I finished Defiance in 3 days (all side missions and campaign) Read my Review.
-This is a long review about everything within Defiance - my final verdict is at the bottom if you wish to skip the body.
Before I explain a bit about whats in the game, let me explain The Game.
Defiance is not a bad game, its far from a bad game.
It is just a little disappointing considering the potential it could have had.
There is no doubt they team worked hard on the project but it just was not thought out entirely or in its entirety.
The game is good BUT it could have been an award winning, one of the best MMO's of the year product- but it just is not.
I played the game straight for three days 6-8 hours per day, so lets say I completed it in about 25 hours.
The longer I went on with the game the more I noticed that it had little to offer in content except for side missions and the campaign - there are other aspects like time trials (where you will have to drive your quad-bike as fast as you can through loops from points A to B) - then there are the shoot it outs whereby you get a highly power weapon and you must repel wave after wave of enemy.
At the end of these events you can see your score and the top 3 players ranked - the chance of you entering the top three is extremely limited.
Then there are ark falls - an ark fall is a bunch of rock like diamond objects that appear on the map. You travel to its location and alongside many other players you will have to kill enemies that spawn around it.
Once you complete destroying one diamond crystal rock then pick up your loot, jump in your vehicle and speed off to the next rock (There are about 5 or more rocks that appear in any given ark fall at a time).
Once all 5 or so ark fall rocks are destroyed then another one appears that features a boss - destroying the boss is very easy as about +- 50 players are shooting it at the same time.
Boom the hellion or scrap creature dies and you pick up your loot.
Lets talk about enemies.
This is probably the most disappointing part for me.
The reason is that the development team just did not make enough enemies in my opinion.
There are a feew classes of enemies such as:
-Dark Matter (The strongest)
-99ers (Mine diggers)
-Scrap bots (Machinery)
-Raiders (Weakest)
-HellBugs (Creatures)
-Mutants (Semi transformed human - zombie looking)
-Undead
Within each category there are enemies and a stronger unit. So all in all there are less than 40 variations of enemies in the Defiance Universe. Compare that the Guild Wars 2's 300 enemy. Catch my drift.
Enemy AI is not very good but this did not hinder anything for me and my experience with this game.
The enemy AI does the basics like roll, dodge, melee, duck behind cover, run towards you and sometimes retreat in battle.
Fighting an enemy one on one is simple - just hide behind cover, peek around the corner and unload a clip into his head or wherever.
But, as soon as they swarm and begin to surround you things start becoming tough, and often you will die as simply there are too many against you at once.
Combat is decent and addictive - probably half the reason many will come back and play the game.
Enemies explode and pop with addictive satisfaction to the player, and often you will end up popping more enemies than you would have bargained for.
All enemies classes die differently, for example scrappers explode with a mechanical sound while raiders pop into a pool of blood.
The guns one uses are satisfying but could be better, they tend to lack sound a bit but still pack a punch where needed. However this is not game destroying at all yet it fits into the world nicely.
There are also many guns with the classical colours that indicate their power, for example white is the least effective, purple and blue being more effective than green and so forth.
Now and again during the campaign or co-operative missions Heavy weaponry will appear for use, the first player to pick it up gets to use it, except due to its enormous size the player can only shuffle about without the ability to sprint.
These weapons put down almost every enemy with ease yet if you become a target for more than one enemy unit at one time you can die very quickly as it takes too long to reach cover from their fire - so there is evidence of a strong and weak aspect to these Heavy weapons.
All weapons from snipers, to SMG's and rocket launchers, shotguns and more all boast their own unique abilities and powers.
A player can choose to equip two at one time and this allows to mix things up.
The world is debatable, it certainly is not as pretty as WOW or GW2 yet at the same time it does not try to be. You are born into a disaster ridden world in Defiance.
There are two main areas namely the top half which is Country Side with farms and the odd rubble towns, and the bottom half (or more appropriately 25% as about 3 or 4 would fit into the top half).
The bottom half consists on an area of San Francisco that was obliterated during the Defiance war.
Where the top half is an area where trees and shrubbery have managed to grow the San Francisco part is entirely different - its like a different world altogether.
