Recent reviews by BloodyMutt

Nearly two days of play time recently... still finding new and amusing ways to accomplish things.

So, really don't throw out a lot of reviews. To do so I either have to highly dislike or like whatever is involved.
I got this game for 8.75$. I already have ten hours of play with maybe shoot... five mins? of that being AFK time refilling my coffee cup.

I had just put this on my WL after having just read a random blog post about how "No one wants turn-based Co-Op" games in this style. The author, respectfully, is an idiot who doesn't see just how mighty a surge board games of similar design have had in popularity. I instantly scooped up another copy for a friend, and a few others have picked it up. Three of us played for about 4 hours last night alone, and while we didn't "progress" far there were few turns where nothing was going on. When one friend left the other and I swapped to another save file and while combat and such mostly feels very same-y, the replayability just from the shifting pieces on the board is a treasure.
Hell, with all the time off I have I just knocked out a few hours in a solo game, where just it being solo changed up a few mechanics so slightly that it gave it a different feel for me.

Now it isn't all sunshine and rainbows. If you have the Wheaton Curse, I am so very sorry. I personally failed some critical 4/5 chance actions in a row, and there are some negative conditions that are extreme negatives, like the risk for gear breaking, or every one's favorite RPG condition "Confusion"
On top of this, it does feel odd to only have a 3person party, though that may be what kept the pace refreshing, should you only have one friend to play with one of you will have to manage a second character, or opt to increase your challenge by removing the character entirely. On top of that, things won't quite split evenly, so shuffling gold around could become a bit of an issue if you're trying to min-max.

TLDR
Pros: The Online Co-Op experience was incredibly smooth. Decisions held a weight to them. Replayable! Great Solo or Co-Op!
Cons: Cartoony polygonal graphics might be a bit of a turn off for some. Combat can become very samey or very frustrating if dice constantly fall in the enemy favor. There is always something one can find wrong with something.

Wall of Text Incoming. Mild language.
"Ok, this is an interesting take. Eh, mized reviews... We'll see."
First thing first, the art style. Among my favorites it is certainly gorgeous and is actually the reason I installed in the first place.

Series of Events:
Game Launch... Register... "WELCOME!"... Tutorial begins while I'm being spammed with "keys". Finally get informed that these keys are dished out weekly just for playing. "Cool, I can dig that." Without mousing over you're not exactly told what each key does, but that is sort of obvious. Game asks me to unlock a hero, which it tells me is called breeds, but still decides to call heroes because calling one thing two names is cool I guess.
I go to check out a hero who looks interesting, base stats show up in a nice lil char sheet. But wait... where the hell are their abilities? This isn't a right click simulator is it? Seeing tags like mage tell me surely each breed does something. Ok; now lets sto-... where is the return button? Nevermind that I'll just click Hero again. Tutorial continues on as if I had used a key and insists I start playing... Well, I can't disappoint the all-might tutorial...
I drag over the lowest key and unlock Ivy... Gut told me she might have a heal, and she kind of looks like a chick from Avatar so win win... click play, choose graveyard, cause... I mean... it is a friggin graveyard!
Out of game UI goes poof, game ui pops up telling me to Vote for something or other; gives abso-friggn-lutely NO information about what the heck I am looking at... looks pretty though... "Ok, lets clickkkk this one... its a daybreed like me. Huh... nothing happened, timer is still ticking." Continue clicking around because my mind tells me the big VOTE button was to lock in my selection, which... I never got the option to make one. Ok, no worries, maybe it is an incoming feature being previewed.... yeah...
Get in game and the ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan. Looks GORGEOUS, which is great, cause eye candy helps... But while trying to pick my skill it constantly yelled at me as though I was attempting to cast... Hrm... Ok, I'll be a wood-league player and click to learn the skill Q looks good (later on ctrl+Q/W/E/R finally started working, though with serious finicky time spent holding ctrl in advance else it would cast). First hurdle done. Next, find the shop. P, well, lot of mobas use it for shop so why not (why though? why p?)
"Your monolith is under attack"... Uh... what!? Sure enough the other fella decided to suicide dive my monolith (not towers, do not mistake them for towers). He'll proceed to do this throughout the game because the AI doesn't understand that to-monoliths hurt. Ok no biggy, I'll let him ♥♥♥♥ around up there for a bit... I'll go to the other side and see ho... Ok no attack move? What is A bound to? Banner... ok maybe that's like summoner skills or such. Nope, found the banner on the map. "Return it to your starting area to trash." Bully! Off I go. Meanwhile there goes SuicideMcgee again. What a champ. dance around my starting area... Oh bannnerrr? Do something? After another suicide dive and monolith damage actually becoming a concern I check the amount of gold I have acquired. "Crap" Rush out to farm, attack animations aren't to bad, last hitting will take some getting used to, good thing there are these barrels to get some chump change out of.
Ult acquired! Spend the next chunk of time trying to figure out what the heck it was supposed to do. For those who are curious, she puts down a seed. The seed itself doesn' do squat except fade away if left alone, wasting a chunk of your very precious mana. "Drag and drop..?" Ok back to the shop, maybe I missed something. Took another chunk of time before accidently stumbling on something glinting as I passed by...Another three mins to find the tiny little numbers next to my skills that I had mistaken for Kills, death, assists, farm. Silly me. Good thing I gave up a tow-erh... monolith. Also spot a "dungeon door"... Sure why not. I need some fat lewts... Turns out to be similar to jungle camps, except the main guy did more damage per swing than the enemy Breed did... TACTICAL WITHDRAWL. No back function, guess I'm waddling back to base...
Spend another five mins mousing over things in the shop because the game has pulled a FROM Software on me and not told me squat about what does what. I'm a mage, so clearly I want Power... I don't like dieing so I want Health... but... why are there so many if they don't do anything really unique... Plus side, they actually affect how you look, brownie points acquired.
OK, Suicide McGee has annoyed me to no end, time to fight. Run in, W him... and he runs off of it, which makes sense... but so do the minions... This guy understood that a spell from me did damage, but had died twelve times to the same monolith...
Game goes on as I try to make up apparently mass quanities of loss ground. Figure out how to summon the Troll, who bugs out at the last enemy Monolith because a minion stood in his way and he couldn't figure out how to switch targets... or something like that. Eventually kill Suicide Mcgee and then hear a 10 second countdown... "Huh, it didn't count down other day/night cycles did it!?"


