Recent reviews by JayTac

(I put a few hours into this game on Epic and wanted to review it here) Paragon was an interesting endeavour to make a 3D moba, its first iteration, my favourite, had a larger map and an interesting power-up system that involved cards rather than your typical items like most mobas, unfortunately the game struggled to carve its own identity amidst the moba genre and Epic tried to speed the pace of the game up by making a smaller map and appeal to the average moba player by homogenising their systems and such to be more in-line with the stereotypical moba, this really only further hampered the game in finding its own identity, it was at this point Epic released a new game that you might've heard about, Fortnite Battle Royale, although Paragon wasn't on life support it was quickly axed shortly after Fortnites release to redistribute the team and money elsewhere, aka into their new cash cow, the team behind Paragon released basically their entire work on the game for free which spawned many a fan-made product, all of which suffered in the same way the original Paragon did in that they cant figure out an identity for the game but also, a bigger problem beyond that which I've noticed now is that they're all stuck in the mindset of what a moba is supposed to be, it has to have an item shop, it has to have a dedicated ability for all characters that is a dash/flash with a long cooldown etc etc, none of them really explore or take advantage of the 3D space, fundamentally this plays like any other moba, just with an extra axis to concern your aiming, what this results in is a by-the-numbers boring experience, also I'm not sure if I'm misremembering but Paragons combat felt a little more involved and impactful, in Predecessor I feel like I tickle the minions no matter if I'm level 1 or max level full build, similarly the fights feel like long drawn out slogfests that quickly become awkward if your opponent manages to back out of your auto attack range, nothing feels satisfying or sparks joy. also back in the days of Paragon you could cast abilities at the turrets, something else that was unique and sorely missed, a little unbalanced perhaps but I'm sure it could've been ironed out, anyway all this culminates into an experience that is just terribly bland, the game is so homogenised that I can't even be mad at it, especially as it's a passion project from a team of people who presumably preferred the homogenised version of Paragon, but I certainly can't recommend you play it either sadly, maybe there's an alternative timeline where Fortnite wasn't released, Paragon wasn't axed and it eventually grew into a form worth playing, but we live in the reality where instead we were left with multiple zombie husks of the original game, all of whom have failed by the way, and in a market where free to play live service games just aren't thriving anymore, I can't imagine Predecessor will be far behind its fallen comrades, preemptive F's in the chat please.

the "full release" is more akin to the "full release" that happens to a body once its deceased and the muscles are no longer contracting the anal sphincter, fitting for a game full of rotting zombies and dysentery, dont get me wrong, there is fun to be had rolling around in the filth that is 7 days to die but theres a lot of issues and a sense of a game never fully realised, constant development issues and system changes that ultimately, in my opinion, havent brought the game to a good final point, i imagine the developers would even perhaps agree with that, version 1.0 seems to be shoving it out the gate for the sake of it, maybe as a last ditch effort to get more funds for the game, maybe because theyre already struggling and cant commit any more resources to the game, or maybe they just wanted to hide the embarrassingly long ago release date on their store page with the new one, or maybe they just want to be done with it, either way this full release doesnt feel like a full release, and funnily enough, when you load up the game it even says in the title "this is prerelease software" something youd probably want to remove for the full release ofc, unless you forgot about it because you rushed the release, although i should probably use the term rushed lightly as its been in development for like 10 years or something. so yeah, its not a bad game, its not a good game, its a mid game that feels dated, feels shoved out the door barely hobbling, although one thing i will say as someone who hasnt upgraded their pc over the life cycle of this game, the optimizations have gotten substantially better, the loading times were atrocious before, id say this games worth buying on sale, you can definitely get some fun out of it but i wouldnt recommend buying it full price currently.:

Edit- ah ok, i see now why they "released" the game, because they wanna release their "new" game, which should honestly just be dlc for this one, if not a free update, called "7 days blood moons" the trailer alone makes me want to refund this game if i could, havent seen such a blatant cash grab in quite a long time, its a literal copy paste with slightly different gameplay, for shame, will add you guys to the ever growing list of devs ill be avoiding x

This isn't just a great example of how to make a great game but also how to update and sustain a great game, I couldn't believe it when I saw an 8 year old game get an update adding a whole new mechanic to the game (a dedicated dash/evade) this game and the devs are amazing, as everyone else has said, check it out if you enjoy the Diablo series or ARPGs in general, you wont be disappointed.

