RIFT draws on the best aspects of other fantasy MMORPGs to create an entertaining and dynamic game. It's a game that is definitely worth the time that MMOs demand.
The Pros
- Rift invasions are great fun
- Dynamic class system
- Polished gameplay at launch
The Cons
- Well worn fantasy setting
- Standard MMORPG gear grind
- No automated grouping system for dungeons
RIFT Review:
Trion World’s RIFT is part World of Warcraft, part EverQuest 2, part Warhammer Online and all fun. With its dynamic world invasions constantly spawning, there’s never a dull moment while you quest, group, raid, PvP and craft your way through the world of Telara.
At first glance, RIFT looks like all the other fantasy MMORPGs out there. There are heavy influences from many sources, including WoW, EQ2 and others. The developers cherry picked the best features from those games for their own. If that’s all they did, we would be disappointed. Instead, they used those familiar systems as a base to build two great features into RIFT that makes it stand apart from the rest: the dynamic invasions and the flexible class system. And that’s what makes this title undeniably addictive.
The Invaders At The Gate
Here you are in the world of Telara, merrily questing your way through the countryside, killing 10 rats and running delivery quests. Quest objectives appear on your map so you know where to go and a quest tracker on your screen tells you how you are progressing. Suddenly, a call goes out across the zone. A dozen enormous rifts tear open in the sky and other worldly creatures pouring out of them. Before you know it, you are in a raid group that is thrown together on the fly, and you are battling the planar beings intent on overrunning your world. Thirty to forty-five minutes of frenzied mayhem later when the last rift has been sealed, you are rewarded with generous loot based on your participation and are free to go back to your level grind. Until the next rift invasion breaks all hell loose on the land in about an hour or so.
That’s the beauty of the game. It breaks up the monotony of the standard level and gear grind so common to these kinds of MMOs with the rift invasions. The invasions happen constantly and are great fun to participate in. They scale based on the number of people that are in your ad-hoc group as do the rewards. There are side missions as well stopping the planar creatures who try to invade and conquer nearby quest hubs and towns. Plus there is usually a boss mob that requires a full 40 person raid to take down to end the invasion. Choose your level of involvement and the game will reward you appropriately.
Deep in quest mode and not interested in the current invasion? You can usually skirt around the invasion hotspots to continue with what you were doing, but if your quest hub is overrun or your quest mob had a rift dropped on it, you are going to have to find something else to do until the other players take care of business. But if you skip the rift invasions, you are missing the point of the game. The really, really fun point.
Multiclassing For Fun And Profit
The other great feature in RIFT is the flexible class system. Once you pick your archetype for your character among the warrior, rogue, cleric and mage options you are introduced to the soul system. Souls are essentially skill trees focused on unique roles for each archetype. Warriors can pick the Beastmaster soul, for example, to be a pet class or a Mage can choose the Warlock soul to be a debuffer. Your character can pick three souls to work with out of eight available to each archetype and invest points into each one to get what you want out of them. Mix and matching souls to fit your playstyle is great fun, but the true beauty comes next.
What if you choose three specialties, invested points into them and decided you don’t like it? No problem! Not only can you reallocate your points, you can actually choose different souls to work with. A few simple quests at level 15 allows you access to the other five souls you didn’t choose early in the game. You are still limited to working with three souls at any given time, but you can eventually buy more loadouts and switch between them any time you are out of combat. Warriors can have a tanking loadout with three souls that fit their style, a second loadout with three souls that are better for dealing with magic-based bosses, a third for DPSing and a fourth for off-tanking. No need to roll alts within the same archetype and face another gear and faction grind because another playstyle appeals to you. How’s that for multiclassing?
More Than Just A Pretty Face
Rift invasions and the class system are the crown jewels in this MMORPG. But the questing, group instances, PvP and crafting are top notch as well. Instances are designed for five players and are created around themes. The Realm of The Fae instance is sectioned out according to the seasons, for example. The creatures, foliage, even the weather changes from summer to fall to winter as your fight your way through the realm of the faeries. Each boss encounter has its own challenges and drops prized loot. You can tell the designers spent a lot of time making the instances immersive as well as enjoyable.
