Recent reviews by KneeKo

!! DO NOT BUY (atleast not yet) !!

TL;DR:

The game is extremely poorly optimized, atleast for AMD cards. There are no SEA servers, and there is strong evidence they are not planning to add them either. Extremely poor netcode, where rubberbanding extremely ruins gameplay. Extremely long queue times and few servers release at launch to bait people to queueing and disabling refund eligibility.

Longer:
- Poor optimization: The game runs much more poorly than the first "limited beta" iteration. You would think they delayed the game to fix the most basic ♥♥♥♥♥, or delay AGAIN just to make sure it's ready, but no. I have a 5700xt, and the game runs at 100 FPS in the first area, 60-70 on the 2nd, and about 30-40 in towns with not a lot of players.
- No SEA servers: This would be ok if they were atleast planning to in the near future. But the fact is, they could've released SEA servers at launch in the first place, but to make matters worse, they are not planning to release SEA servers AT ALL. This means the lowest latency you can get on AU servers is about 140ms. This is a real-time game where block timing, skill timing, and skill shots need to be precise. They should not have released this on Global.
- Extremely poor netcode: Aside from the 140ms ping, very minor hiccups (where other decent games have this figured out) rubberband your game to oblivion. It's not just you, but monsters also refuse to move or fight back at all, or at times damage you but they just stay in place. The client prediction is a mess.

EDIT: 1.0:
- Genderlock
- Bugs that LITERALLY block progression and happen ALMOST ALWAYS still existent that were in EA half a year ago.
- Claims to have polished animations, but Sentinels on character selection with a 2h weapon acts as if they are holding a shield. This applies to A LOT of other things in the game as well.

This game is NOT 1.0. Maybe 0.9.5 due to some added content, but ABSOLUTELY NOT 1.0.


Why would you follow the trend of releasing a game that's unfinished? You can't even fix a feature (online/multiplayer) when you've basically succumbed to the "player engagement" rabbithole and cosmetic MTX BS?

Did you seriously think you can just stumble your way into things by offering a bandaid solution to a problem you didn't fix (an offline mode) when a good chunk of your playerbase wants to play with friends?

This game is 5 USD cheaper than BG3. By percentage, is roughly 12% cheaper. But in comparison, BG3 is 300% more packed with content, classes, has actually good MoCap, VA, and sidestories AND an arching storyline that ACTUALLY matters.

Meanwhile, this game was cut up into little pieces which was planned from the very beginning, into DLCs. Combining all DLCs with the main game, story wise, this is less than half of BG3, your background DOES NOT MATTER at all, there are FEWER races, FEWER classes, FEWER subclasses, extremely SIMPLE side quests. And when I said it's just far worse in every aspect compared to BG3, it iis worse than BG3 in every aspect.

Do not trust and support this developer. This scummy style of cutting up your game to make it seem cheaper is disgusting.

EDIT: Not sure why I initially wished this was more "expansive", when the game is extremely massive.

TL;DR on what this game is: It's a mix or rogue-like aesthetics, controls, freedom, and difficulty with the depth of an actual RPG.

The game is a roguelike in the sense that it was initially a permadeath kind of thing. But since the game features an expansive story with actual static towns and locations, the devs listened to the playerbase and gave it a "Roleplay Mode" where checkpoints are saved in towns. So while the risk is still substantial, it is not as discouraging if you're in it to play for the story and discovery of mid-endgame content.

It's also roguelike in the traditional sense that you can build your character in vast number of ways, and the freedom to do unconventional things to your character. Namely:
- You want to have six arms? Go ahead.
- You want to decapitate your own head? Sure.
- You want to replace your liver with a better one? Alright.
- You want to switch bodies with a monster or even a crucial NPC? No problem.
- You want to recruit the village's elder? Sure you can.
- You want to make a wall sentient and recruit him as a follower? That's possible too.
- You're about to die, and want to turn back time before you do? You can do that too!

Aside from this, there's very deep systems in place that is not required to be utilized to be successful, but it lets you get creative on how to get past certain obstacles. You can even break walls for a shortcut!

Enemies are not just out for you. There's a fully functional faction system that you can manipulate as well, so you might see some enemies fighting each other, or you may befriend a "primitive" or usually aggressive faction so they either ignore you, or they help you when you're attacked.

There is a lot more systems and fun mechanics in place other than the mentioned above to discover, and I'll leave it up to you to find them.

Definitely worth the buy at full price. BUY IT!

Would love to recommend, but the game is a severe lagfest right now. Connections get dropped constantly every 30 seconds to 1 minute, which means you can move, but your attacks won't register until the said drop "finishes". And this lasts for around the same duration, if not more. This extremely ruins the experience,

Not recommended right now until they fix it. Maybe download it, but don't play it yet until they fix it so your experience is not ruined.

Imagine being an old game but having 40fps on max settings, and a ♥♥♥♥-ton of stuttering on a high-end PC.

Strongly considered going member 'cos I wanted a Ultima-like game, on an actually populated MMO, but it looks like I'll be sticking to free Ultima Online shards instead.

Shame.

The game's "season pass season 2" scammage is the worst. Even so, the season 2 pass was promised to have new content in, but checking several months later, there's NOTHING.

Also, this game is free on Epic Store until the 26th, so go get it for free and DO NOT pay for it.

Of the 30 hours I've spent on the game, 80% was spent on trying to make it work, or waiting for loading screens. I bought this low-end game because I don't have a very strong system, and for it to require an SSD to decently run is absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥. I wish I could refund this game, because the only time I enjoyed it was when I lured enemies into town.

For someone who likes difficult games, but is impatient and easily gives up, this game was PERFECT for me.

Unlike the masochistic and unfair difficulty of souls-like games, and the lack of depth of pure rogue-likes, The game doesn't punish you too badly in making mistakes. The game is difficult for a platformer, but doesn't require impossible feats of dexterity to 100% (except of course the hardcore achievements), and even the timed trials are fair, and this is perfect for someone who doesn't like seeing anything less than 100% before finishing their game.

Add up the absolutely gorgeous music score, and the very pretty and unique visuals, the great and perfect sense of size, and the great-looking parallax, this was definitely worth the buy. In fact, this is worth the FULL price, even if not on sale!

I hope this studio branch/develop makes more of these games, because it was created masterfully while understanding the grips of challenge-loving but impatient players (which by the way, makes the MAJOURITY of the gamer demographic).

TL;DR: Masterful sound production values, great visuals, perfect difficulty balance (challenging but not unfair, no artificial difficulty here), doesn't punish you too much and doesn't require superhuman feats of dexterity to finish 100%. Must buy, even at full price!

The game is very much early access level, and not worth being on 1.0.

GRAPHICS: The graphics is not clean at all, and it feels like an alpha stage game with the unintuitive and "dirty" interface, with very bad balance all around. A almost all actions are literally 2 frames of animation. It's very lazily built. This would've been OK if the gameplay was fun. It's not.

THE GAMEPLAY: The 2-combo basic attack would not be so bad if the beginner enemies are not sponges, and there weren't so many of them. Add up the fact that you fight your first boss ever that's even more spongy with that 2-hit combo and having a single skull throw ability, the game's difficulty is very, very artificial. Basically, for common enemies, you'll be trying to gather then together, then spam your 2-combo attack 15-20 times until they die. This is the same for bosses, except you can't stunllock them, and they hit you for MUCH harder, and you can't do anything except dodge and what more than 500x because the game does not give you ANYTHING for variation.

Again, not sure why this was released already when the game is terribly balanced.