RF Online Next
About the game
RF Online Next is Netmarble's reboot of Rising Force, its sci-fi MMORPG: the same planet Novus, the same three warring factions — Bellato, Cora and Accretia — and the same endless fight over the Holy Stone mines, rebuilt from the ground up. The real shift isn't in the story but in where you play it: it's one game on PC and mobile, with a single account and a single progression, so the session you start at your desk carries on from your phone with nothing left behind.
Biosuits: your class isn't a life sentence
The centerpiece is the Biosuit system. Instead of picking a class at character creation and living with it forever, your character swaps suits and swaps roles along with them: melee, ranged firepower, durability, mobility or support. Gear and progression carry over, so trying a different playstyle doesn't mean starting from scratch. And since every suit flies, fights play out in the air as much as on the ground — altitude is another position to contest, not set dressing.
Around that sit the series' heavy toys. MAUs are pilotable mechs that can turn a battle on their own; Launchers bring long-range artillery; and Animus summons fight at your side. The game looks and feels deliberately bulky: a lot of machinery, a lot of explosions, and fights where it pays to look up.
A three-way war, not a duel
The heart of the game is mass three-faction PvP, and that's where Novus stands apart from most of its peers. The Mining War runs in two stages: first each side's guilds compete for the right to represent their faction, then those guilds go at each other to destroy the rival excavators while the rest of the server piles in as mercenaries. With three sides in play, reading the field matters as much as your gear — who commits against whom, and who sits back, decides more than any individual duel. If large-scale PvP isn't your thing there's plenty of campaign, dungeons and grinding, but it's worth knowing the game is built around that war.
What you pay for and what you don't
It's free to play with no entry fee: you download it from the official site via the Netmarble Launcher or from the Epic Games Store on PC, and from Google Play or the App Store on mobile. There's no Steam version. Monetization runs mainly through the Biosuit gacha, with rarities from Common up to Myth, plus Rover and Animus summons, progression packs, tickets, upgrade kits and cosmetics. On the friendly side, the game hands out Rare and Epic Biosuits at level milestones and for taking part in the Mining War, and MAU and Launcher upgrades scale without gacha RNG, making them the safest investment if you'd rather not spend. On the uncomfortable side: you can clear the PvE just fine for free, but competitive PvP and top-tier gear are plainly pushed toward the shop. It's an aggressive free-to-play with Netmarble's usual spending pressure, and in Korea that model paid off — the game hit number one in mobile revenue in April 2025 — so there's little reason to expect it to soften.
Where the game stands today
It's live and actively supported. It launched first in Korea on March 20, 2025, then in Japan and Taiwan on September 30, 2025, and reached the rest of the world on June 16, 2026 with 16 added languages — Spanish among them — across North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. The first major global update, on July 1, 2026, brought the Mining War itself, the cross-server Albern Crater region on the outer planets, the five-player Arcane Trials dungeon, the Expansion gear category, Epic-grade skills, and the epic Pantera MAU and Basilisk Launcher. The Korean version runs ahead on content and works as a fairly reliable preview of the global roadmap: what lands there — like Paradise Battle, the seasonal mode for up to 200 players — tends to make it over eventually. One caveat on reviews: there's no published critical consensus, and the Metacritic page exists but sits at zero press reviews.
Who it's for
It'll land well with anyone after mass PvP with real faction identity who doesn't mind a long progression curve, and with anyone who wants a serious MMORPG they can actually play on a phone without it being a stripped-down version: the PC-mobile crossover is well executed and is its strongest argument alongside the Biosuits. Veterans of the original RF Online will recognize Novus right away, even though the game itself is a different beast. Against it: this is a free-to-play that pushes hard toward spending at the competitive end, the story and quest design are genre boilerplate, and going in without a guild means missing half of what makes the Mining War interesting. It's worth the download — it's free, and there's real fun to be had without paying — but go in with your wallet closed and clear expectations: endgame here is contested in groups, with shop pressure hanging over it.