Recent reviews by Jes McDevlin™

Those who read my reviews know i'm often very critical of games. But this being a solo-dev project, with this kind of quality is amazing. I'm not going to sit here and say "ITS THE BEST THING EVER!" But... Its phenomenal considering what it is. And Siris, if you read this; Bravo to you. Keep up the fantastic work.

This game has a clear focus and identity. The, almost cartoonish, low poly graphics we see all over UE5 games right now do detract from it some, but all the same... within an hour you forget all about them as the tense, atmospheric, emergent game play, and amazing enemy design, truly shine through.

Excellent focus and direction in style and gameplay.
Memorable random encounters and emergent gameplay
Secrets to find, notes to read, no hands held 'questing'
Difficulty options you can tune
The community
Solid sound system. Needs some occlusion and reverb work.
Solid atmospheric music.

The Focus:
This game's inspirations are worn very on the sleeve. Stalker, Fallout, and perhaps a little Thief. Even the writing in a lot of the books is pretty on the nose with how the world is seen as a sort of twisted alternate reality with a lot of the same players wearing different masks. I for one love this, and see it as the greatest strength of the game. The maker, Siris Pendrake, has a clearly defined idea and direction to take his game. With some one who is so focused on their world, i cant wait to see where this leads.

Emergent Gameplay:
Factions fight, monsters attack, anomolies bait, the world feels remarkably alive for how perceptively simple the game is at a glance. The world isn't quite as breathing as some larger older titles, but there is a very strong skeleton here. And there... and everywhere in this game. Seriously, i wish they'd get a life and stop chasing me. :P But no, the bones of this living world are very well structured and it breaths a remarkable level of interaction into it.

Secrets, Notes, Missions!:
The contracts in this game sometimes are vague to an infuriating point... IF you are not a fan of Morrowind like questing. Read your notes, take pages for your journal, write down codes. You will not have you hand held and a giant glowing compass tell you where to go. But all the same; this makes the finding of secrets feel almost second nature to this game if you get into that mind set. By not holding your hand, making you think, and read, the game primes you for finding notes, and books, to read them thoroughly in case something may be important inside. This has made me read more lore books than i ever did in modern Bethesda titles like Oblivion and Skyrim. Just be prepared to look up guides or spend longer doing something than you'd expect in modern gaming. Have patience, it pays dividends.

Difficulty you can tweak:
This game's options for difficulty are bar-none some of the best in industry for this genre. Most games would make you install a mod, or several, to get this granularity of tuning. This took inspiration from games like Project Zomboid, and lets you build a character with positive and negative traits. As for dealing with death you have your choice of save based, respawn based, or perma-death options. You can choose to lose everything on death, keep some stuff or keep nothing and have to run back Dark Souls Style. Loot not respawning make your inner loot goblin angy? Turn it on!

Just remember, once you choose, its done. No going back.

Community:
The community on their discord is friendly, helpful, and insightful. Right now it is small, and that means it is relatively easy to manage and cull bad actors. I hope it garners attentions from more like minded folks who will keep the community a nice wonderful place for all future players. Even asking some stupid newbie questions i could have just googled im sure, the community didn't talk down or berate me like many others would. It reminded me of the old alpha and beta days of Warframe honestly. Some true nostalgia for me.

Sound and Music:
So this one is a bit low on the positives but are not a con. Being clear, this next point is not a con, but a point of note. I can tell a lot of the sound effects for some things are lifted from expired copyright media. That is to say, there is a lot of things like 1950s ads some mobs use for voice lines, and the radio music and TV programs are older copyright expired media. I for one love the idea of preserving forgotten media like this. But others may find it a bit jarring in this game's setting.

The weapon sounds are somewhat samey, but still have a good punch and heft to them so they don't feel boring like playing with cap guns. I'd love to see a real sound designer come in and work on the effects and sound system to give it a glow up and bring it up to another level. What is here, like the rest of the game, is an exceptionally solid frame. It does not feel bad, but it has clear room for improvement and evolution in time.

The atmospheric background music is also solid at making things tense. But I could not point it out of a crowd so to say. Perhaps more will come in time that really resonate with me.

Performance. (UE5 related issues)
Lack of Weapon Customization.
Art Style.

