When a genre experiences a breakthrough game, it's usually not long before the imitators come rushing in. First-person shooters and real-time strategy games both experienced a veritable deluge of titles, some good, many mediocre. Then came MMORPGs. The success of EverQuest, and the realization that people would pay a regular fee to play it, produced yet another flood of titles, with a few greats (say, Dark Age of Camelot or World of Warcraft) with a lot more dreck that's best left forgotten.

The latest mess to hit the market is RYL: Path of the Emperor, a port of a popular Korean MMO called Risk Your Life. It offers very little that you can't find in better games and wraps it all up in a buggy, lag-ridden package.