Rifts World Book Two Atlantis Review

Heres an old review of Atlantis I did. kinda funny

RIfts World Book Two: Atlantis

Atlantis. Just the name brings up many ideas, this place is not one of Palladium’s creation. With that in mind, lets look at how this mystical place is brought into Rifts.

First off, I’d like to say that this book has the possibility for more adventures and plots than many of Palladium’s others. It is simply filled with information and ideas that can keep a GM drooling for months. The Splugorth, their minions and conquered lands/dimensions, and the True Atlanteans are both great examples of the excellent quality of this book.

Atlantis is covered in enough detail to make it playable, there is plenty of good alien technology, magic, and rune weapons. The relations of many of the new peoples with the already existing people of earth is also covered.

The book’s art is pretty damn good. This is one place where the alien looking stuff applies, and a good job is done with the Kittani equipment. The many new races are also finely depicted. My personal favorites are Long’s Splugorth drawing, and the Rune weapon pictures.

Like most of the older books, this one is definitely an old-standby. The things in Atlantis do pop up in later books. Most players today have probably already heard of or used this book too. Do you really need it? No, it’s not needed, but man does it give a lot of great information! One of those books that you just get because you know it’s cool, even if you don’t necessarily *need* it.

My only misgiving with this book? Well, it was published in 1992. Back then it gave many tantalizing ideas, but Palladium has never really focused anymore on this great place!!! I mean, this book has plenty of places where Palladium could have done a lot more explaining. I almost felt they left to many possibilities and didn’t focus enough on giving actual information written in stone. Oh well, it’s still a great book anyway.

Noticable Picture, Quote, or Stat:

Frankly, this book is FULL of them, but after close consideration I picked out the cool idea of Bio-Wizardry. An interesting way to pump up characters, it can make them quite powerful but is very expensive and sometimes has negative side-effects. Also great for NPCs, now that “normal” looking gurgoyle isn’t so normal after all…

Noticable Lame Picture, Quote, or Stat:

Those odd looking Hawrk-whatevers. I guess the idea is sort of interesting, but I just can’t shake the fact that the second one looks like an angry chicken. It’s just not frightening at all…