Bowser’s Review of RIFT
Story
The story of Rift I feel so far is interesting and fairly unique. However, it doesn’t feel very deep. The first few quests and events describe, it seems, pretty much everything you need to know about the world. I do like how the game starts; when you start a character you find that you’ve been revived, the world is under attack, and you must go back in time to stop it from happening again and try to save your world. Rifts happen in the world because a certain dragon is trying to gain control (think Archimonde and the Burning Legion), and the story basically just goes from there – at least so far. As I delve into the world further I find that the quests change up quite a bit. Most have to do with some form of grinding, but honestly it doesn’t seem tedious due to dynamic / seemingly random events happening in the area on a regular basis. More on that later, in “Rifts and Dynamic Events”.
Controls and UI
The controls of the game are very simple, as you would expect from any MMO, and the UI is very customizable. Even without addons, you can freely move pretty much everything around the screen, and display it as you want it, where you want it. A very nice feature, indeed (as I would expect from a modern MMO). All keys of course can be bound, movement and camera options are very similar to in WoW. Honestly, the controls and UI are a very attractive feature in this game, offering more customiziblity out of the box than other MMO’s I’m aware of.
Quests
The quests are very simple, and the quest interface is pretty awesome. It will track quests for you automatically, show you where you need to go (both on the minimap, but also a directional arrow near your character that aligns itself to the direction of the quest, comparative to where your character is facing). It also can highlight an entire area, of where you can complete the quest – like, for instance, if you’re having to kill boars it will highlight the area that boars can be found. The quests, at least so far, just include a brief description and contains what exactly you need to do to complete it. The quest dialog itself is very similar to WoW, in that it shows you your monetary and material reward, and gives an even briefer summary of what you need to do. The quests aren’t necessarily fun, but I don’t feel they’re necessarily tedious either, thanks to the extremely helpful tools. As far as story goes, the initial quests seem to be all about the main story, whereas the quests from, say, level 5-10 are mostly just quests for random NPC’s asking you to do things. Aside from the initial quests, they don’t really tie into the main story (which is fine), but they also don’t really have a sub-story. Honestly, I think that was one of the things that made WoW so fascinating. But, then again, WoW had a lot of back-history with its previous games and novellas.
Graphics
The graphics are pretty good, although not overly impressive. Still, movement is very smooth, the characters looks good, and the environment is beautiful depending on the time of day. As the sun sets, however, the environment becomes a little too dark, I think, but can be resolved by turning the gamma up. The spells and abilities graphics aren’t incredible, but they’re not bad either. Overall, I think the developers could have gone with a more vibrant and exaggerated color scheme for the environment, spells, and characters. Too many developers focus on fewer colors with more tones, whereas WoW did the exact opposite; I suppose many players could critize either design, but I favor the more colorful approach. Either way, Rift seems to have taken the middle ground here; there is clearly a variety of colors while it maintains a more standard RPG feel, sort of along the lines of classics like DAOC, Lineage, and EverQuest. Also, the lighting and tone changes as dynamic events happen; when a Rift is nearby, you know it – the sky becomes dark, the music changes a little, and the environment takes on a Duskwood style feel.
Characters & Mobs
The characters, upon creation, appear very diverse. Not so much as in WoW, but still each race has it’s own body build, skin complexion, and facial features, most of which are customizable (you can customize body build, and you can adjust a character’s height to a marginal degree). However, out in the field, many of the characters look very similar. Of course, identifying a race isn’t important to tactical gameplay, but I always thought it was nice to know a race from 100 yards; it just gives the game that much more variety.
The mobs can be anywhere from copies of playable characters, to pretty awesome looking creatures. There doesn’t appear to be a huge variety of mobs yet, but I’m also in the beginning stages of the game. And, of course, this is a very new game. My expectations are honestly, and reasonably, lower than what I would expect for an expansion to an existing game. Still, I like the mobs so far I’ve seen in the game.
Races & Classes
There are 8 different races each with their own powerful and unique racial abilities. Any race can become any of 4 classes, and each class can choose from 7 sub-class (called “callings”, which are placed in the character’s “Soul”. Souls are basically a talent tree, and the specific talent tree you choose is a “calling”. While I think I still like WoW’s system better, I do greatly appreciate the tremendous amount of flexibility a player has in choosing what talent-path he/she gets, and should make it very interesting in the end-game. We’ll just have to wait and see, but so far I like the new system. +1 for being creative, and for trying something new.
Spells and Abilities & Combat
Some of the racial abilities are cool, and can be very useful. And, for the most part player abilities are reminiscent of classic archetypes. A player immediately gets talent points and spells as soon as they level up; there’s no waiting until you’re level 4 or 10, like in WoW; from the get-go you get to choose your first talent point.
For combat, I’ve found that the game is very, very easy. While not entirely a bad thing, I’m sincerely hoping the dungeon experience becomes much more difficult, and that content in general in the latter stages of the game equally so. Aside from that, the combat system is very similar to what you’d expect from an MMO.
