Recent reviews by Aryx

Is it super grindy? Yes
Did we all expect it to be grindy? Yes
Is the gear and skill system esoteric? Definitely. Like a lot. Watch some YT videos here, and not all of them are good.
Can you mess up your build if you do it wrong from levels 1-50. Yeah, be careful and stay focused green/blue.
Aw crap! I messed up and levelled a few things that I won't be using - No problem, just takes a bit of grinding and you're good.
Can people pay money to get gear in minutes what takes hours? Yep
If you grind will you be able to get the same level of stuff that the credit card swiper did? Yep

Can people pay money to get access to anything that people who don't pay can? NOPE

The graphics are second to none for an MMO. There's near zero lag in huge guild v guild fights, it's easy to pick up and enjoy a MMO story as you level, and the levelling isn't arduous. Level 50 instances have DIFFICULT raid level mechanics (think wow raid) and this really sets it apart for me. It's an actual challenge. Once you have the mechanics down? EZPZ.

People complain about those who swipe their credit card to essentially buy gear that you "work" for... which is wild to me. I think it's more that they "can't" swipe their card. I have ONLY paid for cosmetics with real money. I have plenty of cash to buy items if I wanted to, but I don't... .why? because I actually ENJOY PLAYING THE GAME.

Swiping your card SKIPS playing the game. It's a trap. Just don't fall in to it, and you'll have a great time!

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After getting to endgame and wanting to participate in PVP, this is near impossible for a F2P player. By the time you would get the gear to equalize with people who have used RMT new gear is released, meaning it's literally impossible to get to that point.

This creates a "soft" paywall if you want to participate and have an impact in PVP. This also means the guilds that only bring it people who P2W can roll up and keep Stonegard, claim all the lucent, and continue to be lightyears ahead of F2P players.

As PVP was a large focus of mine, this has completely turned me off to the game. If you're in it just for the PVE, the original review stands.

If you like a colony sim with no real "end" and just like to grow a colony for the sake of growth then this game is absolutely for you, and this would be a positive review in your case.

With no clear goals, endgame, or rewarding experiences and no end in site I bored of it rapidly. I managed to build a colony with some 45 dwarves and it was functioning well, just starting to get in to military, but after a while it didn't feel rewarding to continue.

There was a funny time when I tapped in to the river and subsequently drowned all my citizens, resulting in a reload of the game. Hilarious right? I guess.

I think the genre simply isn't my favorite.

Borderline Masterpiece, and we're still in EA! Some minor balance tweaks are sure to come, but it's diverse enough of a strategy that no single one wins, and you have to be ready to pivot based on what the opponent does.

An autobattler on steroids with an even footing for both players - not silly lottery stuff like with Underlords or TFT.

-- I have to change this review to negative based on recent changes, perhaps if the devs get it together and go back to the original successful formula I could rate this as positive --

At one time this was a pretty compelling take on the auto-battler genre, and really targeted the issues I have with the genre (reliance on RNG) and made for a solid competitive and thoughtful experience.

Overnight the developers have shifted gears and implemented changes to inject RNG into the formula to make the game more "exciting" showering you with tons of free units, unit unlocks etc mid-match that completely negates the benefits of strong economy and unit countering. This update has completely shifted what is enjoyable about the game to target a different audience and I can no longer really enjoy it, when other more RNG-focused auto-battlers are just better to play if that's what you're into. Another game dies to a misguided attempt at abandoning their core playerbase for a different audience, rather than focusing on the things that made the initial idea different.
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EDIT! They fixed the RNG issues! W'ere back to amazing!

It's a great idea, has a system for a "passive" income once you set up trading, but this also makes it incredibly easy. Just left trades up and running while I watched a move and then can create the best ships over and over. Just means you wait forever while you build out your fleet to be ridiculous in size and then stomp everything. You do get to pilot one of the ships in your giant fleet, that part is fun, and you switch around as you lose ships.

So, yeah, it's a great idea just not the best execution.

This is a 8 or 9 out of 10 if you love mechwarrior. If you have never played a mechwarrior game before this would be a tough learning curve for the new pilot. I would HIGHLY recommend playing around in some of the singleplayer MW games before jumping in to this one. But do eventually jump in, we have a lot of fun and it's a great community.

It's not a "P2W" game at all. It's a "Pay to get more faster." You get a surplus of extra money on your first several matches to get you outfitted in to a couple of mechs. From there, you can get a new mech every 10-50 matches (depending on the mech). Matches last from 3-10min. I have 4 mechs that I love, so I bought the special looking ones with real dollars. Now I just farm the in-game money for more mechs. It is not so arduous that it takes ages, especially as you increase in your skill level. (You can make WAY more in a match if you're good - my top match made me 10% of my next mech).

For me this is perfect. I have fun, I get the mechs I want. I personally do invest some real-world dollars in to cosmetics and premium time which just translates in to more in-game money, but these are not requirements by any means.

Yeah, the UI is a little wonky, the seasonal matchmaking can be meh or non-existent in off season times, but these are small prices to pay for being a mechwarrior in a multiplayer game.

Just depends on what you're looking for. If you want a game you can run idly on another screen while you watch netflix and requires some useless clicking to "research" dinosaurs with no significant impact or gain, then this is the game for you.

I found it to be entirely too easy. There was no difficult balance of income compared to resource generation and there was no room for creativity when designing the parks. Sure you picked where the buildings go, but they were of no real consequence.

All that said, the idea of creating a Dino and watching him eat other dinos was neat, just lacked the depth that an adult gamer is looking for.

This is a great game for an 8 year old that loves dinosaurs. My son is playing it now. Worth it for 10-15$, not a penny more.

So much potential. Hope they resume development on it :(

Once they do, my reccomendation goes positive

11/4/23 EDIT:
There's a new developer taking over! The stoke is back! Check them out on discord!!
https://discord.gg/shardbound-game

There's a ton of activity and the original developers have fully supported the new crew. Gonna be great!

They got rid of the maximum number of games you can play. I've played over 50 ranked games and a ton of arena games and have not been asked to purchase the game for 14.99. Not sure if that's how it used to be or something.

I give this a positive because it is entertaining and fun. You have several classes that operate someone distinctly and there are a lot of builds you can try. I've been very successful with an Assassin stealth build.

My only complaint is that there isn't -more- customization within a specific class. There really needs to be a large difference between the different builds for it to really be fun. As it stands most of the specific classes play the same (because of the static token deck) relatively the same.

That said it's still very enjoyable.

They messed up the Action Combat in the ARPG. The combat feels extremely clunky. You click to attack and it takes nearly a second or more for the server to respond to your commands, not only is it the server lag, but they forced you to suffer through an entire character attack animation before executing the skill. Attack animation should not be tied to skill execution in any way except visually.

If they would have gotten this portion of the game right, I may have given it more of a chance but 10 hours in game is all I could bare with this terrible system.

Let me know if you ever fix it, otherwise, I'll never play this game again.

Overall positive. They did a great job of break back all the great things from previous games, and polishing out any negatives.

I'm actually a little disappointed in the pre-built coasters they provide to you. They're extremely good and it kinda feels like "cheating" when you use one of their blueprinted coasters. That said, it's still a fun challenge, and you certainly don't have to use one of those pre-built ones.