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« on: August 13, 2015, 12:29:30 pm »
Well, I spent a little over a week with this game, heres my thoughts:
1: I like the 'puzzles' aspect, where you have to figure things out and its not just push this button, go here, get reward, etc. Of course, you can always cheat just like anything else on the internet, but it feels sort of Everquest in this regard.
2: The grind is 'meh' but it doesn't take long to max a chosen path out... whats really a grind is the reputation/favor grind in order to get access to goodies. Its kind of interesting though in that any time you are out trying to get gear that you sort goodies you find in order to figure out which npcs gets what... "soandso is collecting swords, this guy likes art, I need to save fruit to make these things later for this one" etc. Some of it you can grind offline too which is neat (doing odd jobs for random npcs to get favor AND loot while offline).
3: Death is cheap, more or less, and of course you can even level it for permanent bonuses. Except of course... curses: it makes bosses a little more dangerous so you cant take them willy nilly. At the very least, everyone who assists with a boss gets loot, so assistance and group forming can be organic. Some of the curses are semi beneficial even (and of course, people who play as cows, etc) so thats kind of neat as well.
4: I like the dangerous environments in some places, gives it a little bit of flavor (you can dehydrate in the desert, you can die of the freezing cold in the mountains, etc).
5: The skill system is almost like a jobs system, except you get two mains and then random side skills (limited slots on main bars and sidebars). You have to pick and choose the few abilities you get... and a lot of the setup you have depends on what gear you get as well. You can also make some extremely effective combos with the right gear (and in the end its mostly gear related on how powerful you are). While leveling up other random things helps your sidebar skills, you only majorly use your main skills plus first aid/armor repair (which is a pain to level), and even then pretty much any bonus skills cost power to use so its still a choice on what to spend it on. Also, there are drugs and stuff which can increase skill slots.
6: Inventory hell: so, so much of the game is about managing your limited inventory space. Thats basically one of the main reasons to favor grind: friendly npcs let you store gear. Otherwise you can buy "bank" slots, or you can use random chests in certain locations in dungeons/elsewhere (yes, you can store your gear in dungeons).
7: You can definitely tell its alpha: placeholder npcs/bosses, unimplemented falling damage/drowning, some awkwardness here and there, etc. It doesn't necessarily detract too much from whats there at first though, and the first areas are mostly whole.
Overall, kind of charming game, some neat ideas, etc. I threw em some money to see what they can do with it, but I'm stopping playing now cause I got things to do.
