A somewhat honest noob's thought on Rift.

korriken

Somewhat honest? yes :P I say that because, I have my reservations to a few things, or more clearly, I'm not sure if I like the feature or not.

 

anyway... here we go. I play a lvl 16 Chloromancer.

 

Rifts:

a giant hole opens up in the sky and (usually from what I've seen) giant tentacles come down. First time I saw it, it made me SO GLAD this game wasn't created by a Japanese company, because you know what would happen next! ...anyway. if you HAVE to compare it to something from another game, think of the events on Warhammer, except they happen in random spots and are more varied. Also, everyone gets a piece of the pie in the form of different tokens you can turn in for items, as well as occasionally getting an ephemeral sourcestone that can be right clicked to get a somewhat random item. yes you will see the same events play out, every game has its limits. No, they can't be soloed (unless you're at a crazy high lvl over them, but then, most of the time you got people swarming it anyway, the rewards are quite nice, at least at my lvl.

 

PVP:

I've yet to be one shotted. (THANK GOD) in pvp the damage, at least in the teens, is under control. in Black Garden usually whoever grabs the fang first wins unless someone pulls some sort of miracle, nabs the fang in the face of the entire enemy team and makes off with it and actually escapes, or someone does something REALLY stupid. Of course, its the teens and noobs will be noobs in the form of people running around with the fang, for some reason they can't seem to understand the concept that running won't save you, it just keeps the healers from keeping you alive for longer. grabbing the fang is a death sentence, but its the only way to win. Death in pvp just sends you back to the spawn point for a few seconds, so don't be scared to stand and fight.

Did i mention theres no "get out of cc free" trinket? While hard cc may not be that grand in pvp, given that damage breaks pretty much all cc and it only last for like 10 secs anyway. there are other ways to screw your enemy over, if you're smart enough to utilize it. for example, Chloromancer gets "natural conversion" you debuff a caster with it, and they go to finish someone off with some massive nuclear missile of doom. they launch it and the victim is healed for twice the dmg it would have done. whoops :P

 

Soul System:

AWESOME!!!!! I mean SERIOUSLY! Tired of being a dps? then swap out your souls and take on a new role. Also, the fact that there are support souls is... insane. I thought the day of the support class was done, given that most games only have the stale "tank healer dps holy trinity of mediocrity" Playing a rogue and tired of sneaking up and poking ppl in the back? go ranger for ranged dps and a pet, or go bard and support your allies with buffs and heals. There are only 4 callings, each calling has 8 souls and the 8 souls can be arranged in sets of 3, then you assign soul points, which you earn on level up however you like among the 3 souls (though you can't place more points into 1 soul than you have in lvl, so at lvl 15, you have 20 points, but you can only place 15 points into 1 soul and have 5 left over for another soul)

you start with 1 soul, before you're out of the noobie area, you should have 3, then at 13 you do a few simple quests to unlock the rest. which are pretty much this. find rift, help others seal it, get item, use soul catcher to summon soul, beat it down and drag it kicking and screaming back to the quest giver and enslave it for your own use... ok in reality you free the soul from Regulos' grasp and it shares its power with you.

Some souls have an interesting amount of synergy, you just have to find it. Some ppl QQ about some setups being op, but the game is still young, they'll patch it up in time. no mmo has perfect balance

Quests:

they're varied and have you doing different things... nothing too special here, there are plenty of them though, literally everywhere.

Graphics are Beautiful. absolutely gorgeous.

Soundtrack: very deep soundtrack.I especially love the battle theme that plays when you're fighting a death rift. the people who did the music are heroes in my book.

"How does it compare to wow?" *facepalm* WoW is a Hooptie. it used to be a shiny gold porsche, but half assed repairs by shadetree mechanics turned the 2011 solid gold porche into a 1981 ford pickup covered in rust. It looks like shit but it still runs. I'm not talking graphics either. its the small things, for instance, Garrosh Hellscream is the new leader of the horde. Fair enough. He's also the commander of the horde's forces in Northrend, and a snivelling maggot in Nagrand. Seriously, if you're going to move time forward in an mmo, don't half ass it. Move the whole story forward. that and reworking lower level gear to have more hp to counter the constant increase in damage in the lower levels would be a good step forward.  It may take a little effort on your part, but so does proper car maintenance. Trion has a shiny gold Porsche now. I just hope they don't turn it into a hooptie.

Ending thought. This game has enormous potential and one of the few games I've tried and not become bored at the beginning. From the very onset you're killing bigger than "a large rat" or "mottled boar". no, you're killing reanimated bodies of your enemy's victims. The constant rifts and invasions are a nice distraction from "omfg need to do more quests!" There will be ppl who scream and cry that this game sucks, but that's with any game. the best way to know if a game sucks is to try it.

I saw the marketing blitz trion did and almost passed it off as "one of them irritating wow clones" But, then, I saw the soul system and crapped my pants. The way the Archon class was designed pulled me in. a class based on buffs and debuffs and not the "dps/heal/tank" mantra that is so pervasive in mmos today. The fact I ended up going chloromancer is a fun bit of irony for me. Of course, being able to have 4 roles (specs for you wowtards) each of them set up very VERY different, is awesome.

Finally. a game with actual support classes. I just hope the rejects don't whine and cry and dumb this game down. If Chloromancer and Archon get turned into dps souls, I'll have to go try final fantasy 14.

drel

I can pretty much agree with everything the OP says. I've not been bored with the game. Once you reach level 13 and do a quest, you can change your souls whenever you want rather than starting a new character. Good game overall

Kremlik

I'd run quickly before the rabid haters of all things 'not their game' get you.

In MMORPG.com for every positive post about a game theres 20 troll/hate/jaded post towards it - if this site represented the gaming industry in general, the whole thing would have died 5 years ago and we would have been all outside right now.

Good post

xcutionr

It's sad that only negative post on this website get responses. Very well written.

Wrender

Actually you CAN solo a rift. Maybe not at lvl 10ish but get up around lvl 18-19 or so and if you catch one open when there is not a lot of people trying to shut it down it is soloable. Remember the difficulty adjusts depending on how many people are around. I have solod several by the time I hit 20 and soloing a rift is a blast!

itchmon

to the OP:

 

a) good review!

 

b) there are always tendrils of some sort, though sometimes they're made  of fire, or life.

 

It's good to see a positive review on this site.  Enjoying the game as well.  it gets my nod as the best current themepark mmoo (or maybe tied with LOTRO)

Skuldin

As a person that wrote a farily cynical review of Rift I am still moved by your post.  Perhaps if I didn't have WoW-fatigue with the shallow theme-park game set-up I would have been more positive in my review but even then I can appreciate when someone is truly happy about what they are doing and your review was one of a person having fun.

 

Cheers.