Recent reviews by KneeKo

I love this game. I wish AAA games go back to the golden days where the quality and content was of this caliber.

Sure, the production values are lower, but then again, it's not as buggy as the other AAA games that decided to borrow money from Tencent, ultimately pushing scummy monetization on their games.

Buy this full price.

P.S. THE REVIEW BELOW IS A COPY PASTE BEING USED BY TRASH AND LOW-LIFE STEAM POINTS FARMERS. DOWNVOTE IT AND DO NOT GIVE IT AWARDS.

"I am a 45 yo father, probably one of the oldest people playing this game. I am a single father to my Son, who is 14 now. My son got this game for Christmas in 2019 from his uncle, so we installed it on his computer and he started playing. By the end of the week he had 24 hours on this game. This was horrible for me, as it was already hard for me to find ways to spend time with my son, as he is always out with his friends or just watching YouTube. So i decided to make a Steam account and get this game to see if I could maybe play alongside him. I loaded into the game, picked my character and world and started playing but I was stuck on what you where supposed to do. I asked my Son for help and he started to help me. I loved it as it was the best time I had spent with my Son since my wife had died. This game has ever since brought me and my son closer again and now we actually spend time together outside the house together as well. This game reminded me that there's fun to be had in everything, and it has brought both me and my Son many happy memories."

The improvement over the previous game was definitely great. Though if you're looking for a spiritual successor to the first one, this may not be it.

While the story does carry off from the previous one, the execution and theme of this one just screams pirate obsession. I mean I'm playing a High Fantasy themed game. If I wanted to play a pirate game, I'd play Sea of Thieves or some other pirate simulator out there. It almost feels as if the devs rode the bandwagon, because they feel like using a pirate theme will make the game sell better, aside from making it much easier to play.

On the note of making the combat easier to grasp, it does feel more easier to grasp indeed, and the inclusion of scriptable NPC AI is great. But if you're looking for an older CRPG feel that carries over from the previous game, you will be very disappointed. Every class has a "resource pool" of some sort that allows them to use their skills/spells for x number of times per encounter. Injury is also temporary, depending on your difficulty settings. While I personally like this, and in fact, love it, I don't think this will appeal to older fans.

Lastly, the biggest factor for me not recommending this game, is because of the technical issues behind it. They promised quicker loading times, but now, it also takes 10-15 seconds to load INTO a small interior that has ONE NPC. The game also has very, VERY severe optimization issues. I have a very capable system, so I shouldn't be getting only 65 FPS in larger towns, degrading to 40-45 when I've played too long. And yes, the game's performance such as loading, and FPS in big towns suffer very badly, possibly due to memory leaks of some kind. This alone ruins the experience for me. Exploring is very tedious, as I would need to wait so long just to load into an area. Half the game is a loading simulator, seeing as you're not playing on one, big, open world. When you board an enemy ship, the same long loading times really ruin the experince, aside from the degraded performance when you've played too long.

TL;DR: The game is a loading simulator. Atleast 30% of your time will be spent loading in and out of zones, EVEN if you're loading into a small interior. This extremely ruins the experience, as the game relies on immersion for half of its fun. Take note that they promised quicker loading times from the previous game. Yeah, 5-10 seconds shorter initial loading time with 0 improvements on succeeding ones isn't an improvement. Tech/optimization team was lazy.

A must play. A true successor to the Black Survival game, which was more text-based, and this is more MOBA-like.

If y'all are curious: Imagine playing a MOBA mixed with PvEvP game like The Hunt, but with battle royale mechanics in terms of "building items". Instead of buying it off a shop like the typical MOBA, you have to roam around the map. This adds a depth of strategy to a game, where you decide if you want to go to an area where there's the item you need and risk getting killed, or playing it safe and potentially be left behind.

Instead of gold, mastery comes with the items itself. If you know how a character will build items, then you'll know areas to avoid or a build you'll make to either avoid the majourity of players, or whatnot.

All of these things come together in a very intricate, and extremely high-skill ceiling system,

Definitely play!

The game's mechanics is great. But the game runs like ♥♥♥♥. Do NOT buy yet.

A GREAT, original story well integrated into such a timeline. I honestly expected some cheap-ass simple-plotted story with the usual plot. The game is surprisingly deep.

The pacing is EXTREMELY good as well. You can veer off the main story doing hunts for Legendary pelts, some collectibles, but you are NEVER lost when you come back.

And finally, the biggest thing of them all: The game is EXTREMELY well optimized. I just upgraded my GPU, and expected an upgrade in performance across the board, and this is the ONLY game that has satisfied with expectations. Imagine being able to set ALMOST EVERY setting in-game and it being applied WITHOUT ANY NEED FOR A GAME RESTART. That is how optimized it is.

And did I mention how detailed everything is? From opening drawers, through the sunrise light partially passing through the flesh of your ears, everything here was just made with pure love.

By all means, BUY THIS FULL PRICE. It is WORTH EVERY PENNY.

A very much early access game with content release specifically to milk people. 0 bug fixes whatsoever. If there are, they only fix the ones that are easy to fix. You thought that meshing doesn't happen in this game? It very much does, and even the animations are extremely poorly done.

