Riders of Icarus launched into Open Beta yesterday and we were there! In the starting area, we battled some mangy Ewoks, revealed the pitfalls of the action controls, and mounted all sorts of wild animals.
Riders of Icarus doesn’t mess around, it goes big! And it hits us with a cinematic scene right from the start, where we escape from a dark dungeon guarded by gigantic rhino soldiers like “Kung-Fu Panda.” Our heroine belongs to the princess’s bodyguard, who was kidnapped by a genuine anime villain named Rondo and his “Frostguard.” The game tells us the whole story through beautifully staged in-game scenes that certainly get you excited for more.
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Grand Theft Pegasus
Hardly have we processed all the action from the intro, and we are already battling our “Berserker” through the rhino hordes, smashing the brutish horn carriers left and right through the dungeon. Even the hefty rhino boss has nothing to say, and after we smashed his healing energy stone, the big guy quickly falls to the dust before us.
Next, whole armies of enemies rush into our place, and we have to flee. But instead of any horses or even donkeys (Black Desert Online says hello), we quickly grab a real Pegasus as a mount from the stable. With this flying beast, we take off on a gigantic runway and escape under heavy fire to a flying stingray with deck structures.
Crash Landing with the Ewoks
But we don’t get very far on the flying flatfish, as a stray ballista bolt brings a sudden end to the creature and we crash down. Unfortunately, in the dark Braghin Forest, a place where the knights of the Dragon Order are currently fighting against the titular Braghin. By the way, these are stout little bears that look like a particularly scruffy and wild variant of the cute Ewoks from Star Wars. Even the background music reminds a bit of the Ewok village on Endor!
So for anyone who has always wanted to take revenge on the furry creatures for the infamous defeat of the Empire from Episode VI, you can unleash your anger on the Icarus Ewoks, as many quests revolve solely around farming various types of these fur carriers. Besides the Ewoks Braghin, we also beat up various forest creatures, such as the obligatory wolves and foxes. Why are there always foxes? They are really not dangerous at all and totally cute!
No News While Questing
At this point, Riders of Icarus unfortunately slows down the pace of play, which started so spectacularly. The quests in Braghin Forest consist almost solely of the usual standard MMO stuff like “Kill X and bring me Y.” But okay, such quests aren’t necessarily bad when the gameplay works. Unfortunately, this only partially fits, as although we can now also play Riders of Icarus with an action control, the game is still fundamentally a classic online role-playing game with a control system that requires targeting. Even in action mode, which at first glance seems like Blade and Soul or WildStar, our heroine keeps running away while using skills – away from the currently attacked enemy to a foe further away that is just marked as a target.
So without periodically pressing the Tab key, we can’t get out, but at least we can dodge attacks better with the action controls and execute our combos more effectively. Although we have only a handful of skills at the beginning of the game, once we had the hang of things, we could pull off some cool moves and take down a whole pack of furry bears through the forest.
All the Luck of the Earth…
… lies on the back of the horses wild boars. That seems to be a saying from the Icarus world, as the game is mainly known for its immense selection of mounts. And while in a conventional MMORPG we only get our first mount around level 20, here we get our first mount right at the start of the game. The forest is full of creatures, and anything that can carry a human can usually be mounted, and we can tame them via a cool rodeo minigame.
So it doesn’t take long before we have tamed our first mount – a unicorn. But that’s not all; next, we grab a slightly dim-witted kangaroo and later the crown jewel of our collection, a hefty wild boar with powerful tusks! These creatures allow for much faster travel through the underbrush, and the longer we ride them, the tougher and better they become. With special weapons like a giant crossbow, we can even fight mounted.
Especially cool: Early on, we experience flying mounts in special quests; besides the pegasi from the intro mission (now that I think about it, where did the winged horse actually go??), there is also a particularly impressive quest where we have to rescue a phoenix chick in a trap and make our way there on the back of Mama Phoenix. Flying is a lot of fun and controls very smoothly.
Hero Standard and Sexy Armors
Finally, I want to say a few words about the character editor and hero selection. In the latter, Riders of Icarus truly offers no sensations. The game only features a mere five heroes from the five most clichéd classes that every MMO veteran has seen countless times. There are:
- The tanky guardian
- The healing priest
- The damage dealer classes warlock, berserker, and assassin
The three DPS classes differ in range (assassins and berserkers are melee fighters) and difficulty (berserker is the easiest, warlock the hardest to master). With this standard selection, Riders of Icarus certainly won’t win any originality awards. On the other hand, MMORPG players will feel right at home and won’t have to deal with any bizarre hybrid classes.
The character editor is also above average and is roughly the extent we’ve come to expect from Blade & Soul. We shouldn’t expect a second Black Desert Online, but we can still customize and alter a lot. Also positive: the gender separation of classes (gender lock) often found in Asian games is completely absent here. Every hero can have any gender, and female berserkers are as conceivable as male priests. Only the outfits of female characters are always much skimpier than those of the men, which looks quite silly, especially for heavily armored guardians and berserkers. By the way, there are (still) no races in Riders of Icarus; all heroes are human.
So much for my first hours in the Icarus world. Overall, I quite like the game, especially I’m looking forward to the many creatures. Unfortunately, the game plays a bit stiff and dated, like a souped-up version of World of Warcraft and definitely not as fluid as real action MMORPGs like Blade & Soul or WildStar. And the quest design was certainly not the pinnacle of originality, at least in Braghin Forest. But enough complaining; overall, Riders of Icarus is a solid online RPG with quite complex gameplay mechanics, and since the beta is currently free to play, anyone who loves MMORPGs and mounts should download the client and check it out.
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