The Performance:
The game's performance in some situations isn't stellar. The dev has removed some of the harder impacting UE5 elements, but UE5 is a flawed engine with optimization problems. Some areas, that is to say, watery, stormy, night time conditions, fights with a lot of gunshots, fires, particle heavy anomoly effects and such, can really bog the game down when they combine into one area. I've caught it chugging my little 2060(6gb) down to 20fps on full "unreal" and "Ultra" settings @1080p. That said, for the most part, id say a good %70-80 I run stable capped 60FPS no struggle. I'd suspect anyone with an 8GB VRAM card would have much less issue.

Lack of Weapon Customization:
The lack of weapon customization is a personal sad point for me to make. But I know it would take an enormous amount of effort to do right with just 1 man behind the wheel of this project. The solution of having 'Preset Variants' of weapons to find does help this. But its just that one little tick away from the more visceral gun-nutting a lot of stalker type fans love to see in these games.

The Art Style:
This art style, the minimalist, low-poly styling we see everywhere these days from smaller teams and devs, is a struggle to get past at times for this kind of game. A lot of Immersive Sim and Stalker fans really love that super gritty, fine detailed, high fidelity, in your face graphics. Wile the style isn't winning any awards for detail, it is still a good strong base for the world.

However, the enemies are fantastic in their design and function. You will forget its low poly when you get into it. The tension and horror these enemies can leave you with is palpable.

Sadly it's the moments of peace between the tension that leaves me wanting. It lacks that jaw dropping clarity we have come to enjoy in this modern era of gaming. I honestly hate to make this a point, but lets face it, we are spoiled by the more financially able dev teams who put so much effort into graphics they forget to make a game.

This is not that. This is a game that isn't the most "cinematic" thing you've ever seen. BUT IT IS FUN. I'll take the hit to fidelity to have a truly fun game. Give it 5 years, this thing will have some Ultra-HD mod pack i know it.

All of that said; this being a (mostly) single man indy dev, I am blown away at the amount of work this must have taken. Anyone who has worked with a rendering program knows it can take days to make even a single small item look good even at lower poly.

Overall:

Quarter-mile wide, 1 plank length deep game.
Worth it on sale only.
Valued at about ~$10-20 AT MOST.

In a word: Underwhelming.
Graphically, performance, appearance, content, game play, & effort.

Slow repetitive game play.
Many missed opportunities and blatant lies in marketing. (AAAA game, etc)
Insanely pushy micro-transaction shop. (Mostly cosmetics.)

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Please don't get into this game if you have a habit of spending any money on cosmetics. Every, last, thing, is a cosmetic in this game. Every ounce of this game is expressly made to part you from your money if you are weak of will and easily seduced by the shiny, sparkly, fancy, or edgy.

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You walk around port talking to ugly NPCs with only 3 lines,
sail around somewhat chaotic seas,
gather resources with a mini game, (Minigame was removed in a patch.)
do the same kinds of quests over and over,
shoot ships intermittently,
mostly babysit your ship as it sails with a curve,
go back to port,
empty cargo,
craft mildly better gear,
raise arbitrary gear score with limited gear options.
Repeat ad nauseam.

That is it. That is everything.
All other things are iterations on this set of basic mechanics.

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No ground combat,
No boarding combat,
No walking on your own ship,
No joinable factions,
No reputations,
No diplomacy,
No 'dungeons',
No 'raids',
No exotic/legendary items.

What features do you get?
Simple story line,
Gear Scores,
Scarce gear drops, (Better at world tier 2)
Mostly crafted/bought gear,
World bosses,
Random Events,
Random timers on events/randomized inventories, because FOMO,
Mild faction interactions,
GTA like 'heat level' that dies off instantly with factions,
Season pass,
Booze "smuggling" job (think GTAV-O, RDR2-O Jobs),
The shop shoved in your face in every possible screen,
Always online game play on laggy inconsistent servers,

This game is slow, repetitive, grindy, and over all not an action game no matter what anyone tells you.
This is one step above a turn based RPG, and many many steps down from an A-RPG.

Gear has power scores, you get gear from quests, rarely from kills, and mostly from gathering resources, refining them, and crafting loot with them.

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Mostly because I can't give it a perfectly meh 2/5 | 3/10 stars, but still enjoy it.

