Nukezilla Review: RIFT (PC)

My first true foray into the daunting, life-absorbing world of the massively multiplayer online side of gaming has been quite different to what I expected. I’ve owned RIFT for a couple of months and have reached level eleven, but after only fifteen hours or so of actual play time I have seen only a handful of other players. I had expected to be riding around vast plains on a trusty stead with other players I met in-game within the first couple of hours of starting, raiding caves and villages and engaging in epic battles with one hand on the keyboard and the other holding a pizza slice.

Yet, there has been just a faint whiff of multiplayer presented to me during my on-off immersions into the world of Not Azeroth Telara. Not that I have any qualms with a lack of multiplayer in an MMO, on the contrary: riding solo on a two-headed turtle beast, I’m absorbed in a game that feels more like a extended warm-up act for Skyrim. Not only that but I’ve found RIFT to be a challenging yet approachable experience, one I’ve felt has asked for no commitment to be made on my part: I’ve been playing the game in small bursts, jumping in and out at will and I intend to continue in that fashion.

RIFT dispelled my preconceptions of the MMO: I don’t have a basis for comparison – I’ve avoided the genre since playing Runecraft several years ago had me throwing my money and time away - but with RIFT I don’t feel like I have to make any commitments or sacrifices. There is certainly the option and indeed potential to play all day every day, but playing RIFT in short bursts has been relaxing; I appreciate a game that can allow me to listen to music while playing but never requires more than a few albums of my time.

The Great Outdoors

Fancily described as capacious, RIFT opens itself up in a way reminiscent of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. After watching a short cutscene to introduce you to the world of Telara and creating my warrior class character, I was standing in a large room that had only a couple of other non-NPCs present. There was a quest to take – which was pretty routine – and after a few minutes I entered the great outdoors… and by great, I mean bloody massive.

The quests and objectives I have taken so far haven’t had me travelling great distances but it is clear that RIFT has an expansive game world, the kind that will certainly house a great many quests to complete consistently. The reason for RIFT being called so is something that will make itself apparent when you start venturing out looking for quests. Remember the gates in Oblivion? Rifts are a little like them, opening up across Telara and spewing hateful creatures which you kill to close the gaping holes back up. Closing a rift produces its own rewards and with many appearing all over the place you’ll be hard-pressed to find yourself without something to do.

Rift closures don’t really count as actual quests so with individual NPCs able to give you multiple concurrent quests and the potential to have five active at any one time, you will always be occupied with something: you can take on a whole bunch of quests from a lot of people too, and change the active quests as and when you see fit. Several quests I’ve taken have been to improve skills acquired while playing, such as mining and foraging which can be improved by training and taking on side quests that have you traversing around outside of the storyline.

There are a line of main quests that progress the game’s story, but I haven’t been paying too much attention to the actual motivations for quests since many just require you to kill a certain number of creatures. Switching between quests is something I’ve been doing more and more frequently as I prefer to turn in bunches of quests at the same time, giving me greater lengths of time actually adventuring.

The quests themselves are at times so much fun I blaze through the dialogue without reading it so I can run gleefully off into battle: if I feel I need a bit of background information, I can talk to a quest giver at any time and choose the speech dialogue options that provide some detail. The opening part of the game is somewhat separated from the bulk of the game, so if like me you get a bit confused and miss some key details being introduced to a range of important characters will help fill in details about the world and what’s happening.

Soul Search

The story isn’t really a hook for me though: the combat and soul tree system are what appeal to me, and are RIFT‘s strongest attributes. I should explain the latter: as you play you’ll get the opportunity to choose three disciplines that take the shape of trees and sort of grow as you level up and apply earned skill points. Each discipline tree has branches and roots that correspond to different perks and attack moves that can be assigned to your character for use while playing and engaged in battle: using garnered skill points from levelling on the branch moves & perks unlocks more on the roots which can be assigned to the twelve keys on your keyboard above the letters.

There are six tabs which you can switch between but with twelve slots on each and a lot more moves available it will be down to you to decide which moves and perks suit which battle best: there are basic moves that have to be used to gain access to advanced moves in battle, so your choices will need to be strategic. Moves and perks use up attack points – for the time I’ve played I have yet to deplete my points bar but I expect to as I level up more – with more advanced moves requiring more points but dealing greater damage. If you use a basic move, you’ll get a point which can be used to make an advanced move more powerful; you can save up to three points so using a basic move a few times in a row then switching to an advanced attack is the most effective attack method.

There are a couple of moves I have so far that can deal with high enemy density, but dying happens almost exclusively when facing multiple enemies. You can summon creature companions to fight alongside you but these serve as enemy distractions more than help, so when picking a fight solo try to avoid doing it in a highly populated area or you’ll end up with one of two option: soul walk or respawn. A soul walk can be used once an hour, and basically entails you leaving your dead body and wandering around for a bit before respawning; respawning sends you to the nearest spawn point and needs you to wander over to your dead body to be resurrected. You can go the graveyard but I have yet to do that and I don’t intend to: each death and subsequent respawn chips away at your ‘soul vitality’, but with only a 10% loss at a time and healers around that can mend your soul cheaply respawning is much more efficient.

Gear Up

You need to gear yourself up with some equipment before you even consider fighting. Attack moves are effective but only with the right weaponry and armour. As you’d expect with an RPG like this you can choose between melee or ranged attacks – for mages there seems to be wands and staffs – with the choice entirely dependent on your disciplines and battle style preference. I much prefer swordplay but RIFT provides so many weapons and moves that it would be easy for me to dabble in ranged weaponry. My move choices cater to hack and slash though, so choosing the right sword is a personal priority. Quests can have weapon and armour-based rewards and they are how I’ve been chopping and changing gear the most: I’ve gone for sword and shield over two-handed weapons, because blocking attacks can prove very useful if fighting a strong enemy.

Armour can be important for attack purposes also though, since gear for different body parts can give your character ability boosts such as strength and endurance increase. RIFT can be very tactical for those who enjoy fine-tuning their experiences: from soul configurations for different battles to armour variance to soul tree branch choices, fighting styles can be intensely customised and scrutinised over. That said, I’ve been playing RIFT like I play Torchlight – attacking anything gung-ho with little consideration for style customisation – so those looking to just jump in and kill things can do so effectively.

The enemies are wildly varied but all destroyable, the customisation options exponentially numerous and the gameplay balanced acutely to provide challenge and accessibility for newcomers in equal amounts. RIFT has a fantastic polish – I run the game on low settings (as recommended by the game) but it looks great and can play it smoothly with the CPU-eating iTunes running in the background – and with any luck it will grow into a fiercely popular alternative to World of Warcraft. It will need luck though, as it is clear from playing the game and perusing the internet that Blizzard won’t be fearing Trion all that much: the RIFT community will need to grow a lot before I can truly recommend it for its multiplayer. There is definite potential though, in its raid system just begging to be utilised by many and the huge world of Telara waiting to be filled with new players.