I played this game up to a certain point, then just got completely bored.
It’s not an insult to the game, it’s criticism.
TO satiate the backlast people are always ready to dish out, I’m going to list some thing this game really got right.
Graphic Design - I’m not for the aesthetic, but I would be lying if I said it looked anything but flawless.
Sounds - Ambient noises, creature noises, and voices are all well-balanced and don’t sound repetitive or generic.
Inventory/Menues - They are smooth, and most everything is pretty intuitive. I found myself zooming around after about hour 8.
Feel - It’s responsive and never squishy.
Let me get to brass tax though. The cons keep making me not really care for this game.
The plot feels non-existent after the first tree I fell for the first quest. If there is a plot, and I happen to be following, it’s overshadowed by the 1000 cookie-cutter side-quests. Due to the repetitive nature of these side-quests, I avoided them sometimes, causing me to miss something I actually needed to grow as a character. Which was unfortunate, but it didn’t ruin the game.
The skills, well…what skills? There are 6? 8?.. In almost any other game I would have that many by level 10. Variety is the spice of life, you give me fewer choices than I have fingers, and you give me 3 slots to use them. Hey, if things continue to go bad, Amazon can always sell this for $20 USD on mobile in a few years. I understand that there are different weapons with different skills…what If I don’t want to use a spear, but I like the bleeding effects? Or what if I want to heal people and throw fireballs? Don’t even get me started on the lack of fantasy in this…
When thinking about core mechanics, they are ALL repetitive. It’s a dodge simulator. Dodge is not fun…I wish that Dark Souls never became a big hit. It works for that game because it’s made to be difficult, dodging successfully is impactful because some enemies carry a weapon as large as you, and it has an end. Dodge mechanics are the chocolate-covered cherries of gaming right now, and I have had entirely too much of them. If you had something like…classes, maybe you could have thought about a creative way to nullify damage in other ways relative to each class. Amazon didn’t though. They wanted an easy and equitable game. That doesn’t translate to fun or good, unfortunately. Aside from dodging and a lack of fundamental classes, you also have; a territory rip-off from assassin’s creed (which is just busy work), more cosmetics than story, more events than story, and more crafting than the variety of combat. I have never seen this much crafting…for no reason. Also, the player house dichotomy is a bit cringe with all the cosmetics available and the ranking system. It would be one thing if it existed without a ranking, and I was blessed with a random neighbor…but no…whales are very annoying and the cosmetics are absolute garbage to look at when I’m trying to enjoy the natural aesthetics of the game.
Last but not least, Leveling up it’s not a tough experience, it’s a boring one. By level 29 I stopped because I had discovered 80 of the waypoints…what’s the point? I don’t even know or care what max level is, that’s how boring this game is. I usually look up max level after about 7-8 hours of gameplay but not this time. I will say the game has the ability to get you into a grind…but that’s about it…if you think grinding should be boring, get help. What makes grinding in other titles like WoW more fun is that when you grind a certain mob it was relatively confined to one location. Nope, not here, I can trample clear across the map from wolf zone to wolf zone… Out of the animals I have seen that I can kill…blighted things…blighted things…wolfs…rams…bears…dear. I can’t remember anything else because every time I think about the gameplay of this game I genuinely struggle to remember.
I don’t harp on this just to hate it, I do regret spending money on it, I really wanted to make it work, to give it a propper chance. It’s just not good though.
I want to be helpful, and I have played a lot of MMOs over the 17 years I’ve been online. Here’s some advice to save this trainwreck.
Classes - Classes with identity…no more procedural armor/weapons…that shit is so lame. Mages tanks and healers. Right now all you have is…my guy is a “dude with a musket and hatchet”…you have nothing. I have no end goal in sight, I don’t know if I’ll continue using the hatchet, nothing feels very meaningful to gain because I’m just leveling up the weapon and therefore my character’s level really means nothing as well. Classes also create diversity in the economy as well, driving people to farm and trade more. (playing your game more)
Class Skill/Talent Trees - All MMOs have some version of this because it works. It’s unique to the character, not the weapon. Your weapon can have a thing too, but the player needs to feel that their character is getting stronger…not that they are just getting better at using a weapon.
MAGIC - Where is the magic??? DoTs, HoTs, AoE…all stuff that helps push the mechanics and helps create more engaging combat. Stop holding people’s hands…I know you want to appeal to the 10-year-old crowd, but the 10-year-old crowd doesn’t have money, and when they see what their 16-year-old brother is playing they will drop this is a heartbeat. Healing, Summoning, Blowing things up…you should be doing magics in any fantasy.
You don’t have to be like any other MMO, but there are some staples that keep people playing that have never been complained about. Those are just my thoughts though.