RIFTSTORM

In this current state of the game, It's kinda difficult to recommend this game But honestly I found myself oddly quite enjoying the game several personal pain point for this game is : 1. FPS drops in crowded situations, which makes the fight quite annoying 2. The "rougelite" element is too shallow. Did like 2 - 3 runs and I realized I always take the same Lythograms. Maybe its because of my preference, but more Lythograms types would be nice and I assume this is already in consideration. 3. Experienced crash once after like 3 hours playing. I assume this is because of some form of memory leak? idk i forgot to copy the log 4. One time I was joined by some random players buy they quickly got disconnected. Also once I did a failed mission and the players can still join. There should be a check to prevent this. It's super weird to allow player join failed missions. 5. How come the hugger Mutated enemies can "hug" the defend objective and the only way to kill it is by using skill? That aside, the hugger elites run at an absurd speed to hug you. I faced 2 of them in a defense mission, and have to spam button, and that enemy is a frustrating run ending. I can tolerate the mechanic, but that is the worst enemy I've ever fought in any game. Rework / Rebalancing would be nice. 6. Personally, I don't feel the "Looter Shooter" experience. Every mission feels like material gathering with weapons case as a bonus 7. My biggest complain is in the Rift Zone with the bodyslam mutated enemy. I find it frustratingly annoying unable to fight back and just have to dodge a lot of body slam attacks with little to no time to fight back and just hoping your Lythograms or skills do the job. 8. Better tutorial system would help, like how to face the enemy first time when you encounter them, or how the weapons works and behaves. 9. The orb thingy ghost enemy type could have longer trail line to the host ghost thingy for pointing to better direction. Aside of that, I feel this game have a massive potential, but I find this game still unpolished in a lot of parts. Hopefully this game will improve in the future Quick edit : also hoping offline mode can be applied in the game rather just a launch option

Overall I'd Give it a 6 out of 10 as an Early Access Game. (version 0.6.2.1) A lot of the pros are also cons right now. I am hopeful that this game succeeds at 1.0, but will take some work. Potential is there and if you want to kill 20 hours and support an EA dev team, the sale price of 11.99 is worth it. I have reached level 50 (current max) with one character and mid 40's with two more. my maxed weaver still has 8 skill points to unlock due to difficulty obtaining weaver dataseeds, which are needed to spend the earned skill point. The gameplay loop is good in short doeses as a solo player, and with co-op you can rush missions with ease. There is a lack in mission objective variety, but they are working on more mission types. Some characters feel more 'done' than others and the combat can be challenging at times. The rogue-like style level ups we all came for feel... slightly underwhelming at times, depending on the character. I dont regret buying the game, but do hope that Confiction Labs successfully flushes it out by they call the game done. They have already started addressing community complaints. Enjoyable for an EA title. Pros: -Interesting concept for the world if it gets developed more - character variety checks some boxes, but could use some tweaking - Co-Op is more fun if your game doesn't crash, if you don't get kicked or disconnected - some of the legendary weapons can make a positive impact on gameplay and make the missions fun from start\ - Beta mission type Killbox has a lot of potential. it is an endless run that lets you flush out a build and earn a ton of resources and weapons ( no credits for now though :( ) - Co-op offers ways to unlock more, faster Cons (term used lightly. these things can be improved on before launch: - solo play gets boring - not everything is explained to you in game. (context: i had my wife join me for a few missions and was confused on how to find a few mission identifiers and it led to her wasting time on missions that weren't progressing anything) - Characters need some balancing. Hertz does same damage as any DPS but doesnt have to worry about survivability as much as two other DPS characters. Characters that use pets for their abilities don't feel special. I often found that I was focusing more on gun play than bothering to use my summon abilities, because my gun was doing the job just fine. - Caracal (another character) is locked behind earning some extra materials, rather than story progression and his gameplay doesn't feel like it was any more special than any other character. I wish my first play throughs with him made me feel like it had been a worthwhile goal to achieve - Credits, the main currency, are a time wall. Though a recent update increased the drop amounts on higher difficulty missions, it takes three missions to buy a gun from the store once you reach Threat Level 4. Everything you do requires credits. Repair a gun? 6,750. Skill point? 6,750, Craft a gun? 3k-7k, Craft an Augment? 3k-6k. Mission rewards at Threat 4 award 6k to 13,500, with exception of max difficulty (9999) which awards 20k. - Co-op is unstable for some players right now - some interactables in-mission have potential to overlap with other objects, making it hard to select things some times. (minor annoyance) - when playing missions with multiple levels, I have gotten brought to a 3rd floor that had the exact same layout as the first floor I was on. While in this game it is not possible to go back to a previous floor, I was confused for a second and thought I had. Reusing maps is okay to a point, but leaving a floor to travel to an exact copy makes it boring - To max out skill points for characters, you need a weaver dataseed which is only availablle in urgent missions. missions are reset every 15ish minutes and unless you sit playing for long periods of time like I did, you may not see one offered for your character if you play Hertz, Rook, Botsy (3 of 5 current characters) - it takes a little time to get a build moving, and often, by the time you have a well performing build, you are killing the boss (never took any longer than 45 seconds), you are going to base and dont get to play with it

It's OK. I was in a long run and it crashed. I don't think I'll go back. Great potential, but probably too early for EA. A typo in one of the subtitles was telling. :)

Extractionlite? Nah. RIFTSTORMLIKE! Lets make RIFTSTORMLIKE a reality!

I think this game is trying a lot of things at once and the team doesn't know how to prioritize it. Some things are great, but a lot of it feels shallow. I suppose that's why its Early Access, but is definitely not for everyone. I like it, and I think the team is engaging the community in the right way, so +1 from me.

Fluid gameplay, interesting backstory, decent visuals. I think there's a room for polish in some area, but it's ok for now, can't wait for this weekend to invite my friends to join in multiplayer mode

Riftstorm is already a lot of fun with a great foundation to build upon. It combines a few different genres like looter-shooter, extraction and roguelite which all work decently well together despite them not being that deep yet. The looter shooter aspect revolves currently around only guns, no armor or trinkets. There are currently 28 of them which are all more or less unique. Their itemization goes as far as each roll with a gear score and 1 - 4 passives. The passives are mostly bonuses you can get during a run so it takes away some rng in a nice way. The Roguelite part works good too. During a run you often get to choose between different upgrades ranging from simple damage increases to stuff like projectiles bounce, create black holes or home in on enemies. There currently dont seem to be a ton of upgrades so you often the see the same ones. The extraction aspect is the weakest part of the game right now and doesnt really add much to the experience. If you fail a mission you lose all rewards and your weapon might get a debuff but you wont lose them and you can repair them fairly cheaply. You always have the option to leave missions early. There are also 5 Characters to play as all with their own abilities, some augments to them and a passive tree. You can fully spec every note in a passive tree so there isnt much choice besides what you take first and last. I cant say how much about how they differ from eachother because I only played Starling so far but from looking at my teammates they do have unqiue play styles. Some positives + Shooting feels good + Movement feels good + Enemy variety + Elite enemies are good + Location variety + Some "build" possibilities Some negatives - Some desyncs in coop when joining late - does have what I assume is a place holder story right now I think Riftstorm is definetly worth a try at the moment. Just keep in mind it is early access so some things are bound to be off and will get fixed