Recent reviews by Mr.Simplicity

good game

Though I do enjoy the game... it's just Valheim. Don't buy this if you're expecting anything remotely similar to RuneScape. I read the reviews saying the same thing but figured it was still worth a shot. After the first time it said "you are being hunted" there was no shadow of a doubt that this game is just Valheim.

As for an actual review: it's a basic survival game. Stuff is scattered around on the ground that you can pick up. Other than the occasional chest you can't loot anything that you would think looks lootable. They tried to implement RuneScapes leveling... tried... there doesn't seem to be all that much to it though other than just unlocking a few things. Even though my Attack level is 22 my combat power is still only level 1? I got the bone club which says it does double the damage of the stone club and it just doesn't? Also the thirst and hunger meters go down way too fast and you lose like half of it when you sleep.

This honestly feels like they're just using the IP as a cash grab at this point. I really hope they take this to heart and switch the game up to not just be another generic copy of a game that was actually successful.

Great game

I'm not destroying 10 million blocks for an achievement. Good game though.

*UPDATED REVIEW* Now that I've finished the game

My original review bellow covers most of my thoughts on the game. However, now that I've finished it, I can honestly say that it's a good game for, and I really need to iterate this, what the Dev has clearly stated on the store page as to what this game is and isn't. I do hope though that the Dev continues to build on this game and is able to add some more story to it. Maybe even some true survival, base building, and colony management stuff for once you finish the game so you can keep playing and maybe all that effort building your colony and other era stuff doesn't feel wasted.

Only thing I might criticize now is the price. I am a firm believer in $1 per hour of gameplay in order for it to be worth buying. It took me ~15 hours as I'm not typically very efficient when it comes to automation and resource gathering. Regardless with most review it seems it takes most players roughly 12-13 hours to complete so I'd say that would be the price point to hit for this game. $12 or $11.99 if you wanna get fancy. I do understand this being only a single person project and it's nice to get rewarded for your hard work. So at the current $20 price tag I really hope they continue development as I stated before.

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ORIGINAL REVIEW @ 4.4 HOURS

For those that are complaining about the game... You need to actually play the game. It was developed by one single person, sorry it's not a AAA game with a million dollars poured into it.

For the review... I've only made it about halfway through the colonial era, which if you don't at least make it that far, to quote another review "you're review is invalid". There's a lot going on and it all happens pretty quickly. at least at first.

For anyone actually interested in this game then, well, the reviews aren't entirely wrong. There doesn't really seem to be a "story" but most low budget survival games never do. I would say the quirk that makes this game different from the rest would be the "time travel". Though it technically is time travel, it's more you have different biomes you teleport between to gather the materials that you need.

If you read the "about this game" section the dev actually tells you that it's very linear. Though I wish there was a story built into each era I understand why there's not as well. The game also kind of spoon feeds you your objectives the entire game, as far as I've seen so far. I'll say the colony aspect of the game seems is kind of out of place. Though it is what let's you focus more on progressing though rather than just grinding for materials.

I'm having fun with it so far and I really hope I find more time to come back to it. Which I could've continued playing instead of writing this review but a lot of these negative reviews really just aren't fair. You really can't just play a "survival" game for less than and hour or two and assume that you've seen anything the game actually has to offer. I'll admit the game starts slow and the controls feel really clunky, especially the dash mechanic but switching it to the alternate mode really helps. It lets you hold shift to run and just tap shift to dash. However, you get used to them fairly quickly.

The combat and AI is pretty borish. Animal AI will fight until they get to about 25% health and then run. Human AI will stay and fight to the end. It's a minor core part of the game being that you have to kill the dinos to get meat or leather.

All in all, you really need to get to the colonial era to start seeing what the game really is and for $20 you really can't complain.

Oh where to start?... I'm recommending this despite what you're about to read (if you do) as to not discourage people from buying the game. This is merely a rant nitpicking every little thing that annoys me so far. If you hated/couldn't stand Raft but enjoy these gather/craft/survive games then it may be worth checking this one out.

This seems to be going in the direction of barely being a game. Though one thing to point out is that I could not stand Raft, yet I do rather enjoy this game. It's fun, for a bit, then it's just tedious.

