Its taken me a while to get around to writing the review of Defiance: The Game for a couple of reasons.  One of the main reasons is that one is that I have found after playing it for a while I have come to not really like it much at all, the early enthusiasm is soon dampened by the second reason which is that after a while it becomes just far too repetitive a game to keep me gripped, or interested which is a shame as Im actually quite enjoying the TV Series which is currently airing on Sci Fi.

Based on the TV Series of the same name but set in the ruins of San Francisco and surrounding Bay Area, Defiance allows you to create one of two species, a human (male or female) and an Irathient (male or female).  There isnt much in the way of customisation for your characters and this isnt as in-depth as say Elder Scrolls: Skyrim in the options it gives you to create your character but I suppose that really isnt much of a big deal to most players.  You are then given the choice of character origin which acts in the same way as it does in most FPS in giving you a choice of what weaponry your character starts with and presumably is more adept at using.

The game starts out with a fairly easy couple of quests to get you accustomed to the controls and after that you pretty much go from quest to quest if you wish to further the story, or you can explore and pick up one of the wealth of side missions that range from races, liberating specific targets, saving people from attacks etc, etc.  There is enough activities to keep you busy and with new content being added after each episode (although as of episode three Id not come across any myself) Trion do appear to be making an effort to keep people playing it.

However the major problem with the game is its repetitive nature, the Ark Fall events really are fun especially if you have  dozens of people there with you, otherwise it turns into a slog where you do not get very far within the time limit and die frequently due to the lack of support, and support is something this game proposes itself to have but sadly lacks.

You see it is sold as being an online multi player game which allows you to go off and do your own things and this is all well and good unless you are doing certain story related quests and then you are required a lot of the time to have multiple players there to get past the onslaught of enemies otherwise youll find yourself stuck at a point in the story that you can not advance from.  The Clans as far as I have experienced have been fairly inactive, the chat system is awkward to navigate and it makes communication difficult and cumbersome, by the time you have found the right place to send a message to the person you are with most of the time they have long since left and switching between channels all the time ends up as a major pain in the rear especially if you are trying to arrange something between players doing the same quest which more often than not require multiple people to complete it.

But my biggest problem is that the game is sold as allowing you to play as a single player, but more often than not you require multi player, but then when you do join  a clan it is as dead as dead can be.  After negotiating the menus you find that no matter how often you ask for request and message people you are ignored, some cases its going to be a language issue barrier and that is fine but I have spoken to a few people both here on the EU servers and over in the States that have said they have experienced that same amount of lack of community spirit no matter which clan they joined, overall it feel at times that the multi player aspect of the game is reliant more on timing and being there when other gamers are around rather than a non-existent social aspect which unfortunately fails to impress.

Overall the game has its good moments and its not so good moments and if you are a fan of the series or are just curious about this MMO then I would advice you look for it either on rental or look around for a bargain price brand new, unfortunately I made the mistake of buying the Ultimate Edition as I truly believed it would be better than it actually was so would hope others would at least cautious about purchasing this at full retail price.