Disappointingly one would not really notice that the bottom area is in fact a demolished city due to the fact buildings have almost completely gone (with the exception of like a cluster), there are a few houses here and there with the odd street, but other than that it just does not look much like you would expect it to be.
I was expecting it to be an urban skeletal jungle of a sort - like a built up area but it certainly is not like that at all.
Furthermore, the San Francisco area has been transformed into a rocky like terrain similar to that of Mars, however where Mars would be red this area is purple in hue.
The environments are not bad but certainly are far off the best I have seen in contemporary MMO's - the Defiance environment I found a little bland and tasteless yet sprinkled with the odd sparkle here and there.
For example, you drive through a crop field that you have seen a hundred times over but then you pass nearby a farm shed with a tractor and some farm workers doing their business - this is a nice touch that adds to the world with some detail.
There are the so-called dungeon areas you will encounter now and again of which I never really paid much interest in. There are the odd underground tunnels sort of a thing, they are very similar to storage tunnels scattered with lots of pipes, barrels, computer terminals and so forth. You encounter these in missions and so forth
These tunnels are more like the interior of a spaceship such as one you would see in the 2012 PC release of Aliens than one which appears like a cave or something along those lines.
Multiplayer is decent for a certain amount of time before it becomes repetitive. On a PC one can enter a MP game by pressing the left Ctrl key then selecting the intended prompt.
Often one will have to be patient as you will have to wait for a certain amount of players to join before you can play. This took me about 10 minutes on average, during those minutes I just continued with missions until there were enough participating players.
It is simple capture the base or structure type game, there is ABC points and you must battle it out to control these points.
Finally let me explain the economy of Defiance.
It's minimal.
What you earn on missions is Scrip (Currency) and Salvage (Secondary currency) - using scrip you can purchase weaponry, vehicles and unlock gear.
Enemy units drop very little Scrip that there is no point in always picking it up.
I ended the game on about 130k scrip.
At the end of a mission you can earn about 100 - 200 which is little but it soon accumulates over time.
I found there was very little to do with my hard earned cash because many good weapons require your hero to have a certain amount of Reputation in order to purchase them, I could purchase a vehicle but I had no need as I already unlocked a good enough one from completing the main story line.
Regarding the story line it revolves around a piece of technology called the Ark Tech Cell, all the factions end up fighting for it and this leads to war.
The Dark Matter faction as well as the Raiders steal it and you must get it back - nothing overly fancy.
The final boss at the end is reasonably challenging.
Bugs are seen now and again in the game from within missions to the main story lines. This can hinder play as this became most evident during the final boss encounter whereby I could not revive my character. After a death your character can revive himself using T, but you only have one revive - all in all you only have two lives at a time - if you die twice you lose cash and respawn at the nearest checkpoint - this was not working 100% during the boss fight.
Other times you will drive your vehicle and on the points of going over a ramp the ground will disappear or just turn a flat brown colour for a split second before recovering.
At one time I completed a mission and had to return some Hellbug serum to a post box machine type contraption, however surprise-surprise when I returned with it the post box had disappeared - I had to just abandon the mission and do another - the next day they patched it and it worked fine.
The Final Word:
The Defiance game is worthy to be called a MMO, however it certainly is very minimal in content and substance.
Is a sense it is as if the development team got 75% of the way through the project and decided to release a just acceptable title.
After a certain amount of playing time any given player will notice that there is not much more to do than just the ordinary and repetitive missions and the odd ark fall here and there.
To be honest the game could have be much better if the development team worked more closely with the vehicle mechanics, appearances, weaponry upgrades and stats, a better looking world, more detailed and substantial world, more socially integrate UI, more worldly events than just the odd mission and ark fall, the team should alos incourage innovation within side quests as they are extremely repetitive.
Although the player tree skill is very well done there is little else to be overly excited about in Defiance.
Too much driving, too many repetitive quests, an average story and okay boss fight(s) marred down the experience for me.
However, if you are a dedicated gamer, you like MMO's and action then I will not not recommend Defiance.
Its a good game but its just not the best the business has to offer.