For someone that just recently got into the MOBA genre, I have to admit I’ve been swept up in it and am loving it. So when first heard of Rise of Immortals, the new MOBA from Petroglyph, and read that it was just another “Dota Clone” I decided to check it out for myself and see what it had to offer.
Much like every other MOBA title out today, Rise of Immortals is a free-to-play game that features an item store that allows players to purchase immortals, skins, upgrades as well as utility items such as XP bonuses for faster leveling. Launching with only 12 immortals, character selection isn’t on par with some of the older games out there, but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing as you can quickly get accustomed to all the heroes.
Here’s were RoI separates itself from the pack by incorporating something traditionally found in MMO games. Instead of players leveling a master account and being able to choose from any of the available heroes before a match, players select one hero during login and only level that one unit. Meaning if you ever want to switch to another hero, you’ll have to start over from level 1.
While many players will not mind this difference, I think it’s an overall downgrade in terms of gameplay. Some characters naturally play better together in teams, so being able to pick on the fly what character you want to use before a match is a big deal.
Read the full Rise of Immortals review by continuing below.
Some MOBA games have 40 or 50 characters to choose from. So is it really a wise move to have players start from level 1 every time they want to use a new character?
Once you’ve selected your character you’re teleported into the Hub, which is a visual lobby room where you’ll see players standing around, chatting and purchasing upgrades from NPCs. The Hub was touted as one of the big ‘improvements’ that separates Rise of Immortals for all other MOBA games and while technically it does, for the most part it’s just a chat room.
I never understood the appeal of visual chat rooms as opposed to text ones. To me having an organized list of users and a nice big clear screen to read the dialog is leaps and bounds better than a virtual room. There’s only two NPCs there anyway and nothing else, so it seems kinda pointless. I just don’t get it, if the Hub’s main purpose is for chatting, why is the chat window so tiny? You cannot even extend or move it. This is one of those features that was just added so they can list it as a feature that other MOBA games don’t have.
Now we get to the nitty gritty. Once you’re ready to find a match, you simply click the “Fight” button at the top and are given a list of matches and queue times. Currently there are 4 match types available, two PvE and two PvP. There’s a 1v1 practice map and 3v3 for PvE and for PvP there’s 2v2 and 5v5.
The queue times have been pretty lengthy so far due to the match system and of course being a new game. For the most part 2v2 seems to be the fastest with only a 1-3 min wait, with the other two being around 5 mins. Although during the times I was online the actual wait was almost always double the queue time, but maybe I was just on during off hours.
Once in the game it’s pretty much what you expecte it would be. A vendor at your base to sell you upgrades, a big crystal structure you have to protect and that’s guarded by towers and a third building, which if destroyed unleashes super minions for the opposing team.
There are however two slight differences in how Rise of Immortals does it. One, items are upgraded directly from the vendor, so if you buy cheap boots, you can just continue to upgrade them directly instead of trading them in for a better item later.
Second the maps are much more intricate then what I’ve seen from other MOBA games. There’s more paths, areas with NPCs and the lanes are much much wider, which adds some rethinking on how to attack and retreat.
The only issue I ran into was with the brush system, which doesn’t seem to be working correctly. There were times when I would be in the same brush as my opponent and I still couldn’t see them or they would go in and out of visibility. Very frustrating when you’re chasing someone.
Graphically the game just doesn’t look as nice as some of the other titles out there. While the immortal units are well done, overall the game has a more washed-out look to it. Other MOBA games are a little more colorful, vibrant and even a bit cartoony which all just melds together very well. RoI is more dark and dreary.
Overall Rise of Immortals is a solid MOBA title, but in the end it really is just a DotA clone. There’s nothing that I saw that separates this game from the current flock of DotA games already out there. Let me acknowledge that saying it’s a clones isn’t neccesarily a stab at RoI, since some of the big MOBA games out there are clones as well. However RoI fails to separate itself from the pack and when compared to games that have been running for a year or two, it just doesn’t stand up as well.