Recent reviews by Sunch

This game is currently a proof of concept more than anything, in fact it's barely even that since a actual gameplay loop is missing(how?..)

Start match > Kill things > Get upgrades/usables during the match > match ends > Nothing gained aside from some leaderboard stat.


There is currently 1 map & 5 characters for the player to explore, each character has 3 skills and very floaty animations, camera feels terrible and it's clear it's all very poorly pasted together.

There's a lot of praise for this Unchained Engine that supposably makes it possible to have 1000s of entities on screen, but performance doesn't live up to the praise. I was intrigued by another game of this studio but if this is the development standard, then I fear for the worst.

Won't recommend, won't change it in the future either as the stage this current game is in, you should be paying people to playtest it outside of family and friends for more onhands feedback if the bare basics even make sense.

EDIT: Apparently there's news on a coming 1.0 after a long hiatus, for now still a negative advice, but might change in the near future

EDIT 2: Changed the rating to recommend, as they changed up a lot of things and are seemingly going in the right direction. Things like difficulty curve and some minor QoL things still need tweaking, but there's a solid basis now to work from. I have not had the chance to test this in a multiplayer setting, but if the netcode isn't poop, I'm sure this'll be a fun title to pick up for platformer fans.

Things that stood out for me so far were: Crafting possibility of getting a special/higher tier version, talents adding interesting dynamics to combat, perk system is a nice addition to character cultivation, world layout is a lot more logical/intuitive now.

++++original review++++
Revisited the game a couple times over the span of more than a year, barely anything changed. The thing I was looking forward to was patch v0.9 and the following v1.0 after they were announced. Some time later patch v0.9 got postponed, their art team was idle long enough apparently to make a singleplayer spin-off. I shall never fathom how you can have artists be idle, there's always something to improve, add or work on, but I digress.

On top of that there's some weird wording in their last announcement concerning patch v0.9's delay, about the multiplayer network guy being stuck on Mists of Noyah, therefor, the spin-off won't have multiplayer, also he's leaving soon(???).

In short, devs dropped the ball, possibly lost the guy that sorts out all the netcoding, and has an art team sitting on its thumbs. I -think- the chances of this game ever reaching v1.0 are slim to none, which is a shame!

The combat works, the game looks pretty, and the setting is interesting, But this is like putting a Stradivarius violin in the hands of a toddler. It'll look charming, until you notice the toddler is just drooling on the instrument and doesn't have the faintest idea how to handle it, rendering all the beauty useless, and we will never see the depth of what the team had envisioned from the start.

It is truly a shame, I do not know the devs' circumstances, nor do I wish to know them, all I know is, that they dropped the ball and may have accidently dropped any semblence of passion for this project along with it.

tl;dr: Don't buy it, it's a pretty prototype -presumably- abandoned by the devs at this point.

Word upfront, this is a review from a new player's perspective.

The game has great potential, the depth of crafting and the do-what-you-want feel are really there and fleshed out well for a Sandbox game, also the house planning feature is great. However, this is truly the only positive things I can say about this game after having given it a go for a good 4-5hr. Yes, I know, sandbox games take a long time to play proper, but the glaring issues are apparent from the start.

To highlight:

In the tutorial every time you get prompted to "double click" to do x action, it will literally not work, and you have to press F instead. Despite being a game that's been in development since 2003 apparently, small thing, but cmon..17 years time to correct it, in theory.

Tutorial is pretty basic, you get explained the necessary stuff to move around, interact and gather resources from the world.
After the tutorial you have to choose a world, I opted for PvE on the new Harmony server, figuring it was the best way to test the waters before even thinking about any form of PvP. I am glad I made that choice, because combat is absolutely terrible.

The combat feels a bit like this. You target something, attack it, and you just randomly start swinging at it and beating on each other's healthbars, but wait! There is more! Before your eyes appears a piece of UI that initially excited me, being able to choose the direction of attack? distance AND stance!? Dope! Wait why does it not work? The animations don't change, the stances do ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, and it turns out it's basically as if a leprechaun promises you a pot of gold but instead takes a dump on your chessboard while shouting at you how exciting the game is. "Monster X kicked you in the chest -very hard-! For 27,3 damage! Your sword glances against Monster X's face!". Honestly, it's unintuitive, terrible, and all round confusing.

Tutorial island doesn't cover this by the way.

So having disposed the world of some trees, clay and critters, the next hurdle comes around, lag. Not just lag, but LAG the likes that you've never seen. It's a steam launch sure, but again, we're in 2020 now, the game's not exactly rushed through development and had -plenty- of time to see this coming, or better yet, update netcode.

I'm no developer, but I know sure as anyone else, that if you can take a ♥♥♥♥, pour yourself a cuppa and do the dishes inbetween right clicking something, and actually getting the clickable options pop up, that simply won't fly well with players.

After lagging my way around, planning a house, helping someone gather materials for his house, beating up a unicorn and talking to a few people, I couldn't bring myself to do any more.

The game feels like it could've been a great MUD, but now it's just a kinda-working MUD with lots of lag and plain ♥♥♥♥♥ taped to it.



TL;DR: Game is charming, but looks like an ugly child that had a time travel accident from MUDs to the nowadays MMOs. Unsure about it's future, and unsure about its own existence.

Game has a glaring lack of PvE content, unintuitive key assignments and a very shaky tutorial. Had fun for the few hours of co-op gameplay it provided and some PvP bouts, until more content is added however, certainly not worth the pricetag unless you're an incredible fan of the artstyle, combat system and 1v1 fighting games in general.

EDIT:

I'll try to clarify a bit about the whole PvE thing, since it seems all comments so far are having tunnel vision on that part. Yes, I know the game has very bare bones PvE, which as intended since it is ultimately a pvp fighting game. However, given that is the only section where you can co-op play in and the only part for quite a few people that is playable due to network issues or blatant lack of regional server(s)(Bless you aussies). I figured it'd be a necessity to mention, since no doubt there will be people interested in that particular segment of the game as well, especially with people comparing the game to Dark Souls and the likes.

That said, the game is great in what it intends to do, when everything works accordingly. Given that not being the case yet, resulting in a primairly 1v1 fighting game, subject to recurring network issues, I'm still inclined to keep it on 'not recommend'.


Keep in mind this is all purely oppinion based on personal experience with the product thusfar and of course, is subject to change.