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Rift: Impression from the final beta
Overall, a very polished game even in the final beta. I played for about a little over an hour. I came away fairly impressed at the quality prior to launch. The collectors head start is 2/24 and standard release is 3/1. To qualify my opinions here, I played Final Fantasy XI for several years, a little WoW and FFXIV. I've checked out Age of Conan but never subscribed. So my evaluation of Rift here are in comparison to those games.
In The Beginning
The character customization is fairly detailed. Six races and enough options to keep too many players from looking alike. It’s also very quick to get through this and select your class. I decided on a Mathosian Rogue. Unlike the nearly 30 minutes spent customizing in Final Fantasy XIV, I spent about 5 minutes to get the kind of character that I wanted. A very user friendly interface. That is a theme that I will repeat a lot here.
After my character was set I picked a PvE server or as they are called in-game: shards. There are several types available for those who don’t like PvP, including combo servers. Then I selected my faction (Guardian) and a 90 second CG intro to my faction began. I then found my level 1 character in a temple with a NPC that had a mark over it’s head directly in front of me.
Settings
Before starting, I went through all the menu options. I was pleased to find that the key-bindings are fully customizable with primary and secondary options. All the graphics and sound options are also easily modified and accessible. The default resolution is 1280 x 1060 which actually is a nice default for those with less powerful systems. The recommended specs for this game is only a 2.2GHz Dual Core, which is mid-tier at best, as well as low end graphics cards, so you can tell that they designed this game for the average PC owner. On a 2.6GHz quad-core and Radeon 5750, I was able to maximize all the settings without any noticeable lag. This was on a low population server so it will remain to be seen if this is the case once the server begins to fill up.
Starting Out
Back to live play, I moved forward to the first NPC who tells you to visit the gatekeeper. This starting temple is nice and small. Not a lot of area to cover. So I head to the stairs on the right toward the other NPC. The mini-map is excellent, providing large icons of NPC locations and detail of the paths can be seen. The game is also has a very small learning curve as help menus from movement to souls to accepting quests seem to pop up at just the right time. I was actually in mid-sentence at one point saying "Now how do I …." and pop out comes the help menu. Next is my one primary gripe with Rift. The movement controls. Running forward appears much slower than other MMOs. Strafing side-to-side and stepping back are at half the speed as moving forward. Frequently I had to stop, swing the character slightly in a different direction and then starting running forward again. I was very happy with the inclusion of an auto-run feature that partially removed this problem. It was also an issue when I had a link later from a Corrupted Knight from behind. It seemed to be a two-step process in order to engage him as I had to step forward then swing around to face the mob.
Once I reached the second NPC, I was allowed to select my first soul (Bladedancer). The soul system is a skill tree of the class that you selected for your character. This is easily a strength of the game. Each of the 4 classes currently has 7 different souls options (the website shows one more coming soon). Each character gets to pick three of those. Each soul has its own tech tree somewhat similar to that of Diablo II except that it takes several points cumulatively in a soul to open the later branches instead of 1 per skill to unlock the next branch. The higher spells and abilities become available depending on the number of skill points, which are earned at every level up, you place into that particular soul as a whole. The strength of the ability, spell, or passive trait will depend on the number of skill points you place into the particular skill. Skills range from a maximum of 1-5 points. After my selection I was directed to the graveyard outside. The sky is murky and frequent cataclysmic comets crash down around you really putting you into the feel of a post-apocalyptic world under siege. A very short run to my next NPC who gave me a quest to defeat 6 defiled souls.