So I am a bit of a glutton for punishment and this is a simple but relaxing game for the most part.
I put more than 24 hours into the open beta the game had. I enjoyed it, and so I got it for dirt cheap when it came out on sale ($6). I enjoy slower paced games like this where I can watch something else while I play. It'd almost be a perfect phone game if it was broken into shorter jaunts.

If anything it feels almost like a clicker game at it's highest tiers where you end up not doing much for a long time, then press buttons frantically for a few moments, then go back to a whole bunch of mindless babysitting mechanics as you sail around.

And for me, that's worth the $6 put into it.

I still say Vermintide 2 is superior. But its hard to beat something that was so fluid in it's design when you try and tack on more stuff. Its no wonder this game is so clunky. But.... rough edges aside, this is a fantastic game with friends. Just prepare for frustration.
play ranged? Be punished by melee mobs.
Play melee? Be punished by ranged mobs.
Try and swap back and forth? Get constantly surrounded with your gun out, and shot in the back of the skull the second you pull out your sword to get the ghouls off of you.

Best with friends, suffering loves company.

A bit clunky, but over all fun and enjoyable. Best with friends. Worth the full price just to support these devs.

As addictive as the things you pedal.

If this is early access, its a very very solid foundation. Its a simple, fun premise, with a fair bit to do.

My main complaints are the controls are a bit floaty, and on keyboard some of them are a bit overly sensitive (yaw). And i wish the parts could be resized some as well. IE: Stretchable wings, shrink or expand engines, etc.

Over all; it was worth every penny and i hope to see a bright future for this game.

Unpolished, Unintuitive, and Unfun.

The numbers must go up.

Got to say; i am pleasantly surprised here.
The execution is a bit clunky, the game feeling very indy in quality, but not vision.

This is a game that i can see people who enjoy lots of progression and exploration sinking at least a solid 10-30 hours in. But do keep in mind, what you see is what you get. A slightly jank and clunky solo adventure.

My only regrets is that this is not multiplayer, and far more vast in scope and depth. Not to say its not a very fun and worthy game, but i'd love to see this concept taken to another level. I feel if some one out there made this idea into a truly well funded and well developed reality, this would have chance to 'break the internet'.

As is; its clearly a passion project of some one. And it shows. :)

I desperately WANT to love this game... but she is unreasonably flawed in her current state.

If i want to love it, Why a thumbs down then?
TLDR: Optimization, Stability, Jank, Lack of content, Missed opportunities.

Straight up; Optimization, and stability are just not up to snuff for a fully-released AAA title.
I have a 12th Gen I7, 64Gb ram, and an RTX2060, but i cant even get more than 45 FPS @720P on LOW settings. I MUST run AMD-FSR, and frame generation to make it to 60. And even then at these settings the game looks like a PS2 era blurry muddy nightmare with frame gen adding input lag. I can run World fine, I can get 60+ FPS on StarCitizen, the horrible mess that is. There is NO excuse.

Worse still; a lot of my friends are crashing EVERY. SINGLE. HUNT. With just as good of computers as mine or better in most cases.

One is getting frame dips in fights down sub 60 FPS with a 12th gen I9, 64gb ram, and a freaking RTX 3090! Just deplorable!

No excuse Capcom. Fix it.

Content wise, This really is a disappointment in the end. I loved MH:World, but i feel this is lacking somehow. I pre-ordered World and played it day 1, so i do remember how it was at launch and am not thinking about post Iceborn content. Back then World felt more paced and more ordered and felt the world had more life. This time around? No colossal monster, no real big set piece fight, the story was passable but in the end, its feeling a bit mile wide inch deep.

That said! I look forward to the game's progress.

The Co-op for first time play through is still jank. You must progress to the 'hunt started' screen every mission before friends can join. This means one of you has to quit out, then join mission from the board on their friend, and then progress with every single story mission to play with partners. And yes, i'm aware of the old cutscene system in World, but i thought they'd have sorted this by now. Then add in the whole, Squad, Squad Lobby, Link, link-environment, BS and its just clunky as hell. Why have all these systems if they dont even let you organically progress story together?

In the end,... i want so SO badly to give this a thumbs up, but cant justify it.

If its your first Monster Hunter game, you have a god tier rig, and want to play with friends, sure, you can grab this. But i'd honestly suggest starting with Monster Hunter World, beat that, then in the months that takes come get this on sale AFTER they fix their crap.