Rift Reviews

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Written by Brother None on April 27th, 2011

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First and foremost these rifts are a gold-mine in loot - there's no shortage of stellar gear to be had . Secondly, if you chose to ignore your NPC attackers they won't just take mild offence and catch the next bus back to the Plane Of Death for tea and biscuits, they'll force their way into the nearest encampment and overrun it, forcing out your quest givers, skill trainers and crafting gurus no rift battle, no levelling.

The occasional full-scale planar invasions suffer a similar problem. The elemental enemies attack NPCs in packs, and attacking them solo is suicide - but attacking them with a full raid party offers no challenge. There's definitely a sweet spot between "going solo; get crushed," and "zerg rush" but it's rare to come across, especially in lower-level, more populated zones.

That said, that's mainly a player problem - and the actual dynamic content itself is a neat idea that makes the world of Telara seem more alive. It's almost enough to make up for fairly dull traditional content: Aside from a few standout quests here and there, almost every quest in Rift is some variant on "Go here, kill these guys" or "go here, bring me this thing." It's functional but uninspired, and unlike the dynamic content is unlikely to hold players' interests in the face of Cataclysm, The Old Republic and Guild Wars 2.

I have trouble calling Rift a real genre standout or an important game. I would love to be able to look at this game as a bookend, a signifier of the end of the WoW era. It recycles a great deal of the systems and mechanics of its predecessors, only with a little spicing up and a shiny coat of paint. It, in fact, improves on a lot of stuff other games are doing. The problem here is that the MMORPG world is getting really crowded and simply buffing up old ideas isn't enough to warrant an exceptional game anymore. I like Rift, and it is a good way to spend your evening it won't make you too mad or even ask that much of you but it just doesn't do enough innovating to demand high praise.

The fact is that RIFT takes the best parts of WoW, WAR, Age of Conan, and countless other MMOs before buffing them to a shiny, glorious finish. Unfortunately this may also be its downfall. There is no light-heartedness in Rift, no pop culture references. While the questing is streamlined, and the crafting more so, the casual players may not enjoy the serious nature. Sure, it has content for every level, including plenty of end game dungeons and raids, but it may not be able to captivate a big enough audience. Given the huge amount of similarities with World of Warcraft, why play RIFT when the former has lower specs and a more inviting atmosphere?

Is questing a grindfest? Well sure, it's an MMO. It is still the standard (Kill x amount of y, collect x amount of z), so on and so forth. But luckily there are only 50 levels, and they come fairly quickly, and a pretty environment does help ease the pain a bit. And depending on which server you roll on, there are a decent amount of players on at pretty much any given time, and the community is generally helpful to even the stupidest of players, without snarky comments beckoning the poor sap to (l2p). Another nice perk no riding skills or level requirements for them. If you have the money, you can get a 60% mount at any level. With the collector's edition, you're actually given the 2-headed tortoise abomination my character can be seen riding in these screenshots.

The guys at Trion Worlds took a lot of stuff that works, from various MMORPG's and mashed it together into a rather pretty package. So far, the gameplay elements are very solid and I found myself getting lost in the game very quickly.looking up and wondering where the time went. On the flip side of that, they left out all of the things that seem to piss gamers off. Like I said, it seems they probably spent a lot of time reading the message boards of all of the top MMO's and getting an idea what to do and what NOT to do.

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