Must Touch Pretty Flower
The interface looks a lot like RF online, with the red bar to indicate your life and the blue bar for your Chi (mana). The hotkey actionbar sits comfortably at the bottom of your screen, making it less troublesome to scroll your eyes around the imprinted skills. The graphics remind me of Dynasty Warriors for the PS2 (you cant blame me, they all dress the same way). The skills look pretty dazzling when executed. It's not everyday that you see an MMO with character models that blend well with their skill's lighting effects. The background is rather stale and could use a bit of work. Everything looks pretty hollow and the buildings don't seem to have that much texture. If I must cite an example, then I'd have to say that it looks a bit like GuildWars with less texture.

Seriously?
We all know that hacking has been a big issue among most of the MMOs today. This game however, managed to create a system that can end the line of hacking forever. The process is quite simple but rather insulting. In order to 'Seal' an item, one must first buy a sealing tool and apply it on a certain item. This makes it password protected and cannot be taken away without proper authorization. Once you're tired of your item however, you have to buy an 'Unsealing tool' to be able to make the item free for other players. The price is rather steep and is probably a waste of time. Unless you're a really paranoid player, this option wouldn't be much help and would only rip you off as time progresses.

Enough chit-chat! Where's the war?
Hero Online's combat is rather flashy compared to its MMO brethren. Cool skills like spinning blades, casting meteor storms and cleaving gigantic swords are all rendered perfectly to your delight. Everything is fast paced and the fonts used for hit confirmation is quite appealing. It always helps to let players feel how hard they can hit regardless of the sound effects.

As for you PVP-lovers, the game has a decent arena system that lets you plunge into an all out war that would remind you of Dynasty Warriors. Winning in the battlegrounds is quite rewarding since players can get good items upon victory. Some persistent territories also contain PK settings. This means that once you enter that zone, you're most likely to get killed (or is it the other way around?). In my opinion, persistent PK zones are quite good since it boosts a player's ingame paranoia. This means that the player will most likely be more alert, thus creating a fine link between the player and the game. Nothing makes you get into the game better than PVP (or the desire for vengeance hehe).