Having heard a long time ago about the "lack of content" I dismissed Sea of Thieves for a couple years then finally checked it out with a 1 month game pass and I must say, even if there was a lack of content, which there certainly isn't anymore, the real content, like a lot of PvP and multiplayer games, are the other players and random scenarios you find yourself in and fortunately, probably owing to the game having no real equipment upgrades (therefore everyone starts and stays on a level footing) the community isn't as toxic as some PvP games tend to be, there's still a learning curve (and still some toxic people) and veteran players will still have the upperhand but you can always overcome adversity in this game and learn from each encounter. The gameplay itself is varied and it's pretty much whatever you want it to be, some people play very casually and are averse to PvP, some people like to roleplay and meet others, some people like to just sit at a seapost and fish, some people don't even play the main game and only play arena, you could be a true pirate and go around plundering and making enemies or a sneaky pirate and hide on enemy ships or world events waiting for an opportunity to strike, or a friendly pirate just trying to help others and make friends, there are plenty of world events and random events to keep the game varied and unpredictable and no two sessions will be the same, there's also lengthy story missions with lore, the only problem that I can see some people having is the pacing of the game, in that there is no true pacing, you CAN go on for a chill session and just do a Tall Tale (the story missions in the game) but that's not always what you'll get because often you'll be met with PvE or PvP that's out of your control, the game can also be quite ruthless solo, especially as a beginner, and there's been a few updates over the last year that have in ways both helped and hindered solo players (chainshots, blunderbombs, being able to res etc) it can definitely be unforgiving when you're faced with your first galleon crew but if you persevere and learn, one day you'll be fighting galleons solo and feel like an absolute pirate legend, and there's no better feeling. I'll cap this off with a few examples of some standout gameplay that I've experienced recently in the last week or two (I could genuinely write a couple books about the crazy stuff I've experienced in my 500 hours playtime over Steam & Microsoft Store) just so you can understand the breadth of the random situations you can find yourself in: I had sold all my stuff at an outpost and scuttled my ship, I stood there AFK minding my own business when a Brig crew spawned at the outpost I was on and told me of a ship they were chasing with lots of loot, I unofficially joined their crew and gave chase with them, unfortunately at one point I was knocked off the ship in a fire fight and lost them, I jumped back on my ship and went after the ship they were going for, now on my own with the odds stacked against me I glanced a gunpowder barrel floating in the water and said to myself "if I harpoon it, it's a sign" sure enough I grabbed it not truly knowing what I intended to do with it but it just felt right (I'm not one to sail around with kegs usually) I eventually approached the brigantine, my friends from earlier were nowhere to be seen so I assumed they had lost the fight, the brig was trying to pull up at Reapers Hideout to sell and a storm was settling over, not great for me as it's difficult to maintain a ship solo in a storm whilst engaging in naval battle, I made the snap decision to set my ship to sail through the middle of Reapers Hideout at full speed (often difficult to achieve at the best of times, never mind during a storm in combat) crossed my fingers and hoped that my ship would sail itself out of the storm while I jumped into the water with the gunpowder keg, I boarded their ship and like textbook blew them to pieces, killing 2 in the process, the last guy I killed with a blunderbuss, they sank but unfortunately backspawned and overran me so I returned to my ship to find not only had it sailed perfectly and didn't take a hole but the storm had moved my wheel and it was coming back to the island, what ensued then was an epic battle between me and the 3 guys who had backspawned and were now using the cannons on the island, unfortunately I didn't come out victorious but the battle alone was worth it.

Another time me and a friend were sailing together and got into a fight with another 2 man crew sloop, I tried to go through the middle of this island to outmanoeuvre them, you technically shouldn't be able to go through the middle but I forced it (I'd done this before and it worked just fine) however this time our boat COMPLETELY flipped upside down like that scene in Pirates of the Caribbean and continued sailing at full speed, I fell off the boat as did my friend and we were just stood there, jaws dropped, watching our ship-turned-submarine start doing loops around the island because the wheel was full locked and then it randomly righted itself, and this was in the middle of a fight too, I can only imagine what the other ship was thinking witnessing this, the physics in the game can sometimes be a little whacky to say the least, there was a glitch in the past that basically sent your ship to space and was some of the funniest times I'd had with my mate (check out the Chest of Rage glitch if you wanna see it for yourself, it was sadly but understandably patched out)

Another time I had a fight with a brig whilst I was solo and they managed to sink me after getting a lucky one-hit shot on me with their cannons (pretty much a death sentence as a solo sloop) I backspawned and boarded their boat and killed all 3 of them multiple times, I legit took over their boat and decided to start sailing towards this sloop I could see in the distance at an outpost to see what they were up to, when I got there I manged to raise their anchor and steal their ship too without them noticing, so I was now solo sailing a stolen brig and a stolen sloop side by side, I had no idea what I was doing or to what ends but for a brief moment I felt like a god... Until I failed my sword dash trying to go from one ship to the other and landed in the water, some serious egg-on-face.

