E3 2012: RaiderZ Wants to Raid the West

RaiderZ might be a tough sell for a Western market. Despite having some clever ideas as far as classes and combat are concerned, RaiderZ character aesthetics are very clearly targeted first and foremost for an Asian audience. Sure, visuals aren't everything, but when you're going to be staring at your screen for hours on end, and when you have increasingly more options for free-to-play MMOs, you better be into what you're seeing.

Let's start with what RaiderZ does right -- namely its combat and class systems. Instead of mashing on number keys like World of Warcraft (which I'm a fan of, by the way), RaiderZ takes a more hack and slash approach, with combat closer to God of War than EverQuest. Every enemy you fight telegraphs their attacks, giving more skilled players ample time to roll away from a strike. Many of the attacks and abilities my character had had big wind up times, too, so there's a certain trade-off when you want to do brutal strikes instead of quick hit melee hits.

Having more action-focused combat in an MMO isn't enough to make a game stand out today, though, and RaiderZ innovates with its clever take on monster drops. On top of loot, monsters will regularly drops their weapons or parts of their body when they're slain. So for instance when I worked my way through a group of skeleton archers I could grab their bows as I killed them, giving me a couple of new skills for a few moments before it disappeared. They also dropped their skulls sometimes, which allowed me to pick them up and, if my aim was good, hit another skeleton for critical damage. Other monsters like zombies will drop limbs you can consume for buffs, while bosses will sometimes drop pieces of themselves that you can wield as well. It's a cool hook.

While you start as either a Beserker, Cleric, Sorcerer or Defender when you first create your character, you get to put points into the other professions' skill trees starting at level 10. This means that you can be a damage dealing Beserker and pick up some healing abilities from the Cleric profession, creating a hybrid class. The hope is that this will make you feel less committed to a rigid progression structure, and instill a feeling that you can create your character however you choose.

The profession options are pretty open, but the actual avatar creation process is decidedly less so. Developed by a studio in Korea, the character models are Eastern takes on what caucasian people look like. Fans of J-RPGs might be into lithe characters who can have frosted blue and pink hair, but I think that publisher Perfect World Entertainment will have a hard time getting RaiderZ to have mass appeal in North America without additional visual options. I could be wrong, of course, but I just don't think the characters currently in RaiderZ appeal to the fantasy most people have in the west.

RaiderZ releases later this year, and will enter closed beta in the near future.



Source : ign[dot]com