Recent reviews by Phantom

It's having a rough launch just like most online games, especially EA games. From what I've seen so far the graphics are pleasant, the music is beautiful, and the temtem are fairly interesting. The biggest difference I see with pokemon that im getting a positive feel for is the battle system. You have 4 moves, but instead of PP, they use stamina to use which is a 7th stat on each temtem. Think of it like a mana bar. A lot of the random luck aspects are gone like accuracy and evasion, and certain moves have a hold number associated with them meaning you have to wait a certain number of rounds before you can use them. I assume this is to prevent you from just spamming your strongest moves. You have to strategically play your way through each battle to use them.

So far I've enjoyed what I've seen. Nobody likes server issues but we know they will be sorted out soon. I try not to judge too hard on that aspect. I'll judge things properly when everything is up and running.

H1Z1 has been an interesting mixed bag of goodies and turds. I have been both critical and forgiving with this one. Let's start with the good.



Pros:

**SOLID ENGINE - Runs smooth as warm butter, and doesn't lag at all, even on my crappy internet connection.

**# OF PLAYERS - on a map about half the size of DayZ's, it's coming out of the gate supporting around 200 players per server. Nothing else in the genre can match this, and as they grow the map out, they are mentioning the posibility of 1000's of players at once. Nice!

**COMBAT - The gun play is very tight. It has a more "game" like feel to it instead of DayZ's extreme attention to realism. Controls more like Planetside 2 or battlefield. The melee combat really shines here in my opinion. After playing the sad execuse of "melee" in DayZ, this is miles better. In fact it's good compared to any genre. The hits feel meaty and players heads and bodies react to the hits appropriately. The first time you KO someone with an uppercut to the chin, you will feel the magic. (and so will they)

**DEV SUPPORT - The communication about patches and such has been great from the Dev's, and the patches have been rolling out almost daily since launch. A number of personal gripes have been fixed since I started such as tweaks to hydration/energy drain being way too fast.



Cons:
(I would include the rough launch, but since that's over and it's in alpha, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.)

**COVER AND HIDING - Compared to a game like DayZ, the world feels "gamey", and it doesn't feel like you are able to hide in the grass and stalk people very well. You always feel like people will be able to spot you from a mile off and that camo plays no part in the game. There are also no leaning options. You have to fully expose yourself or walk in peoples way for the most part to look around corners.

**PAY 2 WIN and DEV LIES(to a degree) - This was huge to me at first. Throughout it's development the dev's were constantly talking about just selling cosmetics in the game store, along with event tickets and crate keys. Once the game launched all of a sudden we find out the airdrops had weapons and ammo. That is a huge pile of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥! However, the dev's have nerfed this airdrop system since launch. They have had certain weapons removed from them entirely, plus lowered the chance greatly of getting the less powerful ones that can still be in them. They also made the radius of the drop much larger, and made the plane slower. These are all steps in the right direction, but the game would still be better without them. They are more barable now is what I'm trying to get across. Since then the dev's have appolguised for miscommunication and misunderstanding, but a lie is still a lie, and I hold that against them.

All in all I like this game, and I do see it as #1 when it comes to an early platform for improvement. If DayZ wasn't so janky and terrible in performance and functionality I would probably consider it #1, but as of now it isn't. We will see how they both do in the future, but H1Z1 is starting mostly strong for me.