DEFEAT...
...
...
"Well ♥♥♥♥ you too." I just lost a game, to a troll deciding he wanted to have that gargoyal lil fella as a pet instead of just smashing the monolith his massive club could have reached twice over.
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This game needs so much work, so very much.
Its artistic style will be something that will get it a following, its little rpg elements of resource management might put people off (If everyones R requires it I'm going to tableflip).
The in game tutorial might do well to not be off by default though... Oh! And being able to SET KEYBINDS. Clicking input and seeing an empty menu made me almost alt-f4 the damn game.

I personally do play to keep my eyes on the progress, perhaps even play to learn a bit but there is so very, very much that needs to be done.

With the mixed reviews I decided to give this game "An hour", literally as you look at my time played. In this hour I played against the AI to get a fairer feeling of just how the guns feel, and because I did not want to run the risk of other shooter's habit of frankly unbalanced matchmaking. So if you are curious as to how the player v player kindly move along.
OK; It is an MMO only if you can call Call of Duty an MMO. The initial AI matches start off like fish in a barrel, and then promptly turn into "Ok, now I am shooting a bb gun... that shoots marshmallows, that heal the enemy."

Now after an hour of dedicated play the main thing I noticed was I didn't feel like I was progressing in any fashion. Sure I managed to unlock a character. But after an hour of time that was it, and all that took was a single AI match. I don't mind a grind, but pulling up a shop menu after an hour of doing so and noting "Well... .1% done to my first weapon." does not inspire the desire for me to play.

The guns didn't feel horrible (up until they became the marshmallow flingers of doom against the armored enemies), and overall the game concept is enjoyable. That's about all I got out of my hour of play and maybe that is enough to help you go in not as blind as I did.

First: It is another Survival game in a game genre becoming mired with multiple titles of various success. So, the question that should always be asked is, what does this offer that the others don't?

Are the Developers Active? A+
The developement team is on the ball. It has been a long time since i have said that about a dev team. But they are making sure content is constantly coming down the pipe to keep you interested. There is not a lot more I can say on this point and I will avoid listing a few other games that have utterly failed to accomplish this, though I am sure others have/will point them out.

Is the Community Toxic? A
The community. I have played several other of the Survivial genre games, and to be fair not all of the players are of the quaility that stands out the most; The toxic players. While this game is by no means immune from them, over all the community has remained among the most pleasent in my time as an online gamer. Of course I speak from my personal experience, other players have told me otherwise, but for once I have actually enjoyed playing for long enough to put down a base, and shockingly once in awhile actually log on to it being intact!

