Riders of Icarus – First Look – by BoxCatHero
Genre: F2P MMORPG
Developer: WeMade
Publisher: Nexon America
Release Date: Jun 29, 2016
Riders of Icarus is a new MMO that is currently in closed beta from Nexon. In the past, I know Nexon has been accused of questionable business practices, but in recent years they have shown no signs of it, and for that I am glad. I rather enjoyed Maple Story when it had came out, although I never reached what was considered end game. Riders is a far cry from the days of Maple Story, as it’s played as your standard MMO or as an action MMO. What I mean by that is with ‘standard’, you target your enemy by clicking on them, then using your skills. Action, however, you aim your character towards it and use your skills via a reticle similar to what you would see in Devil May Cry or Bayonetta. It also promises aerial and mounted combat which unfortunately I was not able to to unlock on Closed Beta 7, becuase I got the key at the end and was only able to play a few hours. I was, however, able to get a basic understanding of the game, and to play around with a flying mount for a bit.
As far I could see you are a member of the Hakanas royal guard assigned to the princess.While escorting her, you are attacked and captured and the princess is taken. What small amount of story I was able to get through after that was an escape from the prison you were put in. You then have to make your way to the capital to let the king know what happened. Now let’s dig into the game features! As I stated there is aerial and mounted combat in the game, though I didn’t get far enough to unlock it. One the main draws for this game is you can tame wild beasts as mounts and, using an item, you can turn them into pets that will fight beside you. They gain levels just like you, and you can give them items to further their power.
Let’s move onto the classes since it is an MMO, there’s gotta be some, right? Indeed there are! There are actually only five classes, each with their own set of skills and combos. They are Berserker, Guardian, Assassin, Wizard, and Priest. In terms of other games, Berserker is your heavy melee damage class, Guardians are your tanks, Assassins are your thief-like class, and Wizard and Priest are self-explanatory as they are pretty much the same in any MMO. I played Berserker for the review and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Ain’t nothing like taking a large weapon and just beating something into the ground with it.
Anyways, another of the unique features in the game is how the quest tracker works. In most MMOs you have the quests displayed in a column on the right, however with Riders it does that and more. In other MMOs it goes straight down the column, and sometime the list goes off the screen. In Riders, it is split into pages and a distance and direction counter has been added beside the quests.
The crafting system is simple and easy to use. You just go to the production area of what type of crafting you want to do, and use the crafting station there to produce that type of item. That is pretty much as far as I got with the game system itself. With that said, let’s move onto the graphics and audio. The music in the game is amazingly well done and gives a sense of the environment you’re currently in. Take for instance the Capital Hakanas, which is a massive city, throw in the music and abience and you’ve got a massive bustling city that feels immersive. The in game cinematics are absolutely gorgeous and well voiced. I personally normally skip through cutscenes, and these I did not even try to see if you can skip.
I can honestly say that looking at what I saw of the game as a whole that it has great potential and will be a great addition to the gaming community. Will it be able to stand up to games like World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy 14, and Blade and Soul? I honestly have no clue if it will or not, however, I can safely say that it will not go down without a fight. It will all depend on how well it can grab players and keep them as well as the content as a whole. Once open beta starts on July 6th ( June 29/30th for founder pack owners) I will update this review to be a lot more through as I plan to delve into the game as much as possible before the 6th.
With that said, I can’t give a concise Drastik Measure score to the game as whole, but I can give what I’ve seen a 7/10 (70).
