MY REVIEW of Rainbow Six Extraction

[talloyer]

Hello, I have owned Rainbow Six Extraction on Ubisoft Connect for over 1 year and since Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Extraction is finally on Steam and it is on an excellent deal for now, I intend to post here my review on the game to give my insights about it.

WAY TOO LONG, DIDN’T READ IT: Rainbow Six Extraction is an excellent PvE alternative to Rainbow Six Siege with very high optimization, solid gameplay, replayability, but also plagued with underwhelming amount of content and post-launch updates, reduced playerbase and halted support from Ubisoft. Perfect to buy in a deal.

WARNING: Gigantic Text Ahead!!!!!!!!!

First, I digress a little about my background. I have bought Rainbow Six Siege very cheaply on 2018, loved the gameplay but hated the matches, stomped too often and bullied by teammates so I returned to Overwatch to my beloved Moira, Reinhardt and later Sigma (RIP Overwatch!!!!) Then I learned about Rainbow Six Extraction, was interested, in spite of its exquisite premise (I had been expecting PvE campaign against human terrorists) and the nasty R6Siege fanboys then I was chosen to the Closed Technical Test and fell in love with Rainbow Six Extraction. Too sadly I had to wait a few months for a deal in my damned country and finally bought it on May 2nd 2022 on PC!
Rainbow Six Extraction directly follows the events of “Operation Outbreak” from Rainbow Six Siege an untold number of years later and is not canon to the franchise. Archeans reemerged again stronger than ever and Rainbow formed a REACT division led by Ash, with her right hand Mira and Thermite as her left hand (none of the 3 are playable) and 20 Operators from Rainbow operate in incursions at 12 maps, each with 3 subzones to complete varied objectives until Extraction from the 3rd subzone or either of the previous ones, though with less rewards. Each subzone has the time limit of 15 minutes, and if time runs out the subzone is overwhelmed with Archeans out to get you.
Game is gorgeous, very well optimized, with beautiful and very detailed environments.
All operators are from Rainbow Six Siege, with 18 available on launch and merely 2 added post-launch. They work essentially like in Rainbow Six Siege, but were adjusted for this game. They have 10 levels of Progression, where you upgrade the Operators with some increased stats, weapons unlocked, ability upgraded, and 10 more Prestige Levels, where there are only 2 meager cosmetic rewards at levels 5 and 10. They start with base health of 100 and do not regenerate nor recover health in traditional way. The medkits available give temporary health, which decay over time. If the operator’s health goes to 0 (s)he is Down But Not Out (DNBO) the first time with a decaying health bar shortened by enemy attacks, where the teammate must go to the rescue, otherwise the DBNO Operator becomes Missing In Action and is unavaible until being rescued in a specific objective in the same map (the subzone might change).
It is possible to play the game solo in all maps, or mount a private squad with 1 or 2 teammates. The difficulty of the objectives are adjusted to the size of the squad, to the point I find playing solo usually the easiest way to complete the incursions and several of the Studies (more on later) although It is more thrilling to play the incursion all by myself. A unique feature of Solo Mode is to find points of interest, marked as a magnifying glass where, interacting with it, makes Ash, Mira, Thermite or INDEX says something about the highlighted area, which is great for visual Narrative. Ultimately, playing solo gets boring after a good while, especially after making 100+% of the game.
There is a good variety of Archeans, with a good diversity between them, although most of their designs and movements could have had generally something more unique, although they are very different from their counterparts at Outbreak’s Rainbow Six Siege, especially the Apex.
I must say Rainbow Six Extraction is ONLINE-ONLY, even when playing solo! No Internet, no Rainbow Six Extraction and I despise Ubisoft made no effort to add offline option, which should be far easier than Ghost Recon Breakpoint (another online-only game even solo that Ubisoft had no shame to update to Offline Mode).
The matchmaking is very flawed. Unlike Rainbow Six Siege, Rainbow Six Extraction does NOT allow the player to change the data center. An user on R6E’s Discord shared a way to change .ini file to manually change the data center, but sadly had no effect to me and I do not know what I did wrong yet. This means if you do not live on North America nor Europe you are likely to struggle to find teammates, especially at late times. Another serious problem with public matchmaking is that the difficulty is tied with the desired region, so if you want to play on “Critical” difficulty, the only maps you can play in a public squad is at “Truth or Consequences” region and nowhere else, unless you play the other maps Solo or with a Private Squad. This makes public matchmaking terrible for experienced players since most likely in Quick Play you will be forced to join inexperienced players and for specific regions it may take a very long time to form a Squad.