Let the Quest Begin
The quest system is very simple, again it appears to be made for the novice at this point. There is very little text to them, so those who hate wordy NPCs that require page after page after page of reading or button mashing of the Enter key to get through it quickly will rejoice. All the quests were 1 or 2 mini-pages that took up about a third of the left side of the screen. It’s more about directive than narrative. Now to the combat. The combat system features a menu bar very similar to Final Fantasy XIV. While it was a detraction from FFXIV, it works here. Once you engage a mob, an auto-attack sequence will begin and continue until you take an action or one of you is defeated. This will obviously be nice for farming or assisting on lesser mobs at higher levels. Here on level 1, if you don’t use your skills on the menu bar, you can almost always expect to be defeated. The cool-down is very quick on most and your energy to use them fills rapidly allowing a nice succession of skill attacks. Combos don’t seem as powerful as you would think they would be but it’s too early to tell if this is really a balance issue or just the design of low level mechanics. Following the battle you will receive experience and sometimes get to click on a golden glow on the corpse of the fallen mob to grab the loot. Once I cleared out my 6 mobs, I returned to the NPC and received my reward of experience points and a healing item. Nice and smoothly, the next NPC for my successive quest is standing next to the first one. Altogether, I did 5 quests. The third quest gave me my second soul choice (Riftwalker) with recommended combinations of souls. This is where the fun customization of skills begins.
Graphics, Sound, and Mobs
The next quest took me to a nearby town. Like most things to this point, there is a lot of detail in the scenery but the mobs and NPCs seem to be of lower detail. It seems to be a hazy blurring effect so this may be intentional. Again more murkiness associated with the corruption of the locals. The graphics are not in the same realm as those of Final Fantasy XIV but exceed that of World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI, especially in the area of smooth textures. To sum it up, it’s newer type graphics but designed with somewhat lower quality to accommodate older PCs. The background music did set the tone fairly well but neither that nor the battle themes were memorable. The sound effects seemed generic in battle sequences but were otherwise of good quality. The most notable sounds were that of the comets streaming through the air on their way to crashing into the ground around you.
Some nice touches were being able to see Corrupted Knights actually breaking into civilian homes and dispatching the owners. Further on in the town, undead devices were emitting a blue light on the heads of helpless citizens turning them into undead horrors. Once again, a nice job here by the production team immersing the player into what appears to be an active event. If you stay around long enough in the area you will see actions by the mobs and NPCs repeated but the first impression of walking into a city under siege was well done. Later on in the woods when I encountered an enemy, frequently they would be working on a device or crafting when I came across them and started a battle. I found it a refreshing change compared to meaningless mob spawns just walking around a given radius of their spawn site with no apparent purpose for example as in both Final Fantasy online games.
Dressing Made Simple
Now the equipment actually had me confused for a moment but that was from my expectations of a more complex system. The equipment system is so incredibly simple that once again it appears to be designed for the novice player. When I received a new weapon, I opened the character screen on the main menu, expecting it to have a sub-menu that I would need to search for it through to find like so many other MMOs. This is not the case in Rift. Equipping items is as simple as opening up your satchel (inventory) and right-clicking the item you want to equip. That’s it.
What I Missed
Keep in mind that I did not attempt crafting, PvP, or examination of the economy.
The Final Minutes
To finish off my time in the beta, I took my character outside the second town and wandered the woods for awhile, taking on any corrupted that I saw. I did die once. The death system allows you to spirit walk or just choose resurrection back at the starting graveyard. I chose the latter. There is a 5-minute cool-down weakness timer associated with it just like Final Fantasy XI.
I really enjoyed playing Rift for that limited amount of time and I look forward to giving it a thorough play-through when it is released. I would recommend this to MMO novices and those with older PCs that want a newer game.
Comments
Here is a good site for some crafting information.
Link: http://forum.mmosite.com/topics/576/201101/11/36,1.html
I seem to be the only one saying this, I hated the graphics in Rift. They were murky and washed out looking, to me anyway. It reminded me of the really old Speed Racer cartoon of the early 70's (Yah I'm old, but at least I made it!). Other than that, Rift was ok, certainly nothing special.
Seemingly infinite class customizations! Win!
I think these guys are payed to hail rift.
This game ain't that good.
Eh I played and it just isn't my type of game. I can't get into it when all I'm doing is pretending to play the piano when fighting monsters.