Recent reviews by -shhfiftyfive

well, it is free, so go ahead and play it if you haven't, but curb your expectations...

what to say. game was decent for almost 2 weeks.
week 1 the server is gated - only access to 3/5 of the map. (level 30)
week 2 you get access to the last 2 areas as well. (level 50)
week 3,4,5,6??? nothing of interest. (extra sprinkles of nothing)

weekly starcrom and whack a mole restrictions are not at all worth chasing. (blueprints)

now they've added loot crates, so the game is a non-starter for a lot of people. won't be returning for a new cycle/season whatever. (another 10 days of leveling and then 30 days of nothing between the next cycle, rinse repeat?)

if you can, just enjoy the game 1-50. then don't expect anything - the game is stale and lacking any end game - not really a perfect time to try to sell loot boxes...

this mode is painful when combined with any other mode. it is a slog. will take ages to gain progress, even in a speed mode.

its got some of the same problems as other expansions, but this seems much worse. let's summarize.

- melvor idle base game. amazing spreadsheet version of runescape. full stop. nothing after this feels like runescape at all. prepare for disappointment.

- township (1st free content) is an underwhelming skill, with a task system tied to it with rewards. all come after the fact. they don't keep pace. so they are just chores. a checklist.

- toth (1st xpac) was pretty lame because it was very linear, added a bunch of new items, almost all of which were entirely useless. felt nothing like the original game.

- aod (2nd xpac) was also kinda lame,. the 2 new skills were very different. one was a map that played itself. the other was a museum collection game that took insane amounts of bank slots.

- the best part was a mode added later, relic mode, that gave wonderful bonuses, but only worked if playing aod.

- another free update for base game: new strongholds. kind of a cool idea. new gear sockets. sweet. sadly i don't think many people will give it a separate review, as this expansion has overshadowed the free update content by releasing at the same time. nobody had time to play it.

- here we are, (3rd xpac) ita - does not play well with adventure mode. does not play well with relic mode. does not play well with non-speed mode. does not even play well with the base game because it forces you to swap gear. so it might as well be a sequel or stand-alone game, instead of crammed into the game and not playing nice at all with the game it got merged into. so idk. just really feels like you brick yourself trying to play this xpac. you're forced to swap out gear, or just not play the other content while trying to play this content. new strongholds? swap your gear. even though the level 99 gear you have to even access the abyss is better than the starting abyss weapon, we must swap weapon... thieving old content? swap your weapon!. its arbitrary. not fun. why do we need to swap a weapon for thieving? we do no damage in thieving!!!

f2p mobile psychological nonsense.
they're looking for mindless whales to fund them.
they're not trying to make a good video game.

the game itself would be great,
but

#1. the fps is awful. the more npc's near you, the worse it is. unplayable in cities.
maybe the dev can fix this.
note: cyberpunk 2077 was removed from playstation store at launch for about as much.
these hardware requirements make no sense, given how the game looks pretty dated graphically. they've just put too much processing requirement on each npc. they need to cull this issue.


#2. i get random freezes sometimes. they last like 3 minutes or are unrecoverable.
the "1 save" system is highlighted here as a bad decision given the state of performance.

#3. the kbm keybindings is very much not pc friendly. many unused keys are restricted from being used. also, you must hold down a (modifier) key to use many actions. why? we would have no reason to do so if we could use the restricted keys. also they force you to have all bindable actions bound to a key. if you leave on unbound they it will not save your changes. example: it uses extra keys to move your mouse with keyboard keys. this is entirely pointless. and... having to go to ESC menu first to access any menu (inventory, etc) is just a lot of unnecessary steps for a keyboard / mouse pc game.

#4. the friendly fire system is detrimental. random people join in a fight and then get mad at you or your pawns for incidental contact. this needs to be more forgiving or removed entirely.

#5. sure would be nice if most of the offered pawns available to hire were of my level. it takes a long time trying to reroll (leave, wait, come back) to try to get a new selection of pawns. no, to solve this problem, i do not want to spend real money on RC so i can just hire pawns that are higher level than me.

the game is great, but Capcom has stained this game launch. reminds me of both Cyberpunk (horrible unplayable performance) and the Shadow of War game having a cash shop (that was later removed)

very early access. tons of stuff not yet implemented. tons of bugs. but very fun and tons of potential. bugs are getting fixed. single person dev team. great creative mind.

25% Project Zomboid (Stats, Crafting, top down, Line of sight, one mistake = quick death)
25% Tarkov (Extract with the loot, or die & drop all those upgrades, quest items, loot$$)
10% State of Decay (Home Base Upgrades)
100% S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (basically top down version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)

Math


oh hey, my gun jammed again. RIP.
can't wait til i can repair my own weapons..
low durability is recipe for epic failure.


various difficulties, sliders, and loadouts to start with.
non-permadeath just rewinds time to before you went outside home base and died.

Tip: set sprint to Spacebar

BEWARE

1. many game-breaking bugs.

2. some RNG outcomes that just makes you restart, because it is not smart to continue.

3. save system is detrimental (1 save per campaign, any manual save overwrites the previous one, so like hard mode / ironman / rogue-like). this means it is not viable to go back and carry on when your one and only save gets ruined by a bug. you just start over and likely get the bug again and again and never finish the game.


still... it is a really fun game.
but chances are extremely high that you will not be able to complete the game.

tried coming back to the game.

problem is my original characters from 2007 are stuck on a disabled server (Meneldor), and the game company has no server transfer in place for this.

i know. it is 2022 and you'd think game companies would have this stuff figured out before shutting down any servers...

also reports from the game company is that the feature has been planned forever (years) but the company hasn't done it.

also, reports from players, support tickets for any issue seems to go unanswered for months. so i am not holding my breath.

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