RaiderZ Review

RaiderZ is the latest game published by Perfect World, the goal of which is to hunt the biggest and baddest monsters in the whole world. You’ll be able to join up with other hunters, equip weapons and powerful magic and then take down fantastic creatures as part of a team. The Monster Hunter vibe aside, this is obviously meant to be a different MMO, but we’ve often seen press releases and websites for “new” MMOs and they often fail to live up to expectations. Is RaiderZ a neat idea hidden behind a standard MMO? Read on to find out.

RaiderZ Gameplay Video - HD

Green and Great – RaiderZ is a stunning looking game. It might not have the pure quality of other MMOs (Guild Wars 2 or TERA especially), but it’s better than the average free-to-play game and not just in its use of colour; art and level design seems quite impressive as well. RaiderZ is pretty as a picture and, thanks to the frame rate issues (see below), generally acts like a picture as well.

Ready for Combat – RaiderZ is Perfect World’s response to the success of the combat system in TERA. You target your enemy rather than click them. Although all of my attacks after that were “sort of” auto-aimed, it still felt like I had a bigger role in combat than you’d find ordinarily. It definitely feels quite hands-on and is well worth trying out to those of you who couldn’t play TERA.

Story Time – The story, thanks in part to the role you play in the action, is quite interesting and well worth actually reading. Although the quests are as you’d expect from an MMORPG – kill this monster 5 times, craft this item – the combat doesn’t really get boring and the quests tend not to get overly repetitive. This is especially true when you consider you can pick up other weapons or change your “class” on the fly (although not really, classes are a little less specific than in other games).

Fighting Titans – One of the biggest draws for RaiderZ, as it was with Monster Hunter, will be the huge monsters you’ll come across almost from the beginning of the game.  These monsters are difficult, require quick reflexes and smart battle and are about as much fun as you’ll have in an MMO of this type. Forget fighting uninteresting rat-like creatures or Pokemon rip-offs – although RaiderZ has its fair share of seen-that opponents in its ordinary enemies – this is the future of MMO battle. Bring friends and watch that adrenalin start to pump.

Taking it Slow – One of the major devices in the modern MMO is allowing the player to level up quickly – usually with one or two quests – in order to reward them and keep them playing. RaiderZ isn’t one of those games, and it’ll take you longer than usual to evolve your player. It’s well balanced, not so long that you get bored or start to struggle, but not so short that it doesn’t mean anything. Why can’t this be done more often?

Androgyny – I like to be as open minded as I can when entering into a character creation screen. If you didn’t enter expecting the impossible, I imagine your head would explode. Still, RaiderZ has one of the oddest standard character assembly that I’ve ever seen. The women wear very few clothes and the men wear make-up, have hair that obviously would take up days to perfect and generally look very feminine. It’s a nice option, but it’s so forced and unexpected.

Note: A recent patch seems to have fixed the issues listed below, but was accurate at the time of writing. For the sake of “covering the bases,” I thought it would be best to leave a record of the problem. We’ve changed the score to allow for the improvements of the patch and of the reduction in spam, but players should be aware that these issues may exist.

Frames Per Second – There is no reason in hell that I should be getting less than 10 frames per second in this game without any graphical options, and 70-80 frames per second on Guild Wars 2. I’ve experimented with everything (using our very handy FPS guide) and absolutely nothing works. Then again, perhaps it’s something to do with the spam…

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam – The first thing I noticed on first signing into RaiderZ was that I was getting less than 10 FPS. The second thing I noticed was something along the line of “C H E A P E S T V .... ,” followed by a web address. Imagine that message about twice every second, from multiple accounts. The fact that nobody seemed confused or offended by this constant spam probably shows how common an issue this is.

RaiderZ Review

The Verdict

If you completely ignore the Negatives section of this Raiderz review, you have in RaiderZ one of the very best free-to-play MMORPGs of the last twelve months, and certainly the best free-to-play MMORPG from Perfect World. It has real action, real story, real incentive to keep playing. Watch the constant spam though (I couldn’t be more literal, check out the accompanying video) and the occasional frame rate issues, and you have a game to watch. I can’t suggest enough that you download RaiderZ at your first convenience and give it a chance to impress. I have every confidence that it will blow you away.

Also read our RaiderZ tips and hints

Games like Raiderz

• Perfect World
• TERA
• World of Warcraft
• Useful links: RaiderZ website