Also as I proof read this like 20 times I kept adding more and more so it's all going to seem way out of place in some spots, a bit drug out, or just not make much sense. Also comments are turned on so if you want to judge me and tell me I wasted my time typing all this, please feel free.

Now...

The thing bothering me the most is the combat. The guns are all pretty bad, the actual shooting is pretty bad, ADS is terrible. I try to inch around a corner while ADS and with full view of an enemy I shoot and the wall... is in the way? but the AI is seal team 6 and can hit me with an entire mag with just my pinky toe showing. Also the enemies armor system is kind of dumb especially when you first encounter them, only having the pistol. which honestly I fell you encounter the enemies way too early on. I hit one in the head 6 times doing 52 dmg each before his helmet broke, keeping in mind I had to reload like 5 times because every time I fired they ducked or ran 100 mph across map to hide behind a different wall/object. Even after I broke his helmet hitting him in the head still only did armor dmg. Then it only gets worse because you got these red guys who have 2x as much armor and 5x as much health. Now there's only 2-3 of them per depot but when I have to dump 50-100 rounds into them each which wouldn't be bad if when they dropped ammo it wasn't only for the guns I don't have or when they do it's only like 10 rounds. With the special rounds tho it's not that bad and I only have to hit them with about 20 rounds except you're capped at I think 56 rounds of special ammo. Yes, you can craft ammo, and it's honestly pretty inexpensive to do so but honestly why am I having to go through 500 rounds. The only reward btw is being able to get to the altar which is the only way to open chests. Haven't gotten that far yet but after reading online, those chests don't really give you anything you need, just plain raw resources. After you get so far, the resources in the void are pretty abundant, getting a few as a reward is pretty redundant.

Now more annoyances. Honestly I've seen a few people say it. Why don't the level 2 buildings make the same things the level 1 buildings do? You have such limited space after being almost forced to build the steam engine. Also if you don't build the steam engine directly in the middle you won't be able to reach the floors when you have to repair them. In which case by putting it in the middle you lose almost an entire wagon. This might just be me but when upgrading the train I could only upgrade the first one to be longer the others are only the 2x2 platforms you get when you make them. Other than the Rofleemos there's no point to even having that many cars if you can't make them bigger. And the Gathering Station... is so pointless. It takes up an entire 2x2 car to itself. Even with the open space you can't place a bed anywhere inside of it which honestly you'd think it would come with one being it's its own little room. With a Rofleemo assigned to it you only get 1 random resource every 40 seconds, just one. it only collects items if you're moving. I imagine there's a Rofleemo that makes it faster but out of the 3 I've got so far all of them do the exact same thing, make the lab use 10% less fuel. So, starting to think these little things are fairly useless. They are also unhappy without decor but there's no room for decor and there's wall mountable stuff but no walls? I guessing I'll be able to build walls on my train cars at some point, hopefully.

AND storage... the stack cap only being 10 is completely abysmal. on top of which the first storage you get can only hold 4 stacks. I myself am hold holding way more than that. How can you not fit more than 4 stacks in a BIG A** BOX. Oh but there's a tier 2 storage... yeah it only hold 2 extra stacks. Which holding 6 stacks could and should be what the first storage can hold and the tier 2 should be 9 or 12 stacks. Having such low inventory space really makes you have to use up the extras and progress through the research faster then you should. I've gotten all the way to where I need to get acid. I looked online and you can only get them by completing arenas which of course I'm not that far yet, so I'm just stuck. with about 30 tier 2 boxes full of everything I quite literally can't do anything but set the afterburner and get to the next depot hoping I'll finally find one of these arenas. HOWEVER, I did (because it really is necessary) find a mod to upgrade the stack size to 250 instead of 10. The items that only stack to 5 are still only 5 though. Now that I have room I can casually gather resources again. Welp, wrong there. Boxes are full again and I'm back to square one. Over 1000 wood and scrap metal and about 500 of each Iron, Copper, Steel, and Brass. Still haven't found an arena. And I got bored of gathering... but feel like I'm going to miss something if I just race through each level. Devs, don't think the solution is "make resources more scarce" if anything, along with increasing storage limits, just make items cost more. Like a storage rack should take 8 bolts but then to make 8 bolts you should only need 2 iron. 1 iron to make 4 bolts. Not sure why I'm wasting an entire iron ingot on a single bolt. It should also take 2-3 iron ingots to make the frame itself then at least 2 wood, one for each shelf, which is should be more like 2 per shelf so 4 total. So that would be 4-5 iron and at least 2-4 wood to make one shelf. A little bit of realism meets optimization. With a bigger storage, which again should also cost more, it would feel worth it to spend that many resources on just a storage rack.