Speaking of difficulty levels, there are 4 levels Moderate, Cautious, Severe and Critical, and they do not work the traditional way (enemies stronger, protagonists weaker, less ammo); the factors that alter difficulty are roster of enemies, chance of Mutation and XP earned. From beginners this is a big deal, but for more experienced players the differences between Moderate and Caution, or Severe and Critical become irrelevant, so for me there are only 2 levels of Difficulty in Rainbow Six Extraction.
A core feature of Rainbow Six Extraction is its randomness, by far its strongest asset. No incursions are ever the same thanks to the random objectives, enemies, items’ locations, and Mutations (map modifiers) that change the experience of each Incursion. Another core feature is the Sprawl, a black substance that covers floors and walls, that hinders movements of the Operators, and the player must shoot them to clear space and visibility.
There are 13 objectives, which one of them, “Gateway”, has the closest to a boss fight called “Proteans”, a single Archean based on one of the Operators (Alibi, Smoke, Vigil, Sledge, Finka); I like it, but the time is short, Proteans are sponge-bullets and the worst, at some point they vanish to summon Archeans, which is a disgusting persistent videogame trope, so there is a good chance you will fail this challenge and having your Operator MIA because of time running out. Another objective, “No one left behind” happens when one or two operators of the Squad are KO’d and must be brought to Extraction pod to not become “MIA”.
Unfortunately, the maps, as great as they are, are in short amount. There are only 12 maps, 3 per region (all in United States), and since the game locks the other 3 regions beyond New York until you reach higher Milestone levels you may be bored with the repetitiveness of playing the same maps over and over again. Even with all maps unlocked, 12 maps just becomes too little. Ubisoft should really have had developed and released more maps regularly over the months to Rainbow Six Extraction so as to really engage people with replay value.
I think Rainbow Six Extraction should have had more verticality. Perhaps it’s in part due to the time limit of each subzone but the maps could have used of more floors, thus more possibilities to use the rappel which is missing here. Flying enemies are missing too and could have been a decent addition.
The weapons of the game seem copied from Rainbow Six Siege, possibly tweaked for Rainbow Six Extraction, but some of them, like BOSG12 and ACS12 are very inappropriate to be here since the have limited effectiveness against groups of Archeans. In fact, Shotguns here work bad; sure, they are useful to destroys barriers and walls but they do not feel impactful nor accurate enough against the enemies. Fortunately, the Gadgets more than compensate for this, where only one can be chosen per incursion and part of the challenge is to find the most appropriate for your game style and objectives. When progressing through the Milestones you can unlock more advanced Gadgets, that make the Incursions more manageable to face.
This game has a surprisingly excellent lore, where there is a in-game AI working for REACT called “INDEX” which catalogues the lore of the game and deepens the biology of the Archeans, their abilities, characters in a minor degree and even INDEX itself. This game goes very deep in science fiction and I was itching to know more and more of the lore when I was progressing though the game. Just too bad there is no closure to it.
This said, Rainbow Six Extraction has NO Campaign, which really, really, really sucks. The only way to actually progress the campaign is through Milestones, which happen completing Studies (basically in-game challenges that unlock cosmetics, lore and unlock points for Gadgets designed to teach you to properly play Rainbow Six Extraction and I learned A LOT from them!) and progressing the levels of the Operators. With higher milestones, more regions, Operators, Gadgets, Maelstrom Protocol and eventually REACT Laser (a game-changer). A few excellent cutscenes are unlocked too but they work more like “vlogs” than any actual Advancement to the Story here, where the final cutscene (unlocked with Milestone level 25) has literally no resolution. In fact, all cutscenes, including the intro cutscene, last only about 10 minutes! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwL2SVvT5gc
