Corpus Railjack Is Kinda Mediocre
I like Railjack. It’s not my favourite game mode, but I think it’s fun occasionally. While you can easily play in a group, it’s also perfectly fine while playing solo. However, there’s a good 50% of Railjack content that kinda sucks. I’m talking about Corpus Railjack missions. Because they really just aren’t very good.
A Taxi ride
Corpus Railjack missions are basically a brief jaunt towards an otherwise normal mission. Sure, there are side objectives you need to complete before you board. But once you’re done with side objectives, you basically abandon your ship! Everyone on board is forced to do whatever the main objective is. However, the main objectives aren’t even that good.
I mean, aside from having to farm for weapons and stuff, why would you spend 1-5 minutes just to do an Exterminate mission? Annoyingly, Corpus Railjack missions aren’t even that good. The maps are huge but enemy spawns are incredibly slow. By far the worst map is Defense, since it uses a FUCKING MASSIVE map and enemies CONSTANTLY get stuck.
Only Volatile missions really feel new and vaguely interesting. And that’s because, once you’ve done the main objective, you return to your ship and blow up weak spots. But Volatile seems like the ONLY mission that even considers your Railjack after the main objective. Every other Corpus mission, once you’ve done the main objective, you just, well, leave. That’s it, mission over, you just did a way longer and more tedious version of a normal mission.
So, really, your Railjack, which you’ve probably spent a lot of time on, is just a glorified taxi. No one liked it during Scarlet Spear, and no one likes it now.
The side objectives are stupidly long
When you do have side objectives, they take FOREVER. You often just have to babysit a console for an arbitrarily long time. They’re not even particularly fun side objectives. In fact, honestly? They should just be their own missions, since they don’t really match up with the main standard-Warframe missions. Really, the side objectives kinda need to be main objectives, as they take so long to complete. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and only need to destroy some Crew Ships and security nodes, and these do feel like older Railjack. But that moment is fleeting as soon as you all have to ditch your Railjack and do the main objective.
Even the Crew Ship portions of Corpus Railjack are more tedious. Grineer Crew Ships die pretty cleanly. If they are shielded, you can deal with them quite quickly. But Corpus Crew Ships have annoying shields on them and are honestly really weirdly shaped. even going inside a Corpus Crew Ship is more tedious than a Grineer one. To destroy or steal a Corpus Crew Ship, you have to traverse a single room that is nearly as big as a Grineer Pulsle Turbine.
Grinner Railjack is just better.
While the missions in Grineer Railjack are simpler, they’re also more fun. They just have a better flow to them, since each node is primarily a skirmish. The main objectives use both people on a Railjack and an away crew, and the missions aren’t nearly as long. While, yes, this does make Void Storms tedious, the missions feel smoother and make more sense.
Most importantly, Grineer Railjack much better represents a team mission. You have people off doing the side objectives, crew ships are less tedious and you can have someone in the pilot seat at all times. There’s a job for everyone.
Corpus Railjack just… doesn’t do that. Once all the side objectives are done, it’s no different from a normal, non-Railjack mission. And whenever I play Corpus Railjack, I can’t help but think “why am I bothering?” After all, there are already plenty of missions doing the exact same thing, without a Railjack. Why am I doing a Railjack Survival when I could just be doing a normal Survival?
I don’t know, and honestly, it is very off-putting…