Environment & Dynamic Events (Rifts & Invasions)
The environment clearly shows that a lot of work has been put in to it. The game-world appears to be about as big as the Eastern Kingdoms in WoW. Don’t let that fool you though (especially long term players), because there is an aweful lot of content in a relatively smaller space. For starters, there are more little camps and villages spread throughout the entire zone - if you compare this to WoW you’ll note that there was really only one town per zone (in Vanilla), whereas in Rift it’s closer to 4-5, or sometimes more. Many of these little camps offer quests, a slightly different look and lighting, repairs, etc. I’ve heard that mob spawns are dynamic, with more mobs spawning the more that are being killed by players. I’m not sure if this is true or not, but I can say that hunting for mobs is a very painless process, regardless of the number of players in the zone.
Now on to Rifts and Invasions.
Rifts happen as the protective shield around the world, Telara, is attacked and broken through. A “rift” is caused that unleashes small invasions into the immediate area of the rift. Rifts are very easy to spot, and can be difficult to stop, depending on the strength of nearby players. Rifts go through various stages, similar to a typical boss fight. Each stage offers new mobs, or more mobs, perhaps of a slightly higher level, and then finally a mini-boss. Most Rifts can be defeated with about 10 or fewer players of equal level. The most awesome thing about Rifts is that there are different types of them, so it opens up a more interesting experience for the player, and is seemingly random. Also, Rifts can happen seemingly anywhere in the game-world. Once, while I was questing, a Rift appeared directly in my questing area. While this might be a nuisance for some, I feel that it breaks up the monotony of grinding, and you feel the need to rally with allies to defeat the event. It is especially encouraging to see people gather from around the zone to help you. I noticed while looking at the map that Rifts tend to be the same level as whatever mobs are in the area, and one interesting thing to note, too, is that multiple Rifts can occur in the same zone. I saw as many as 6 Rifts in the same zone, which I thought was really fascinating.
Invasions are assaults from NPC’s of the opposite faction. That faction’s NPC’s will storm a beach, for example, and then set up a patrol in the zone they’re in, and head to one of the towns (not always the nearest town, which I think is very smart on the part of the developer). You can see the invasion’s patrols on the map, but you can sometimes be blind-sided by them, too, if you haven’t looked at the map recently. You can run from the patrol, or you can find nearby allies to help you fight it. Patrols usually consist of about 3 mobs and a mini-boss (like a Lieutenant).
Music and Sound
The music is very fitting and seems to be quite good. I haven’t heard that many different themes yet, and I haven’t noticed anything truly inspiring just yet, either. Hopefully that changes, because I’m a huge fan of epic music in a game (e.g. Storm Peaks, Darnassus, Thunderbluff in WoW, etc). However, I know that a lot of players in general tend to turn the music off and listen to their own playlist, so not a major complaint.
Partys & Raids
Partys are uniquely awesome, in that there are “public” parties you can join as you encounter a unique event, like an invasion. As you near an Invasion event, you’ll see a dialogue prompt at the top, which is completely non-intrusive, that allows you to joina Public group for that area. This method makes it so much easier to defeat mobs and such, and is a huge relief for healers (and tanks!). The raid interface is almost identical to many of the UI addons found for WoW; very simple and efficient.
Content
The content is surprisingly good. The environments are full, as discussed earlier, and each zone is packed with quite a bit of stuff to do. There are in-game achievements that you can get for various things, and there are dozens and dozens of quests for each zone. I found that I had too many quests, in fact. The Rifts and Invasions make the game very interesting, too. My only gripe is that one of the cities, Meridian, seemed vacant, or half-finished. Meridian is a large, main city for the Defiant faction, and though large, architecturally seemed unintuitive. Also, it seemed void of interaction; there weren’t a whole lot of NPC’s or other stuff going on within the city. Perhaps that’s as intended, but it sure surprised me that there wasn’t more activity.
Dungeons
As of this writing I have not experienced dungeons just yet.
PvP
As of this writing I have not experienced true-PvP just yet.
How it compares, Summary
In summary, I find that this game could become a great MMO. It already has many great things about it, but if the developers hope to compete with WoW subscribers they should look to continue adding a lot of content in the next few expansions and mini-expansions. The game is already very good, and I think it’s important for any carry-over player (those coming from other MMO’s, notably those that already have multiple expansions) to understand that this is a very new game and as such may not have the type of content they’re expecting. However, I’d also like to suggest for people interested to try it out, because this game seems to do a lot of things very well, and certainly has a lot of promise. Of note is what I consistently hear about the developer; that they’re a hard working group and listen intently to its customer-base, and not only that, but they’ll make changes almost immediately upon hearing feedback. The game is very polished, all things considered, and is a lot of fun to boot.
I hope my review was helpful, and I’ll update the Dungeons and PvP section as I experience them. If you have any feedback please leave it below.
Also, unlike Warhammer's Open Beta, I never found a bug, never got stuck in the geometry, and never CTD. The game itself is polished and it feels ready for launch. None of this "we'll fix it later" business. It just feels solid. And on my brother's weaker machine (Nvidia 9800gt, dual-core), I ran it on Ultra with very little frame drops, where as Warhammer which uses the same engine, lagged worse on LOW. I was stunned at this. xD