Stay away, do NOT buy.

Also: For a very poorly optimized game, it's around 200+ gb.

I missed this game! I can see there have been updates that made it better, without compromising the old, simple but fun formulae of the game. Hoping for the community to grow, and the game to prosper!

PROS:
*Mechanically speaking, the gameplay loop is GREAT.
*The story sounds fantastic, albeit low fantasy.
*Voice acting is not ground-breaking, but is good enough. 7/10.
*Facial expressions such as eye movement, mouth synching, is mechanically astonishing. It looks almost natural. 8/10
CONS:
*The game is a TECHNICAL BUGFEST. Runs very, VERY poorly even on an AMD card. The low FPS would've been tolerable, but the game has majour stutters on the opening movie, and very, VERY bad AND frequent microstutters as you play. Not being able to properly watch the fluid animations bots make can be very immersion-breaking.
*Facial animations, while moves very naturally, is awkwardly scripted. When I talk to an NPC, I expect him to be looking at me, not like a ragdoll mechanical test that has the "natural movements" happening too often.

The game depends on immersion to be enjoyable. This is not some kind of souls-like where the primary appeal depends on complex gameplay mechanics and the like, as such, I CANNOT RECOMMEND THE GAME at its current state. There's a patch being worked on, and I'll update my review as these hotfixes are released.

Game plays great. Gunfights are decent. The freedom given to you to explore around is awesome. Everything looks beautiful. The story is pretty good too.

But the game is a technical mess. Extremely poorly optimized, crashes randomly, very annoying visual bugs that restrict game play.

Example bug: I drive a car in the 2nd area (desert area), and check my map whilst driving. The game decides that the re-adjustment after I check my map should make the roof of the car cover 60% of the upper part of my screen, making it almost impossible to see unless I get out and then back in the car. This makes it so that I can only check my map if I go outside my car, which can be dangerous especially at night.

There's also some extreme awkwardness with the movement. Going uphill, your sprint speed is naturally slower. This would actually be great if IT DIDN'T KEEP GOING THAT WAY EVEN IF YOU REACH THE TOP OF THE SAID HILL, NOW SPRINTING ON FLAT GROUND, AND STILL SPRINTING ON THE SAME, SLOW SPEED. This is tolerable when walking on open areas, but if you get in a rocky, slopy area with lots of mutants that would chase you, this is extremely unacceptable.

Also, when walking around an area with a lot of stones or gravel around, you character can randomly get mini-stuck, and you'd have to jump or move around. This can also be very frustrating when in combat, especially if you're playing on the Ranger difficulty where things can end you almost instantly.

On navigating higher terrain, you can visually see your jump exceeding the height of a ledge, which means you should be able to jump over, right? NO. The game decides you need to walk around a long length to get to the other end, or maybe keep sliding sideways on the slop and spam the jump button until the game decides it's one of those ledges that you can "climb" on. How the ♥♥♥♥ can I not jump over the ledge when I see my foot literally 4-5 inches above the elevation when I jump?

After deciding to sell on the Epic Store for 1 year, making ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of money, and then making ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ of sale on Steam a year after, the game is still very buggy. The bugs mentioned above should be very basic things fixed immediately, and it wasn't. This dev's next game may not be so great, as this is the game they start slopping around.

Would not recommend, because if I do, this may start making the developers think that letting things like the above come with your purchase is something players will look past.

Concept is great, combat feels good.

But the broken animations, bugged pathfinding of NPCs, unreasonable strictness and strange mechanics on crime make this feel very inhibiting.

I kill all the guards in town with no more witnesses left, and my crime meter shows nothing. Next day, I revisit the town with respawned guards, and they magically know that I committed a crime there?

I knock out a villager in her sleep, with no witnesses. They should be clueless about it, right? No witnesses either, she lives alone, and I even took the liberty of closing all doors inside the house. Next day, I am apprehended by a guard saying that I hurt someone, and I should pay up.

I steal things from other towns, and visit another from across the map. Guard searches me, and magically knows the items I have are stolen, and take it away? What, so the people I stole from the other town can now communicate with another, and somehow know exactly the items I have in my backpack are stolen? So I reload my save, and put them all in my horse. Horse stays outside of town. Guard searches me again, and says I have stolen items! He ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ took the items I stole from my horse.

What kind of tight mechanic is this? The game aims for realism, yet forces you to go a certain path to make it viable? If you're going for a realistic game, then might as well make everything realistic, not make certain mechanics work against the player and punish them for utilizing the freedom you gave them.

Also, the game crashes like ♥♥♥♥. I had 0 mods before, and it was already crashing randomly. Given that the game depends on a very tight and limited saving system, crashes are extremely infuriating. To this date, my game has been crashing randomly out of no-♥♥♥♥♥♥♥-where, wiping bandit camp clears, speech pass checks, long hunt sessions.

Uninstalled, and will not recommend. This game is no longer going to be updated, so don't buy it unless you want to play a game that will make you scratch your head repeatedly for strange mechanics that work against you for doing things how you want.