I may have 13 hours in the game but 7-8 of that it just sitting there waiting for stuff to craft. Being that I didn't want to miss resources thinking that I really wouldn't get that much, I spend of my time in the depots or parked out in the void. I forget what they called them but I've only gone through like 10 levels so far.

Oh and the little buggers that attach to the train. The narrator made it seems like they were going to be way more of a problem. Kind of wish they were it would've given me more to do. The shark also doesn't seem to be aggressive enough because if I shoot it and it's not already attacking the train it just runs. Then I hit a level that didn't have a shark which was really weird. It's also weird that there's a shark on every level. Like there's only one shark. It seems like it was only added because Raft has one then they just didn't do anything with it passed just it being there. I get this game is supposed to be a Raft clone and IMO it is better than Raft. Y'all really should've done something to make the shark more relevant. Either make it more aggressive add more than one (like 2-5 honestly) or just get rid of the thing entirely.

Given this game has apparently been out and in development longer than I thought you're probably well passed making these kinds of changes. But hey, it's worth a shot. This was way longer but apparently it was 1,347 characters to long.

TLDR: This game as a whole kinda sucks and I hate it but I haven't made it far enough yet, I don't think, to give it a negative review. I did enjoy the 13 hours I've put into it so far but just hit a brick wall and feel like I have to race through it now to, in a sense, catch up to the game. Either way I still think it's worth to give this game a shot.

The game just feels terrible. Played less than an hour. Unless I can get the palace edition for less than $40 then it's just not worth it. Didn't even play hour an hour and immediately felt the need to refund.

Yeah.. This game is fun.

It goes without saying that this game is really only focused on the dialogue and for some reason gives you the option to turn it off. Given the trailer, that's what probably made you want this game, not sure why that's an option. Either way this game is hilarious.

Now on to the (probably less) important things...
1. You carry no momentum when jumping, I understand that is because of certain mechanics they've implemented, which regardless just feels so wrong.
2. Not sure about the reviews talking about poor performance but I experienced none of that. Have everything on max settings, only thing I changed was turning motion blur off... Still not sure why that's even a thing in games because it's god awful.
3. Ran into a glitch after defeating Douglas and returning home... I had zero gravity??? reloading the last checkpoint fixed it but that was very weird.
4. After running through the same area a few times looking for anything you might have missed, I'll admit, the dialogue does get quite repetitive and a little bit annoying.
5. Certain things, you'll see what I mean when you play, in terms of the previously mentioned mechanics can be quite inconsistent. i.e. I was further away from it when I used it before so why can't I use it now? which again understandable because they want you to have to come back. Just would like some consistency.
6. Also like a lot of games, unfortunately, if you accidentally move to far some dialogue gets cut off. It seems they tried to make it so random NPCs chatter would fade out but if you walk too far it just stops entirely. Like if I'm walking away and an NPC is telling me to ♥♥♥♥ off I want to hear it until it's barely a whisper. not I've walked 10 feet this way and can still clearly see you and the voice line just cuts out. Even If I start dialogue with another NPC, I want them to still be yelling at me. Given this may not be the easiest thing to change/fix/implement but it would honestly be way better if it was. Easiest example. The 3 guys on the road arguing. I can hear them from anywhere on the road but as soon as you jump back onto land they just cut out. I want to hear that almost all the way to the mansion especially with how loud their yelling.

Things I do like...
1. The dialogue... obviously
2. The guns are a little wonky at first, but once you figure out how each one operates, they're fantastic.
3. The animations. Whoever the animators were on this project were definitely on crack and I'm here for it.
4. Now I'll admit this game for the most part is very linear. However the world is a bit more open than I thought, not by much though. In a world full of open world sandbox games, it's refreshing to have a game that's not so open. Although there is definitely some openness to it, you never really get too sidetracked from where you're supposed to go. (yes, to me, this is a positive)

I'm not too terribly far into the game, I hope, the positives might seem like a shorter list but they're fairly vague so they are pretty open ended. The negatives are just me nitpicking certain things that just caught me off guard. I haven't actually found anything to hate about the game yet... yet. There is one thing that's getting me real close to that point but it's not listed because I know most people won't share the same thought, so it's quite irrelevant. Hoping that it changes by the end but I won't be surprised if it doesn't.

