Recent reviews by Tarash

Nice

Extremely poor campaign balance, results in having to tediously redo a mission over and over, frequently up to an hour of your time gets wasted due to the tiniest of mistakes, this is fine for survival, that is honestly the very concept and functionality of it and it works, but for a campaign where you are stressed with tasks to complete while trying to keep out hordes of enemies it really doesn't work.

It's a shame, the games survival mode is fantastic and fun in short bursts, but this campaign that was the primary game plan from the beginning is truely atrocious.

The devs themselves seem completely incapable of realizing just how bad they made the campaign, it is not a learning experience, it is not a fun way to discover the game, you don't get to experiment and at times you are completely at the mercy of the game randomly selecting a side the zombies will arrive from.

I've given the campaign quite a few trys by now, up to around 30% completion on challenging difficulty, it's difficult to like something like this that has so specifically been made to annoy.

Poor work on this one Numantian Games.

Grinding Simulator Online
Would be a more accurate title for this game, everything in this game revolves around going from point A to B whilst clicking on resource nodes or hostile creatures along the way, resource nodes takes quite a while to harvest, so most of your time is spend doing nothing but watching a bar fill up for resource collections.

Don't get me wrong this game probably had potentiel at one point in its life, but everything is based around grinding of huge proportions, every new tier of resource you collect and turn into usable materials, requires the previous tiers resources, so you end up having to grind every single previous tier every time, or buy it off some of the other suckers that spend their time grinding it on the local markets.

The graphics is nothing impressive either, yet it seems to strain a lot of machines for no reason, the player models and npcs walking around is of such low quality and fidelity that some of it, looks like something they ripped straight out of some of the first versions of Runescape, the landscapes and buildings look nice however and have a slightly higher degree of detail, it doesn't excuse the complete bollocks that is npcs and player models though.

To those looking for a more directed way of playing, such as quests or stories, there is none, you will be disapointed and your time will have been wasted if you go into this expecting questing or stories, this is just my experience from the first 6 tiers of resources, and by the time I got through those I was exhausted and tired of the grinding.

If you're european as well, like me, this game is definetly not worth buying, there is no servers nearby, I'm guessing it's all placed in the U.S, seeing as the game runs at a constant ping of AT LEAST 150ms, everything you do WILL be delayed, and combat you will often end up taking damage from things that was very clearly not near you on your own screen, but alas, the latency is a killer.

Which brings me to this point, PvP is supposedly a main drive of this game and at higher tiers you will lose ALL your gear and inventory upon being killed in the wilds, this is not a negative per say, it's part of the game and what they wish to achieve, but it needs to be said as it's a pretty important part of the gamer later, however again if you're in europe, the latency issues will make your life hell, turning pvp and npc combat into a complete ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

What initially drew me in was the very beautifully crafted landscapes from the screenshots, and the first hour or two of the game is alright, but if you've played the game an hour, you've essentially tried everything it has to offer, grinding, more grinding, dying and grinding some more.

I feel like I've given this game a fair chance by now, 214 hours is a decent chunk of time put into the game to figure it out afterall, the game suffers from some severe issues though, that for me at least, completely negate the fun or joy in the game.

1. The game is excessively grindy, if you get through the main portion of the game and arrive at the grinding stage, you grind grind grind grind, for a very miniscule chance at loot that you MIGHT be able to sell, it might also be complete garbage which is the case 95% of the time. Do note, I do expect grind from these type of games, but I also expect there to be actual rewards for doing so.

2. The combat, frankly, older games such as D2 and Titan Quest both did combat better than PoE, it's slow, it's clunky and it doesn't feel very responsive, which leaves the combat feeling very empty and shallow, it is one of my biggest peeves about this game, the fact that at release the combat was absolutely terrible, by now they've certainly improved it, but it doesn't seem like it will ever be salvageable to a point where it feels right. As much flack as people give D3, they did the combat right, crisp, responsive and easy to deduct mid combat events.

3. The passive skill tree, I just can't recommend it, as others before me in other reviews often have stated, it doesn't feel rewarding, there's very few skills that feel impactful and honestly, the best way to describe the tree would probably be, a few usefull skills, and a lot of fillers just there to make the tree large and "scary"

All that said, there is positives to the game too, I don't feel they make up for the issues I've stated above but they are redeeming qualities other people might find good.

1. The Skill gems, I quite liked those, a lot of right customization that feels impactful and fun

2. A large open trading "network" through websites and various channels.

3. And obviously, it's free to play

As a finishing note, I've played ARPGs since D1, been through many various attempts at doing the genre right, Torchlight, Torchlight 2, Titan Quest, D2, D3, Grim Dawn and probably more that I have missed, so I do feel like I regularly enjoy this genre, but for me, PoE attempts to stand tall, but falls due to issues that are so very attached to the core of the game.

Great game worth every penny

As the moment of writing this review I have just now activated my copy of steam that was granted free from the developers to anyone that's purchased the game on their site, I have hundreds of hours logged in this game, im thinking around the 300-400 hours played, half of those in just 1 map without mods.

This game is amazing, the development has been steady and smooth, the developers communicate with their community about future changes, bugs that may appear and other issues that people bring up, they make an extra effort to make sure they provide you with a game that has a lot of content to play, as well as a bugfree experience, that said the game will naturally have bugs here and there, but they are fast at fixing the ones that do appear.

The game itself is about automation, you stat out with nothing but some iron, a furnace and a mining drill that operates on coal, tree or fuel ( this being late game content ) from there on you set out to create the biggest, meanest, most menacing factory you can create, it starts easy, letting you automate stuff that only takes a few raw materials, as you progress further in the game things become more and more complicated, you may need to combine 4 items first, then add oil or water, then combine them into the final product, fiddling around with these things is immensely enjoyable, you get a sincere feeling of satisfaction from completing a huge production line.

Together with having to manage your factory you also have to be careful about your character, the world you are about to plunder of all its riches to create a factory, is full of hostile aliens, all of them just anxious to get a bite out of you for polluting their world, polluting their world also results in them getting stronger, bigger and a more increasing threat making you build defenses, such as walls and automated turrets / lasers, not only that but you get to equip your character with a small selection of weapons to plow down these anti-progression aliens, and you get to make and modify your own armor suit, where you can add different components such as force shields, extra movement speed or defense lasers, finally you also get to build a car with a mounted turret, a tank and you can setup a production of small autonomous drones you can deploy to help you fight the resistance.

All in all thise game provides many hours of fun in just the base game, should you decide to delve into modding the game I am sure you will find a lot of extra hours to be fun, the developers support modding as best they can and encourage people to mod the game.

Finally for the people that don't want to read my wall!

TLDR

Pros:

• Satisfying building stuff
  
• Automation made fun
  
• Logistic problems made fun
  
• Reminiscent of minecraft Tekkit
  
• A lot of freedom

Cons

• Combat is a little meh right now

Big marinez of win

I luv dis game, u go buy now yes ?

this = huge broner