Rifts: Promise of Power: A Palladium Fan's Disappointment.
Written: May 02 '06
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Product Rating:
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Pros: It's Rifts, the class selection is pretty nice.
Cons: Slow, ugly, and buggy. There are much better games out there.
The Bottom Line: Steer clear. Hope Palladium gets another chance at putting something decent together.
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| Alkaiser's Full Review: Rifts for N-Gage |
I had been waiting for a Rifts game for quite some time now. We used to play the pen and paper RPG back in college, and after about the 2nd or 3rd time we created characters and noticed that we had about 50 situational +1 or +2s to keep track of, I decided that someone needed to computerize this, and like, now.
That person would not be me. The time would also not be back then. Or even 5 years later. No, for some reason, the guys at Palladium never saw fit to put their game out on a console until they found one that was apparently failing spectacularly enough to meet their needs. Instead of putting this game on the DS, the PSP or even the GBA, the guys over there waited to put this on the N-Gage.
Which left me in the position of having to buy an N-Gage.
After I bought the N-Gage, I couldn't find an actual copy of the game anywhere. It was listed as "Out of Print" from every reseller I tried, and I finally tracked down a used copy at Amazon...a used Press "Not for Resale" Copy.
So, I was out about $80 for one game, but I'm only going to review this as a $30 purchase. It's not really fair to bash the game for circumstances taht are kind of out of its control. (Though, putting this on a real console would have taken care of most of those errors.)
The game lets you choose from three "Proto-Classes" to start. You're either a Male Mercenary, a Male Mage, or a Female Psionic. Once you hit Level 4, you'll be able to further specialize, and become anything from a pyrokinetic Burster to a Psi-Sword wielding Cyber-Knight, or a mechanized armor wearing Glitter Boy pilot.
The game also has variety in the number of locales you'll be heading to. You'll go to 5 different Rifts World Books, from Chi-Town all the way to China.
This is where the strength of the Rifts world is, in the diversity of things you can do. But it quickly bogs down to a lot of the same stuff in this game. For example, I decided to take the route of Burster, and the first power I got was a Fire Bolt. Unfortunately, that power did less damage than a shot from my Ion Pistol, so there I was running around all on fire, and shooting people with a pop gun. Fantastic.
Speaking of combat, Rifts is all done as a turn-based combat system. This is fine, as I like TBS games, but the combat ends up being so slow, it's almost as bad as playing the actual game. There are several parts of the combat that are just lacking polish, line of fire gets calculated badly in regards to what level your enemy is at (obstacles on the ground somehow block fire for enemies positioned behind them...in midair.) and the movement system not allowing you to "take back" your movement, giving you time where you put yourself in a vulnerable position waiting to get unloaded on because you can't actually take a shot from your destination...but you wouldn't have known that until you moved.
Graphically speaking, Rifts falls short, as well. I'm not sure if this is just a limitation of the NGage, or what, but the animations or either recycled or clunky, and they're all together too long, further lengthening combat. The worlds don't have much different to the lot of them, and aside from the closeups on your characters, there isn't a thing I can praise the art department for.
The game isn't too bad in the audio department, with a decent enough soundtrack and effects, but when that's the only thing I can compliment, it's a pretty bad game.
Overall, I'd recommend steering clear of Rifts. The trouble you'll have to go to get the game isn't worth it for a game I wouldn't even recommend playing on a system that hadn't failed.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
Alkaiser
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Member: Clayton Chan
Location: Irvine, CA
Reviews written: 655
Trusted by: 344 members
About Me:
Broke the 700 pound mark on my leg lifts.
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