This game will not bring you happiness. It will give you dopamine and plenty of things to do and check off, but overall it feels empty. It is a massive world (or perhaps the character models are smaller than normal) filled with a ton of detail and yet simultaneously emptiness. There are so many missions and collectables and clearly storylines the creators put time and effort into making, but in the end it felt empty. This is likely me projecting, but also the gameplay is kinda lame.

It is, the gameplay is lame! It's spiced up to feel engaging with different attack OPTIONS but it's all the same: mostly mouse clicking and numpad tapping. Everything has high health, including Skevers. Much of the game you can just run around the enemies -- but the developers have prepared for that. There is a spell that will slow you down or prevent you from moving. And in order to pick something up or even enter a new room there can't be enemies around you about to fight. Most of the enemies feel like they were placed in the environment just so there was something in this massive space.

When I wasn't endlessly clicking my mouse on a dumb enemy, the other half of the time was either on a horse getting from A to B or at crafting tables deconstructing and researching items to level up this skill that I would never really use. Light, Medium, and Heavy armor are kinda pointless skills, and so is crafting. This is why I don't play farming games. Yet I did it here because what else was I to do - sell it? What about unlocking things? And leveling up my crafting skills so I one day could do... something?

I just don't see the point of playing. I do things and receive rewards and experience points but I am not engaged the same way I am as I was with Skyrim. Yes, this is an MMO, and it's actually really good! It is filled with a lot and no it isn't empty literally, but after a while of going place to place doing quest after quest just running things started to just feel... bland. That's not the game, there is plenty of new content each location - THIS ISN'T AN UBISOFT GAME. And yet... Why?

I think I am writing this review more so for myself, who logged 80 hours throughout the entirety of April, 2020, and logged another 44 hours over 2.5 days January 2022 after I caught tonsillitis. And then another 31 hours two days after this review... Please stay away from this game. There is plenty to do, yes, but in the end, after each quest, if you pause for a moment (which really you can't since it's an MMO) everything you've done at one location will be done again at another, just with new skins, a new map, different music, and different character motivations. Everything seems to be created to further explore the Lore (or vice versa, they use to Lore to just recycle reskinned characters and quests over and over), and that's how they'll keep making new content forever. It appears like there is plenty to do but really... It's just a facade of button mashing and lore digging.

Now, how is any of what I have just said different than any other video game? The size of it all. This game is huge, and it has to be: it's an MMO. And honestly, this is not a bad game. I'd say it's a great MMO, honestly. BUT. I can't recommend it because in the end I wasn't engaged WITHIN MY HEART. My brain liked it, and my video game addict liked it. It has character and characters, and somehow they have avoided the Ubisoft trap (and that is perhaps because of the Lore. In furthering the development and exploration of the Lore, characters and quests don't necessarily feel like an obvious copy/paste).

But I still can't get over all that emptiness. For an MMO I didn't see that many people, and there wasn't enough content encouraging me to engage with the community. It doesn't have the same immersement as Skyrim - something about the characters and storylines and perhaps how the world just wasn't AS big and full of empty nothings filled with fake enemies. Idk, the comparison to Skyrim (a single player RPG) and this MMO would be another Review (or Essay, rather, at this point).

If you absolutely must play a game, feeling like your already full library is full of boring games... Then no, don't play this game. Treat your time on Earth like you would an Elder Scrolls MMO. Go learn REAL skills. Go acquires materials at a grocery store. Learn to cook. Take a class. Find a hobby. Learn to sew. Read a book (or just a chapter or one, I don't care). Just please go live your life.

Please go outside.