RIFT, first impressions.
So I've finally gotten around to using that RIFT beta key I got some time ago.
My first impressions of the game are good.
You can tell that they've taken quite a lot of "inspiration" from previous games, but that isn't a bad thing.
The public quests around the Rifts remind me a lot of Warhammer online, and the public quests in WAR was a great idea so it's nice to see someone else also use it.
The class system is also pretty nice. There are only four classes, but it still offers quite a lot of variety due to how the "talents" system works. (They call it Souls, I guess. Don't know if they use different descriptions for different classes/factions. Either way, tomato tomato.)
Basically, you take WoW's talent trees, mash all of them together in a pile and then pick three. Each tree then has talents and "roots".
The talents work the same way as in WoW, while the roots are a slightly different system of gaining skills.
You don't actually gain any skills when you level up, you only get talent points. After you place enough talent points in a tree, you gain new a "root ability" linked to that tree.
So if you place six points in, say Stormcaller, then you get three Stormcaller spells (I think you got spells roughly every other point).
After you have the spells, you can go to a trainer at level up to increase the rank of your spells as usual, but you don't go there to get the spell in the first place.
This also means that you can go for talent synergy and reduce the number of spells you have or go deep into a talent tree to get more spells at the cost of versatility.
It's pretty much like: If you go pure fire mage, you would get an incredible amount of powerful fire spells, up to and including the "burn the world mega-inferno-blast", but you wouldn't any frost spells at all besides a measly frostbolt. You will deal incredible amounts of damage as long as the enemy isn't very resistant to fire.
On the other hand, you can spread you talents out a bit. You'll never get those insanely awesome spells (or at least get them much later than a pure build), but you have a larger variety of spells, and some of those talents back each other up, too.
E.g. I have a talent that causes my air spells to crit more often in one tree, an air spell in another tree that causes knockback and, due to a talent in that tree, decreases the cast time of my next spell cast after it. Finally, in the third tree I have a spell that deals good damage and boosts both my own and my summoned pet's damage vs that target each time I cast it, but it has longer cast time than my other spells.
I won't get any of the really big spells, but all of my lesser spells are more powerful overall.
I can't say much about the setting or anything so far, since I'm only level 7 (or maybe 8). Just go look at a trailer and you'll know as much as (or maybe more than) me about it.
And speaking of trailers.
This voice really does not fit the (extremely silly) game he's talking about. :D
"On sale ALL OVER THE UNIVERSE in autumn 2009."