PvP comes in many flavors. Battlegrounds called warfronts are accessible as early as mid-teens with new maps and objectives opening up as you level. The first is a capture the flag variant, but holding on to the flag slowly kills the holder. World PvP comes later. Upon character creation you choose if you are going to side with the divinely-inspired Guardians to save Telara from rifts or the technologically-inclined Defiants, sent back in time from the future to prevent the destruction of the world their own way. The two sides have ample time to clash later in the game.
Get Your RIFT On
Trion did a great job of making gameplay fun, immersive and addictive. This title is a great addition to a genre that no one thought would see another great success since WoW. If you are burnt on your current MMO, I would highly recommend RIFT. If you are new to MMOs, this game a great place to start.
Comments
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sijmister
For anyone for whom this would be a deal-breaker, the game does now have automated dungeon grouping, also, the maximum raid group size is 20 not 40. I wish they would update reviews for MMOs as they evolved, considering that they are dynamic games that constantly change. Even if it was just once every year, which would be perfect considering that it has been exactly a year since Rift was released.
LordRath
Ok, so I play both WoW and Rift. I see alot of people complaining about no dungeon finder. Lets get an understanding that wow was out for over 5 years before a dungeon finder tool was implemented into the game. That was midway through Wrath of the Lich King. Also I have played WoW since its launch, and the first year of that games launch, it was a horrible experience to play, constant server issues, unbalanced gameplay (anyone that originally rolled a druid or a pally in vanilla wow can attest to that) and lack of dungeon finder. Wait a minute, come to think of it, for 5 years people had to either have guildies run them through low level dungeons, or wait in the main cities for hours on end hoping to find someone to run with them... I know because I am the person that originally posted the idea for the dungeon finder on the forums for wow to begin with back in may of 2009. By October, we had a dungeon finder. So remember, all the Wow fans out there, every game has to start from somewhere, Wow was not this pillar of perfection for almost 5 years, the least you can do is give the guys and girls at Trion 6 months before you completely destroy them with your unfair assessments. I think compared to WoWs origins, Trion learned from their mistakes and hit the nail as close to the head as you possibly can, without completely ripping off Blizzard.
LordRath
Ok, so I play both WoW and Rift. I see alot of people complaining about no dungeon finder. Lets get an understanding that wow was out for over 5 years before a dungeon finder tool was implemented into the game. That was midway through Wrath of the Lich King. Also I have played WoW since its launch, and the first year of that games launch, it was a horrible experience to play, constant server issues, unbalanced gameplay (anyone that originally rolled a druid or a pally in vanilla wow can attest to that) and lack of dungeon finder. Wait a minute, come to think of it, for 5 years people had to either have guildies run them through low level dungeons, or wait in the main cities for hours on end hoping to find someone to run with them... I know because I am the person that originally posted the idea for the dungeon finder on the forums for wow to begin with back in may of 2009. By October, we had a dungeon finder. So remember, all the Wow fans out there, every game has to start from somewhere, Wow was not this pillar of perfection for almost 5 years, the least you can do is give the guys and girls at Trion 6 months before you completely destroy them with your unfair assessments. I think compared to WoWs origins, Trion learned from their mistakes and hit the nail as close to the head as you possibly can, without completely ripping off Blizzard.
iMdmfc
Look for some help here.
Is this all there is to the game. . .6 races? All of which are pretty much human or elf. That was the hole attraction to WoW. And grant it I play DCUO which is all humans. . .or furries (I'm not judging). . .but really? No kinda monster of bestial creatures?
Yes the skill trees are unique, but Is it just a 'right-click-and-attack-while- pushing-1-10' type of combat?
I'm on the bubble about trying this game out. It looks good from the cinematic trailers and interesting from gameplay videos on youtube. But is it worth in? If so, why?
( ^-^) YAY!!!
Maddogicus
It is actually just a copied set of programs stealing the ideas from WoW and Dungeons and Dragons Online. It uses the basic WoW interface right down the the same keyboard commands, and It uses the look of the Quest system from D&D. Not very original. The graphics are much better then WoW but on par with D&D. Mods are seriously needed to address the downfalls on the interface, especially in the AH. The RIFT raids are interesting, but they just let anyone in the area join, even players at to low of a level to even be able to damage the enemies.
With what they have stolen from WoW, they have missed alot of the most helpful things that WoW has added, especially the Dungeon Finder system. In WoW you just place yourself in a Dungeon finder and you just have to wait until it is your turn. WoW even tells you how long it will be and hit that time pretty close. In RIFT, you have to spam chat so it distracts you from questing to spam the chat to find a group. They either want more guilds playing together, or could not figure out how to program it into their game.
