will send you on a quest to take out the leader of the Afancs, Crimson Lightning. Not only is Crimson Lightning large and red, but Fiore mentions that he's three times faster than common Afancs.
- The turtle that takes you to the Sea God Temple couldn't be more blatant: It literally thinks that it is a Squirtle, and even communicates as such.
- The last boss in the Culvert of Abyss is a rat that looks like Master Splinter, not to mention that he summons a gender bended version of the said ninja turtles.
- Spell My Name With An S:
- Freyja's name was spelled as Freya in RO and in the Tokyopop localization of the original manhwa.
- Baldur was known as Balder in the manhwa localization.
- The Rune-Midgarts Kingdom's name was spelled as Rune-Midgard in RO's early years, as well as in the Tokyopop's manhwa localization.
- Rupees were called Rufi in The Gate of the World.
- Squishy Wizard: Wizards, naturally. Also Priests, and their respective base classes.
- Super Mode: The 'Ymir Children' form of Normans after reaching Master Levels. The Noel equivalent is 'Awaken Darkness' or 'Awaken Soulmate'.
- Story Overwrite: Noels, once you reach Maple Village, are treated as Elemento Academy graduates by NPCs, despite Noels having completely different backstories. It's especially jarring once you meet Zeras Hyperion in Prontera.
- Token Mini-Moe: Female Noels.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Maple Town, the Mayor of which is actually the Freyjan Elder Gedenhardt.
- Tsundere: Ruti Cereno of the Grooming Thieves. It takes four quests just to get her to even admit the following:Ruti Cereno: "Th-thank you for helping us out... Thanks, there, I said it! Hmph! This doesn't mean I forgive you for what you've done!"
- 20 Bear Asses: Expect a ton of these quests.
- Virtual Paper Doll: In some ways RO2 gives players much greater freedom of customization of appearance than RO. Armor and clothes are visibly worn, and it is also possible to dye certain pieces of equipment. There's also a Social slot which allows characters to selectively override their appearance with other clothes, so characters don't have to sacrifice effectiveness for style.
- Characters can also opt to wear their crafting uniforms outside of crafting. Now you can truly be a Lethal Chef!
- Warp Whistle: Kafra employees don't provide teleportation as they did in RO. Instead, there are broomstick-riding Kafra Transport girls that will, for a fee, fly you from location to location.