Is it riddled with a million bugs? of course.
Is it well balanced? no, not really
Is the community friendly? most of the time.
Is Amazon doing everything they can to fix the game instead of pushing more content? nope
Is there a steady enough flow of new content that distracts you from how buggy it is? nope again
Did they inadvertently create a race war by having 3 factions that you have to choose from? Yupp
Is there prejudice towards other factions that aren't yours? totally
Is Amazon's support team for the game helpful? not at all

Though I highly recommend this game the truth is that it's essentially built around just being a PVP open world. There are a million things to do on your road to lvl 60 (the cap) and you can really lose yourself in it for hours on end. The unfortunate part is that once you hit lvl 60 and if you're not a hardcore PVPer then you basically run out of content.

Things to do past lvl 60:
Continue leveling all of your trade skills and weapon masteries
Leveling up your Item Expertise (otherwise known as your watermark or per item gear score)
Outpost rush - 20v20 pvp arena
Wars - 50v50 faction against faction for the control of a territory
Corruption invasions - random event that triggers on territories that you have to protect assets
PVE dungeons and arenas - if you're not a PVPer then this is about the only end game content you have

This may seem like it would keep someone busy and keep them coming back but even if you're a hardcore PVPer, if you're not in a high ranking company in your faction or at the very least a well known player with maxed out level gear, then you will more than likely never see a war. The way it works is the head of the company that declares a war on the territory chooses 10 people to be leaders of 10 groups. 1 of which is automatically taken by them. Then each of those 10 people choose 4 more to join their group. The whole thing works on a roster system and all you do is sign up but again if you're not lvl 60 with a 590-600 GS then you will not get picked. Think of it as playing sports in school, unless you're good you're always going to be the last choice.

Corruption invasions work the exact same way as wars except its PVE.

OPR is super laggy most of the time and again if you're not using maxed out gear with a well balanced build then you won't stand a chance.

Territory ownership in general is completely unbalanced. More often than not an entire faction owns the entire server. For example (there was a recent server merge that brought multiple servers together in to one): My first server when I join was owned almost entirely my purple. When the merge happened the server we got put into there were absolutely no territories owned by purple. Currently purple has 1, yellow has 1, and green has the other 8. This normally wouldn't be an issue and you'd think this would constantly be changing but it doesn't. On top of before the merge a lot of players from my server either changed their faction from purple to one of the other two because we got information that the server we were going to was mostly owned by green and yellow. Or they just stopped playing out right. The merge was necessary but completely unwelcomed.

Though I've listed many negatives about this game I would like to point out that even though I myself am not a PVPer I still enjoy getting on and playing with my friends. There isn't a lot for the likes of me to do once I hit lvl 60 but that doesn't stop me from logging in everyday to play if even just for a couple hours. I think Amazon did right by not charging full AAA price for this game and there is enough content as it sits to justify spending $40. If you're on the fence on whether or not to get the game, if you like MMORPGs then go for it. When I first got the game I figured I would only play for a week or so because I have a hard time getting into the genre but I immediately fell in love with it. To put it in perspective, in the last 15 years of gaming, when it comes to steam exclusively this game has taken #3 in my highest amount of hours played. Thank god minecraft doesn't track how many hours you've played.

Buy the game it's well worth the price. If you're a hardcore PVPer then there is even more for you to do.

WHY!? WHY DO YOU NEED TO PUT IN SPIDERS!? I have arachnophobia!!

Just in the first area too. Like I managed to stay calm enough to run through the plentiful amount of the little ones. Then a massive one comes out of nowhere? Please I want to play this game but I need to option to disable the spiders. I had to ditch my friends because of it.

Or if anyone can point me to a way to mod them out or just to change their model to something else that would be great.

Yes, i still recommend this game because even just the tutorial was fun to run through and shooting wolves and goblins felt great. But if you have arachnophobia I cannot recommend you get it cuz it's a bit much.