While WoW is getting a little old and you end up running the same things over and over, RIFT is missing so many of the things that make the game easy to play in the long run. Not sure i want to continue to pay while they try to get it right
avc75
To the people trying to hate it because of the low numbers compared to WoW...
1. Why would you come to another game to try to bring it down? Doesn't that say a lot about the lack of confidence you have in your own game if you try to bring other NEW games down before they get a chance?
2. It's a brand new game only out for a month. There are still those I've talked to who don't know about the game yet. Give it some time.
Fans of this game should copy the Morgan review where she gives it a 4 out of 5 stars, and pass it around. Copy the link I mean inside the video. For the X-Play crew to give a game 4 out of 5 stars says a lot about the game in a good way.
Asmarelda84
Critterforhire is very right the org tool didn't come out for wow until burning crusade which in my opinion was the better of the expansions.
But this is about Rift.... I have given this a 5 star rating. I have played almost every mmo starting with Ultima Online moved to EQ/EQ2/DDO/CoH/WAR/WOW and so on. I personally found this game to be a lot like EQ2 and that was a game I loved the most besides UO. I think personally that this game will have many awesome years to back it up. I think this game will be the next big thing. And feel that it deserves 5/5 seems odd they would rate 4/5 with such a great review. And a LFG/LFD tool shouldn't be the cause of 4/5 stars. Seems WoW has cuddled their Player base to much including but not limited to G4 employees as well.
critterforhire
To be fair, WOW didn't have an auto-grouping for instances when it 1st came out.
crocodilius
It's a shame that people feel a false sense of loyalty towards Blizzard or WoW, because i've already enjoyed and spent more time in RIFT than Cataclysm. Trion listens to its fans, snaps its fingers and changes happen.
It's just proof what a free beta (and free week of gameplay with preorder) do for you!
On the other hand, I'm really just playing this game until I get my hands on the Old Republic and see what it's like. MMO market is finally getting some GOOD competition and it's the consumers that benefit!
AMDFreak
THis is obviously a biased review. We all know what fans of WoW G4 are. In fact they listed the lack of a LFD tool as a con. That right there shows how much of WoW fans they are. Did they list that specific con in other MMO's without a LFD tool? no they did not.
I wonder what this game would have gotten without the WoW bias slant.
ScottyMadlove
Be warned: Not a game for World PVP. Very little incentive for World Pvp. Don't be fooled by promos. If you left WOW or any other game due to poor PVP. This game is not the answer.
beachard5
one of the cons should be and for every MMORPG they do on this site should be "Its not WoW" even though WoW sucks it seems to be the only MMORPG to get a 5 out of 5 on here and this game should have gotten a 5 out of 5 its probably the most fun ive had on a MMO for a very long time.
Xarion
Based on their review, it really doesn't seem like the game deserved 4 stars instead of 5. Based on my experience playing the game, it DEFINITELY deserves 5 stars and not 4. Best MMO I have played to date, and I've played plenty. Honestly, I had been waiting since the game launched for the episode of X-Play when they'd review Rift and give it a 5/5. But alas, a 4/5, which in my book means "almost there." Rift isn't "almost there," it's 100% all there.
Lacheris74
RIFT is definitely a WoW killer if there ever was one. Very polished right off the bat, fun to play from the beginning, and it came out at the right time. People are getting tired of the 'same old WoW' and RIFT tossed that salad quite nicely if I do say so myself...
Lacheris74
RIFT is definitely a WoW killer if there ever was one. Very polished right off the bat, fun to play from the beginning, and it came out at the right time. People are getting tired of the 'same old WoW' and RIFT tossed that salad quite nicely if I do say so myself...
Fatty_Matty
I've never played an MMO before, but I think I'll start with this game :)
micrapple
Love this game. It's like a combination of what's good of every mmo game out there plus more.
estaples ShowHide(1 Reply)
GTFO, WoW clones!
sarid
how is the lack of a LFD tool a con? if you are going to downrank games for not having a community ruining feature now then i guess every damn game made should be no stars
aaron1983
Thank you for an honest review!
Don't get too sad about the LFD tool, they'll probably make one soon.
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