There are no levels in Defiance per se, though you do have an XP bar to fill. Instead of rising up one level each time, you gain an EGO Rating. Each time you fill up that XP bar you add 10 EGO to your overall Rating. Amassing a higher rating will unlock EGO Points that can be spent on a FFXII-esque board, which always unlocks an adjacent skill to one that was just bought. However, unlocking a skill doesn't mean you automatically use it (something which took me about an hour to figure out). Remember the loadouts I mentioned before? That's where you assign these perks. As you gain EGO Ratings, more loadout slots become available, which means you can switch freely between weapons, abilities and perks on the fly, depending on the situation you're in.
The EGO board also contains four major skills, one of which you pick at the start of the game. Whether you like the more direct approach with Overcharge (do more weapon damage) or Blur (do more melee damage, run faster), or you'd rather take the more stealthy approach with Cloak (turn invisible) or Decoy (send out a hologram that you can instantly teleport to if you choose), chances are one of these options will easily fit your playstyle. You're not bound to a single skill, as progressing through the EGO board can unlock more of these to use, but you can only have one equipped at a time per loadout.
The world of Defiance isn't huge by WoW standards, but it's still quite large. Still, fast travel and early vehicle access make traversing from one quest to another a breeze. Like Guild Wars 2, roaming the map will often lead you to an area quest that anyone can take part in as long as they're in the area, no grouping required. This actually works the same for main quests as well. Since it's so early in the game's life, you're bound to come across players who are working on the same quests as you who can work with you to complete your goals, without the need to ever exchange a single word or a group invite.
The quests themselves aren't anything spectacular, and more often than not, you're clearing out an area of enemies or delivering an important artifact to a certain NPC. There are also various trials, which are more single-player-focused and feel like a built-in Arcade Mode. Time Trial will put you in the seat of a vehicle as you're tasked to get through checkpoints, and the other two modes will put high powered weapons in your hands as you're tasked with killing as many enemies as you can before dying or running out of ammo. They're really just diversions, breaking up the monotony of fetch quests a bit.
There are some competitive and co-operative maps as well, which are certainly nice to see included in an MMO, since PVP is generally quite important. You can queue up for standard deathmatch, but by far the best multiplayer feature is Shadow Wars mode. This competitive match actually takes place on the world map, and has various teams of players fighting for control points. If only there were more alien races in the game, it would feel a lot more authentic.
Defiance supports a gamepad, though your gunplay might be slightly more accurate with a mouse and keyboard. Whatever your preference though, the game supports it. And while I didn't necessarily like playing with a gamepad in the beginning, it did grow on me over time. In fact, that's the only way I play now.
Where the gamepad feels most necessary is navigating through Defiance's clunky interface. While it's not the worst, it requires some getting used to. The fact that not all tabs can be scrolled through with RB and LB, and instead you have to hold the Left Trigger to access a radial menu with even more options, is slightly overbearing. Even exiting the game requires this.
Defiance certainly didn't have a smooth launch. Granted, it's nowhere near as bad as the SimCity disaster, but it had its fair share of bugs that initially turned some users off. I hate to say that that's expected of an MMO launch, but it is. Since its release, there have been numerous patches that have fixed a lot of problems, but some still remain. The console versions are the ones to stay away from. I can't speak much for the PS3 version, but the Xbox 360 version was horrific in my experience. Button prompts were delayed, and the game was overall unresponsive. As soon as I started the PC version however, it was like a completely different and exponentially more fun experience.
Defiance is best described as a third-person Borderlands, without the cel-shaded graphics and the over-the-top humor. Does it have what it takes to survive in the MMO market? Given its cross-media promotion, its promise of more content via Season Pass and no subscription fee to speak of, I'd say yes. Am I required to watch the show to get continued enjoyment from the game? Not at all, though the connectiveness is certainly intriguing. The fact is, beyond a few technical issues that are already being worked on, Defiance is an absolute blast.
Defiance is an ambitious experiment, a crazy cross-media promotion that brings together a television series and a massively multiplayer video game. Still, regardless of the two mediums sharing the same timeline, they are, for the most part, separate experiences. So what can Defiance bring to the MMO table that will entice those looking to trade in their broadswords and plate mail for high tech ATVs and electric pulse rifles?
Being an MMO that's tied to a TV show, you'd expect the game to try to jam a whole lot of lore down your throat. While that's not initially the case, you do learn more and more of what exactly happened to Earth all those years ago, and what Defiance actually is. Sadly, the 2-hour pilot for the television series did a much better job at explaining the backstory of Defiance than the game has so far.
The game starts by letting you pick a certain "class" or "archetype," though it really makes no difference what you choose aside from the starting weapon. This was rather confusing when I first hopped into the game, since I had no idea whether there were certain bonuses associated with each "class," or if one class was better at a certain weapon over another. Turns out, it's all aesthetic, and an hour into the game, players will all be looking very similar regardless.
The game is broken up into two main parts: Main quests, which progress the story of your character and the others you meet, and Episode quests, which allow you to directly interact with characters from the show, and slightly interact with upcoming episodes. The latter is certainly Defiance's hook, for those that want to experience both the game and the show, but don't expect huge impacts. Everyone in the world could have easily skipped over the Episode quests, which help the main characters Nolan and Irisa gather a crystal artifact, and they would have still ended up with the artifact in the show. Essentially, these connections, or at least what I assume they will be, won't really impact the show on any grand level.
However, let's pretend that there is no show, and that Defiance is its own entity. Does it still work? Absolutely! Defiance is a clever blend of Borderlands and Guild Wars 2 with some elements of Halo sprinkled in, all wrapped up into a third-person shooter. When people hear the term MMO, they probably think of hotkey combat, slashing swords, and other longtime genre staples. The truth is, Defiance doesn't play like one. If someone would have put a controller in my hand and asked me to start playing, without already knowing what Defiance was, I would have thought it was a really expansive third-person shooter. That definitely works to Defiance's credit.
World events like Arkfalls bring players together for major battles. Arkfalls are essentially fallen debris that Ark Hunters scavenge for artifacts, but they also attract local wildlife like Hellbugs or bandits. The minor Arkfalls can be completed solo or with a small group, but major Arkfalls are multi-staged events, culminating in giant boss battles. The main problem is that so far, there has only been a single major Arkfall that keeps repeating, and after a few times, it gets boring. This just encourages players to ignore it. Obviously there will be more content as time goes on, but it would have been nice to have a few diverse major battles be available right from the start.
Combat is fast and frantic, where taking cover, using your EGO ability and unloading a hail of bullets into your enemies is the standard. Much like Borderlands and its sequel, you'll be going through guns on the regular. Just when you think you found the perfect Sniper Rifle, you'll come across a new one with slightly better damage and a poison attribute. The guns you find won't always be upgrades, and you'll find yourself selling more of them than you're using, but the fact that there is constant loot to look out for is a plus.
Your character's loadout consists of two guns, a grenade mod, a shield mod, a vehicle, your main EGO ability and EGO traits, which are essentially perks. The gear you wear is purely aesthetic, which means you can make your character look however you want, without resorting to a single look that's attached to stats. It's actually quite an accessible approach to gear, as it doesn't require a whole lot of calculation, and each item can clearly be compared to any other similar item.