Ok, so what about the game itself? A-
PvE: The PvE aspect is fantastic, though without, and I hate that I'm saying this, player intervention(PvP) I am curious to see how long it might last without randomized events, random stampeeding dinos for example. Because once you're built up, you're built up.
PvP: The game is adding a competitive mode, I personally won't be partaking in this, but overall it adds another level of play, so Yay.
PvPvE: This is the kind of server I play on, and as I said about the community, it isn't all that bad for once. Sleep Killing being in the game is, as in other games, an annoyance, and various things need balanced (No you shouldn't be able to punch my Carno to death while it is eating you in a 1v1) Again, randomized events will probably helps sutain things but for the most part these kind of servers are going to need to keep themselves in check.
I give it an A- as there are a few things still needing fixed:
Dead bodies' ragdoll physics are both hilarious and frustrating at the same time. Bloom, let me turn it the hell off! Most games that add this do it horrrrrribly wrong and as a player with rather sensitive eyes it is murder (Yes there is a console command that turns it off atm, it also runs the risk of causing all in game light to be ineffective so have fun walking in the dark of the jungle).

Overall, I would recommend the game. Already I have managed to get my thirty bucks of enjoyment, even when offline just discussing the game, planning things, and so on has been enjoyable.

Happy Hunting!

I would like to start by making it clear that my steam hours are a lie. I played this game when it was still in its infancy. That said, I have not actively played it for a VERY long time, and in fact have no statement of how good or bad the later game is. I will say that the game is VERY enjoyable, more so when you are playing with friends, which goes from almost any MMOXX

The Pros:

• The Foundry*
  No, seriously. I don't care what end game is like. I have personally "remade" some of my group's tabletop shenanigans in the Foundry. *The Foundry when I last had my hands on it had some serious pitfalls (traps being... LOLOLOL ignorable for exampl). I will likely edit this after going in and playing around with it some more now that we're returning to the game. All this said, the fact that this is a thing, and the things people have created more than makes up for the complaints I have seen about end game content, barring that eventually, tmk, they just can't make a quest hard enough. (Again, looking into any updates).
  
• The Combat system
  The only time this system would have a flaw is if you are lagging. Which DOES happen, I'll admit. Now, I can understand where it can be restrictive having only a few skills at your fingertips, personally this hasn't affected me yet. Note that last word.
  
• The Gateway
  Even while I have not been active in the game, when my group drifted away awhile back I was able to keep pumping up crafting... without ever loading the game. Listen close. You listening? EVERY DAMN MMO WITH CRAFTING SHOULD STRAIGHT STEAL THIS IDEA. Now, the actual recipes are questionable at times. But the system is overall what I look for far as crafting, and crafting is a big deal for me in MMO's.

The Cons:

• Gold Spammers
  Ugh. Seriously... Ugh. I know they invest every MMO under the sun at some point, and when finally someone makes a chat filter that catches them all before they drown out other far important chatter they will earn a Nobel Prize.
  
• Price Points
  I'm sorry... Did you really want 25$... for a race? Before you light your torches understand me. I do not dislike that there is premium content, and if I took the time I would list other games that do it worse (EQII comes to mind) when it comes to freemium. The fact that they do have a... albeit slow and player driven, means of getting premium cash is a step in the right direction... but that a Race, and the race alone (Yes, it provides a Racial reswap... but frankly I like my chars as they stand considering two are Drow that I suddenly can't make anymore of) is the price of what could almost buy me another game itself (... ok, used to but I digress) is a bit much. What do I think would be a fair point of cost? I cannot really say. The product is not something I am interested in, but one that jumped out at me. Thus far I hope they at least maintain that classes are not premium content. Glares to YOU EQII
  
• The Website/Market
  When clicking "More info" on Dragonborn... and not being brought to "Buy Dragonborn" first... I'll just back away from this point now as I understand it is a PITA at times to keep things up-to-date but... Just sayin.

Overall I only listed the last because I felt it would be unfair to not have 3:3 on the list so I had to be picky about something. If you are looking for an MMO that gets it MOSTLY right, please, give it a try.

While I cannot accept this as a beta level of game being pushed out, the game is going in... kind of the right direction. Now I would have liked to give it more hours, but soon as I hit a purely russian portion I stopped because, frankly I do not speak Russian. When those kinds of things gets sorted we'll see.

Now, I am not a "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Fan", I enjoy the series but it has been awhile since I have played them so far as stick-closed-ness to the series I cannot vouche for it nor will I as over 80% of games that make claims to stick to a beloved series are actually horrible, horrrrrible mistakes.

Give it a try yourself, ignore the mindless drones who can only think to say "uninstall simulator" on every game on steam and form your own opinion.