Another time I was flying the reapers flag on an open crew sloop (open crew means you play with other randomers) and we were chasing a brig, before long another reapers sloop appeared and started chasing us, and then a 4th ship started chasing them and we were all on this big old conga line of ships and people trying to board/anchor each other, my teammate glitches and has to disconnect leaving me solo, one of the sloops offers an alliance which I take now being on my own and out-numbered, it was shaping up to be an interesting battle until the moment I get a new randomer who decides to immediately be a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, throwing my resources off the boat and eating all my food, so I jump off and onto my alliance ship, tell them about my open crew mate who also tries to board and I just shout "kill him" and they both kill him and he disconnects, it was a wonderful show of comradery but after that I had nothing to give and couldn't be bothered to keep chasing so just left the server never knowing how that crazy fight ended.

I could go on and on about this game, the water is beautiful, the water physics are great, the combat is a little basic but satisfying (unless you get hit reg'd) the way they've made the instruments/shanties work is amazing, audio design is top notch, I personally love the artstyle of the game, the story missions are actually quite good, the PvP is somewhat balanced, there's no P2W and I'm just gonna stop now because if you're not convinced to at least try out this game by now then I don't know what more to say

Went into the game not expecting much and with the mindset that this would've been amazing for it's time aaaaand to my surprise, it's not bad, sure it's janky as you'd expect but not too bad, it's pretty atmospheric, the soundtrack is actually amazing although I wouldn't say the music is always appropriate for the location, the level of detail, for the time, is actually decent and although I haven't played it long enough to fully experience it, I'd recommend playing it, even just for a little while (and leave the starting area) so you can experience for yourself this marvellous piece of history, maybe grab some friends too if you can convince them to play this relic.

Pretty good game, relaxing in a way, stressful at times but oddly relaxing

Seems to be pointlessly difficult, and not difficult for the right reasons either, the enemies can attack whilst they're getting up off the floor, they attack faster than you do so prepare to get your swings interrupted constantly but don't rely on interrupting their swings because they just recover pretty much instantly, the bigger enemies who hit like trucks have no drawbacks, they move faster than you as well and swing faster than you, you're stuck in place when you're doing the swinging animation but you can however stop it early by dodging or jumping, once I figured that out it became pretty clear what the "meta" is for this game, swing, immediately dodge, rinse and repeat, it's a pretty mediocre game with some glaring flaws, I've barely played the game and found so much ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that I'm probably gonna uninstall it, let's dive into the multiplayer: I guess the devs couldn't make up their sodding minds or something because sometimes I can hurt my mate with my bombs and sometimes I can't, but the inconsistency is frustrating enough let alone having any form of friendly fire in such a cluster ♥♥♥♥ of a game, and speaking of friendly fire you can bash each other around the screen (this doesn't do damage but you can knock your friend into a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pit and insta-kill them) AoE magic spells absolutely ruin any sort of fun in multiplayer because you will be constantly getting knocked down by them, the gold also isn't split in coop meaning it's a race to pick up the cash first, this can lead to bullshittingly infuriating situations like being 1 gold short of an item coz your mate is hoarding all the gold. As you can probably gather and as I've already said, the difficulty doesn't come from the actual game but rather the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that hangs off it like clagnuts in the wind. Also I know this is a game but there are a lot of illogical interractions that make you feel absolutely cheated, for example an enemy being able to block a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ LASER BEAM with a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ WOODEN SHIELD and then even better, the second time they managed to block the laser beam when they were BLOCKING IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION, another one is I got an item that made me IMMUNE TO FIRE DAMAGE yet the witches who throw FIRE BALLS were still hurting me, it's little things like that which really piss me off, like I said, I can appreciate it's a game and doesn't have to be 100% scientifically accurate and logical but some sort of consistency or something you can figure out on your own that gives you that "Ahhh" moment and the satisfaction that comes along with it instead of the "wtf is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥" moments that I have been having. Hit detection seems a bit off sometimes too as I've stood there swinging my weapon trying to stomp on the half skeletons nipping at my heels (you're meant to stomp instead of swing when a floored enemy is close)

The "good" parts:
Artworks alright
When you die in multiplayer you become a ghost which still does damage (barely) and can knock enemies about but as you can guess, you can still knock your mate around so this is a double-edged sword.
You don't get dragged into new rooms by your mate in multiplayer like most multiplayer games (not sure how local coop works though)

Overall:
It's pretty much a crapper version of Castle Crashers but more Rogue-like, it's definitely not worth £8.99 but you might find enjoyment in it and value at a lower price

