Recent reviews by [NW☆DD]

Selecting MEGALOVANIA [EXTREME]...

Sans
[[[
You feel like you're going to have a bad time.
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Played this for a while and it really rocks! (pun intended)
Will keep an eye on this to see what new songs are added.

Very simple, straight-forward, mind-blowing puzzle game that everyone should play at least once in their life.

Too many paid benefits, limitations and microtransactions.
You can check my old review below, I wrote It way before the game release.


***

Disclaimer Notice: I still haven't tried treasure hunting, bounty hunting, fishing, becoming part of the pirate faction, end-game dungeons, territorial control, arenas and some things I might not even know they exist. I will update when I find something I think It's worth to mention.

Class
· Pick a fixed amount of skills from three skillsets among 10 (unlocked very early: lv1,5,10).
· Favours Specialization - (Not) All combinations work in certain situations.
· Most skillsets work well by themselves and combo with 2-3 other skillsets.
· Actives require the skillset to be at a certain level.
· Passives require that you know a number of skills from the skillset.
- Not all combinations work well enough at the same level.
- Shadowplay is too useful.

Combat
+ Rewarding combo system easy to understand, but hard to master.
+ Party/raid combos can be even more rewarding.
+ Combat and animations feels very actionish/fluid, but still tactical rpg.
~ First hit tags mob, so only his party/raid gets EXP and drop.
- Dropped items usually bind on equip.
- Roll/Pass system as abusable as ever (I'd prefer Need/Greed where Need binds on pick up and Greed not).
- Combat doesn't feel as dynamic as GW2, Tera, Dragon Nest or ESO.

Crafting
+ Crafting requires dedication, feels really rewarding.
+ Crafted items are very worth it.
~ Most crafted equipment requires previous tier crafted equipment, so you improve it.
- Hasla weapons are so much better than everything else most people can afford, so there is way too much grinding for them in a very small area.

Avatar Customization
- No body customization.
- Can't change most clothes appearance.
+ Good face customization.
+ A bunch of free, awesome, cosmetic appearances.

World Bosses / Raids
- Most of them have no lore.
- Have only looted generic drop from the ~200 bosses (1 to 5 stars out of 6) I killed.
+ A friend have got a really badass cloak, also saw one (world-drop) mount.

Quests
- Most quests are kill/fetch quests.
+ Can skip most quests without being penalized.
· The quest tracking system works in a 2D fashion (the objective might be above or below you).
· Interesting main story.
· Some really amusing quests.

Instances
· Thanks to mentee system high-level characters are encouraged to help newbies.
- Dungeons feel bland.
- Endgame dungeons aren't that hard or impressive.
~ Very few instanced areas.

Leveling:
· Questing is the fastest way to level up.
· Crafting gives a lot of exp (daily amount limited by labor points).
· Not difficult to level up.

Mounts
· Starting mount at level 5 is not significantly inferior to end-game mounts.
· Can get most mounts under 15 silver.
· Cash shop mounts are worse than 11 in-game mounts(not counting color variations, speed/skill-wise)
· Cash shop mounts are better than 4 in-game mounts(not counting color variations, speed/skill-wise)

Gliders
· First glider at level 11: "experimental glider" same than silver pack glider.
· At level 20 you can upgrade "experimental glider" to "ultimate glider" for less than 2 gold.
· Ultimate glider is as good as cash-glider except it doesn't have the "somersault" skill.
· There are much better crafteable end-game gliders.

Crime system: when a wanted player is pvp-killed he can ask for a trial.
+ Trials: jury can see reported crimes with comments, ask and vote: innocent or guilty (amount of prison time).
- Prison: you can play football or escape very easily.
+ Prison debuff: you can't do anything for the time you were condemned, even if you escape (including summoning a mount or using your glider).

Housing
+ Non-instanced Housing/Farming.
+ Tons of decoration options for House :)
+ The more houses/farms you hold, the more you'll pay in taxes.
+ Guilds can clash for control of north continent.

Details
+ Player-collisions.
+ You can turn on/off most lamps and sit everywhere.
+ Ships, mounts, cars, tractors... Are physics based, so you can just jump on them.
~ Most NPCs voices are in korean (text is fully in English).
- Chat scrolling is so F**** bad.
- No addons API yet.
- Female armors.

Commerce
- Most trading routes are not-worth it (there is a few optimal trading routes).
+ It's actually easier to make profit from players than from the environment.
~ Trade ships/tractors are currently very difficult to get and generate lots of profit.

Labor
· Needed to open coinpurses(1LP).
· Needed to identify items(5LP per item).
· Needed to craft(3-5 LP to refine materials, 25-250 LP to craft useful things).
· Needed to plant and harvest(1-10 LP depending on the time it takes to grow).
· Needed to build ships/houses/farms in the world.
· Needed to pay taxes of your buildings/farms.
· Every 5 minutes Players gain 5LP while online, 0 while offline.
· Patrons gain 5 additional LP when either online or offline.

F2P Limitations
· Less labor (limits out-of-combat experience).
· Can't build or keep a house or a farm.
· Can't sell at auction house (you can still use trade chat or trust someone).
·Lifting the AH restriction is pretty easy as it costs ~1€.
·You can buy apex with ingame gold.

Engine
· Beautiful even on low-end computer.
· Can run on max settings in my 5yr old computer.
- Has problems with some outdated drivers/graphics cards.

Servers
- There are tons of gold-sellers and bots in alpha, trion has stated that they have many tools to combat them but won't use them until release. (There are still on release)
- (OUTDATED) Alpha servers are in NA, there is a huge delay from EU that is specially annoying when using gliders, jumping (yata mount) or riding a ship.
- (OUTDATED) Queues.
- (OUTDATED) Glyph (the patcher) seems to become worse with each update.

Sound
+ Background sounds feels really immersive.
+ Background music is awesome.
- There aren't that many tracks or sfx, so you might find it repetitive.

PvP - Update (31/08)
~ Because everyone gets to pick 23 skills out of 54 skills from the chosen(3) skillsets out of 10
that allow you to specialize your character in whatever activity/role you want to do most classes
outclassed by a few classes at each kind of PvP scenario.

Out of over 400 lv50 players (alpha 1.2 server)
· 60.5% of players use "Shadowplay"
· 37.8% of players use "Auramancy"
· Other skillsets are used by less than 30% of the players, starting with: Archery, Sorcery and Battlerage (the main attacking skillsets) and ending with Songcraft