Recent reviews by Label07

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TLDR: DO NOT BUY THIS GAME! DO NOT SUPPORT THIS GAME!

This is not a structured review. As you can see I have just about 3 thousand hours in this game. A player once said in game "we all play this game in hopes one day it will be good". Those words rung true then and are still valid to this day.
I watched a "Josh Strife Hayes" video long ago and then again recently regarding New World. Most of the topics he brought up are still true today, 3 YEARS LATER!

I gave up on this game shortly after the release of the lacking content excuse for an expansion: Rise of the Angry Earth. The storytelling is horrible both in the vanilla game AND in the expansion. They lazily use real world mythology and history and amalgamate it into the game and it just doesn't blend very well. It feels like they wanted to integrate these things just because, but implemented them in a way that is just SLOPPY.

As with most MMO games, New World doesn't really start until you hit cap level. Sure you can join in the zergs for chests and PVP but you will be hugely at a determent. They could have broke this trend with scaling for PVP at least for the open world. Could have had a ranked mode where gear was factored. Think Destiny and it's PVP vs Iron Banner modes.

The devs treat ECR (elite chest run, it's this horribly boring zerg of players that go from one elite area to the next obtaining unearned free loot by zerging down bosses that were meant for 5-10 players just pressing E on every elite chest. It is mind-numbingly boring activity but is the quickest form of progression to increase watermark (think Light levels, again from Destiny), I forget why it's still done to this day, free loot I guess) as if it was an intended design choice, it was BORN OUT OF NECESSITY NOT BECAUSE IT'S FUN OR INTERESTING! It could be turned into instanced content for 5-10 players. Yet another AGS fail.

Stay away from this game! Amazon should cut their losses and retire this game. I'm sure it's a money pit that will never see a return.

PS: Where is Throne & Liberty and Blue Protocol? If AGS dropped the failure that is New World these two games could have been transferred to the West already...

Combat is floaty. Needs a revise to make it tighter.
Enemy and player attacks can land much farther than one would expect. It's discombobulating.
Healing system needs to be revised. It should work like Estus flasks that refill at "Whispers" (fast travel points/revive locations). The current items (food) should instead give buffs that last for X time.

The main topic on many players minds right now is; IS THERE GOING TO BE A WIPE(S) BEFORE OR AT VERSION 1.0?
If this is the case and a wipe(s) do occur. Refunds should be issued to those that want them. All progress will be lost. It would be as if those players never played at all.
This is not typical of EA games. If it were an alpha or beta I would mostly expect a wipe.

The game has promise and supposedly coop and PVP are coming which will be interesting. However, with how the combat plays out currently it's going to be a wonky experience. Those that have unlimited food and/or better gear will have the edge in PVP. A common mistake in loot/gear driven games that incorporate PVP.

Played this game when it first came out years ago. Was excited to see it was being brought back. The devs had multiple closed betas so I erroneously figured they had everything together and were about to release a love letter they obviously loved to players that did as well.

What we got is a great game with a TON of bugs.

The matchmaking queuing system works maybe 25% of the time. If a player declines the (which may or may not be happening) then you are put into a queue that DOESN'T WORK and matchmaking MUST be reset otherwise you'll be in that queue to nowhere forever.

Even signing into the game has it's issues. Sometimes it works and happens within a minute. Sometimes it works and happens in 5 minutes. Sometimes it doesn't work AT ALL...

There is some hero balancing to be done (the two biggest offenders are Tyto and Kajir) but it's hard to get a bearing when you have to restart the matchmaking over and over to finally get in a game. It's a test of patience...

If you are on the fence. WAIT. It's an amazing game but barely playable in it's current state. Sad to see it in it's current state compared to when it released in 2017 where matchmaking didn't have the myriad of issues the game does in it's current iteration. Why do companies do this? Why release a game in a broken state? First impressions are extremely important especially for MP online games.

Pros:
1) Gameplay is great
2) Story is much better than DD:DA
3) World is immense and densely packed

Cons:
1) No Preload
2) MTA in a single player game is a slippery slope. It just incentives the developer to make systems stricter
3) Performance is HORRIBLE (as of 3/22/24)
4) Player movement feels more clunky than the first game
5) Denuvo

Should you buy? Your call. I think the game is great! However, I will NOT ever buy any non-cosmetic MTA (it would just reinforce their reasoning for putting it in and it would get worse and worse over time). Denuvo already makes performance abysmal, that and the game is poorly optimized on PC so performance is all over the place at the moment.

Review ultimately gets a thumbs down as the cons outweigh the pros, even though the game itself is quite good.

For a pre-alpha early access game is has its flaws as expected but not in the same way as other early access games. For the most part, the game runs, systems work, servers are stable, and after playing for a while you can admire how much thought went into many of the aspects of this game.

For me, one of the best purchases I've made in a long time. You can play solo BUT you must be smart and stealthy. For the best experience join a clan via the official Discord. There is usually safety in numbers and getting PVE/PVP objectives completed is MUCH easier.

As the thumbs up shows, I completely recommend. Be warned though, the game can eat your time as there is a lot of micro-managing of items, especially when you get into "quality" materials. Of course this on you and your play style, it may not apply...

Enjoy!

Should you buy any of the content on offer here, and/or standard/deluxe editions? NO. Why?

Multiplayer. The main mode the game relies on as it's selling point is completely borked as of 3/14/19. It's been reported the servers are non-existent and the matchmaking is P2P. I could forgive P2P in other genres of games and indie developers, but this is Square Enix, they have the money. In a fighting game where frames matter it completely ruins the experience.

Single Player. I can't speak to this as you have to buy one of the paid Editions to get access.

If you are interested in this type of game, download the "Free Edition" (basically a demo). There are 4 characters that rotate each week (?). You can earn "Gil" which is used to buy in-game iconic music and avatars, oh goodie... All you have to do to work around this is download/buy FF music, and open a media player in the background, and turn off in-game music.

For now, stay away from this game, check out the "Free Edition" if you must. Hopefully in time SE can get this in a much better state than it currently is.

I read some of the reviews prior to purchasing this game. Many stated, if you enjoyed 'Slay the Spire' (STS) you would like this game... I disagree.

This game has an interesting gimmick (damage = discarding your deck, when deck runs out, game is over). Many of the cards are not as powerful as they should be. In STS, a 2 or 3 cost card usually did some damn good damage or had a very nice effect, since it was essentially taking your whole turn, as it should be the case. In Blood Card, those same cost equivalent cards do typically the same amount of damage/effect as the 1 cost card multiplied by however must the card you are using costs. Terrible design.

I managed to build a cyclical defense deck and killed death once. Any other type of deck (attack focused, etc) have a much lower chance of winning in my experience.

The game just does not have the balance found in STS.

Pass on this game for now, if the devs make a lot of revisions to balance the combat I'd recommend it, but that time is NOT now.

This review may be modified at some point in time later down the line. First let me start by saying.. BUY THIS GAME!

For whatever the cost you will get your monies worth and then some. So far I have 65 hours clock and plan to have more. How many games can you say that about these days.

The gist... sidescrolling-2D-turn-based-RPG with a perma death system when a character receives a "Deathblow". I haven't experienced this type of combat this punishing since like FF:Tactics.

Have not had a crash yet and the game's not even finished yet, pretty amazing by todays standards. Needs a better tutorial, I had to figure out most of the mechanics by playing the game for several hours. Obviously there are wiki and other resources a person can use, so if you have questions hit up the tried and true google.

9/10