I want to recommend this game but I can't because it's simply a waste of time for multiple reasons, not to mention the stupidly long and slow development time. It's the fact that the game is and always will be incredibly unbalanced, you start with nothing, you put in a hour or twos work, still don't have good enough weapons or armor to deal with people, still don't have a strong enough base to not get raided instantly, you're pretty much forced to play at the start until you can make a stone base to sleep in otherwise you're just gonna get raped, pillaged and murdered in your sleep. Oh what's that? You want to play this game on your own? Good luck with that, clans, teams, server veterans and bum-buddies will constantly ♥♥♥♥ all over you because they have the numbers or gear advantage; they can get resources and build quicker than you, they can get airdrops way easier and loot monuments. You know, playing with friends isn't even that fun unless you're the kind of nobhead who likes killing undergeared people, unless you're the kind of small-pricked ♥♥♥♥ who has to kill fresh spawns to make themselves feel more like a man. Ok so you've wasted your time gathering resources, attempting to build a base and being killed by a bunch of guys with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ AK47s, so you went and got your mates on now, you've all managed to gather the resources needed to build a base that isn't just going to instantly get raided, now what? Oh, server wipe, thank you, come again. If this was a singleplayer survival game with co-op (not multiplayer, free-for-all, "who's the biggest ♥♥♥♥" contest) and there were threats in the world beyond Johnny 1 inch and his bum banditos it'd be ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fantastic. The helicopter was implemented to sort of stop high geared people from just ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all over everyone else but the reality is it's easily tricked just by unequipping your stuff and it's killed me more times than it's stopped me from being unfairly killed so it's actually more of a hinderance than a solution. I think the only way this game is worth playing is setting up your own server and having like 9 other mates to play with and then all of you having a solo FFA on a small map. Or join a server after a wipe with a few friends and become the giant ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of the server and become the cancer that plagues this game, if you find that fun, ♥♥♥.

The actual gameplay is mediocre at best, good enough concept, really enjoyable the first time you start playing it (assuming you don't die straight away and join a low population server to get to grips with the crafting etc) but it becomes stale pretty quickly after having to restart on a new server for the 100th time and after losing your awesome base/gear. Also when I started playing I had a great sense of realism which I felt was needed in this style of survival game, that realism was crushed way faster than I thought it would when animals started clipping through rocks and buildings and dead bears heads would spin around uncontrollably like the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ exorcist.

Summary: Alright game, not worth the price, needs a lot of improvement, toxic community, takes forever to progress and seconds to lose everything, solo play is practically impossible, games been in EA for over 3 years and still has a lot of stupid bugs yet the developers are cheeky enough to sell skins.

I loved the style of the game, I loved how there isn't a mana pool, I've only played one class which was the mage and I didn't reach end-game but I played a decent amount of the content, it's all very standard of an mmorpg and pretty nice stuff, interface can be a little confusing at the start (for example it took me a while to find out how to queue up for dungeons and stuff) but unfortunately as other people have said it is definitely pay2win and they constantly try to encourage you to buy things with real money by making every single mob have a pretty high chance of dropping these boxes, which they tease you with by showing you the epic loot inside, and they can only be unlocked with keys that as far as I'm aware can only be bought with an ingame currency called Zen which you can either buy or buy from other players with other ingame currency called Astral Diamonds which you can only get a certain amount of each day, I suppose this in essence stops "gold farming" situations however the economy is so skewed that grinding for the Zen Market items is unrealistic so you're practically forced into spending money, similarly to the boxes you're constantly given discount coupons which once again tempt you into spending money, you can't do anything else with them and dropping them brings up a warning like you're about to throw away the offer of a lifetime. The profession system from what I saw of it seemed intriguing although I never got into it deep enough to discover it's practicality, the unique thing about it is you're not locked into one or two professions but can train all of them to max level, however you're restricted, to level a profession you have to do "tasks" tasks are simple; have the required items, wait a set amount of time, receive reward, you can start the tasks anywhere and continue doing other stuff, however, at the start you're only allowed 1 task slot and professions seem to level painfully slow, additional slots can be unlocked once certain requirements are met but these requirements are clearly end-game level stuff and realistically it's still probably more beneficial to level up 1 profession first which will unlock you additional task slots, the game seems very grind intensive which I suppose can be expected in this day and age and I've heard some stories about the developers and tech support not being particularly caring towards their community, because of this and the fact that I feel they're just out to get your money I can't recommend this game completely, consider this a half recommendation, I suggest you download it and play it with a couple friends but don't invest too much of your time in it and don't invest any of your money in it, basically play it to check it out, especially if you've played other Neverwinter games because I felt like the combat mechanics were quite satisfying to start off with although the novelty wore off and the graphics are nice, a bit WoW-esque but I like that style.

Buy a Sega Megadrive, two controllers and a copy of Chaos Engine, or if you're American:
Buy a Sega Genesis, two controllers and a copy of Soldiers of Fortune.

Either way, play this game but avoid this port, this is coming from A FAN of the Chaos Engine game.