A big disappointment for me was not to explore the PIONEER, the freight that serves as the mobile Headquarters of REACT. I imagine Ash wowuld be the playable character, speaking with everybody, saluting her as “The Big Boss of REACT”, exploring all compartments, using a firing range to test all weapons and gadgets, checking out with other operators, launching missions from there as a Game HUB, but I can only dream… instead, I have to content with merely reading plenty of texts in menus.
The extra modes of Rainbow Six Extraction are, aside from VR Training to teach the most basics, weekly assignments (special missions including Veteran Mode; pretty much no one plays them) and Maelstrom Protocol, THE Endgame of Rainbow Six Extraction designed for the most expert players, and also the only way to earn free “RC” to spend on the in-game store to unlock cosmetics (most of them are just reskins of R6S default outfits, although there is more variety to headgear). Great game mode, with 9 subzones, with gradually less resources and stronger enemies appearing after each subzone cleared, always locked on Critical difficulty; essential to keep playing Rainbow Six Extraction for long term.
One last thing to note is some timed events called “Crisis”, available in 4 iterations in some periods of the year, with unique challenging missions unlocking more lore, cosmetics and exclusive gadgets when completing the respective Studies.
Far too sadly Ubisoft has given a terrible support post-launch to Rainbow Six Extraction! The fact Rainbow Six Siege is still going strong with its “Year 8” while the “Year 2” of Rainbow Six Extraction is nothing but reruns of Crisis Events and the release on Steam is a blast to the face of the fans of Rainbow Six Extraction, including me. It is also extra infuriating that far more problematic games as Ghost Recon Breakpoint and Watch Dogs Legion had far more support from Ubisoft than Rainbow Six Extraction never did. Yes, Ubisoft errored terribly appealing to the fanboys of Rainbow Six Siege to buy Extraction, but it also should have acknowledged its niched playerbase and kept investing on it to grow it organically to be its own thing, as it had happened with Rainbow Six Siege. Apparently, though, Ubisoft is done with Rainbow Six Extraction, not only because of its neglect but also due to a Ubisoft employee claiming on Discord’s Ubisoft server earlier this year that Rainbow Six Extraction had its development concluded a couple of months before, though this post was deleted from there after the GVMERS video about this game. Either way, what a shame.
To finally conclude this review, Rainbow Six Extraction is a great escape from Rainbow Six Siege to play PvE with its mechanics with plenty of replayability to play easily for hours and hours (so much I managed to complete 100% of achievements and Ubisoft Connect classic challenges) with very compelling challenge. Unfortunately, there is just not enough content to justify the replayable approach Rainbow Six Extraction was designed for, so it is inevitable you will get sick of it. Even myself, who loves this game, for the most part of this year so far have been playing it little, more for completing the weekly Maelstrom Protocol and Ubisoft Connect challenges. Then, while Rainbow Six Extraction is NOT a “DLC of Siege” as the haters fanboys of Rainbow Six Siege babbled over and over to excuse boycotting it, it is not substantial enough to be as unique as it could have been.
All in all, I recommend Rainbow Six Extraction, and if I were to rate it, would give it 6,5/10.
Thanks for your attention!

[xxpillowhugxx]

You sound like you've seen plenty of ♥♥♥♥ in R6E. How do you feel about the elite intrusion and acute response mutations?

[talloyer]

Originally posted by xxpillowhugxx:

You sound like you've seen plenty of ♥♥♥♥ in R6E. How do you feel about the elite intrusion and acute response mutations?

Sure! The "Elite Intrusion" is very problematic if the Nests are activated, since they spawn a lot of Elite Archeans, so even the lower Archeans become a huge pain because they have lots of health so not even headshots kill them so easily then in big numbers you WILL be overwhelmed, although most of them are still killable with a single takedown. I recommend to stealthly destroy as many Nests as possible before risking detection. Recon is also very important to detect the Elite Archeans and tag the most inconvenients.
"Acute Response" is easily the worst mutation to me, since the time to leave the subzone is VERY reduced, in fact even before the timer is depleted the Swarm of Archeans already spawn and go straight to your position. So you have to be very fast to complete the objectives, like in 5 minutes or so. For me it's not worth doing the Incursion, I prefer to just leave the zone and restart with a different mutation (the MIA is not lost with this, just respawns in a different location of the map). Thankfully. this Mutation does not appear on Maelstrom Protocol.