Recent reviews by Auranim

Unstoppable force, immovable object. If you rip a lot of your game and sell it for cash, people will complain you're selling a barebones game. If you rip a small amount of your game and sell it for cash, people will complain you're selling them crumbs. You can only fix it with pricing, which this pack does not, seeing as it can't even be purchased separately. I recommend the game, but I will add a negative review here because this "building set" does NOT belong as an external purchase.

So this is what an Asian game looks like in beta...

If you're unsure how to rationally evaluate the evaluations think about this: most reviews here are from players that have under 15 hours of gameplay.

If a game takes all but 15 hours to make you so impressed you want to actually write a review, well, it's a damn good game.

This game is so much fun! For, like, 48 seconds. Then it crashes.

It's a game with a lot of potential, even though rough around some edges. It tries to sell itself as a very free and open-ended game that caters to many different playstyles and lets you truly be whoever you want to be.

But then it locks most higher-end resources behind PvP. If you don't want to give yourself the stress and anxiety of going through a map in which hordes of enemy players can show up and absolutely destroy you, stealing all your items and money, while humiliatingly allowing anyone who inspect you to view their names as your killers.

I loved this game, but for the grind it is, it's extremely disappointing to have to purchase high end materials from the market at 12x the price because you would like to avoid the stress and anxiety mentioned above. Was hoping to start a guild and chill, but chill isn't the intention here, apparently. Sad to cross this off my list.

I pinned three guys to a wall with an arrow.

10/10

Seen as this is an Early Access title, I'll start by saying this game has so far baffled me with how much polish it has. Not for an Early Access game. For a game in any stage of development. I expect to have fun in Early Access titles, but I also expect bugs and incompleteness. That is not something that I have seen so far in Portal Knights. Keen Games is serious about this game, and it tells.

I remember when I first started playing Minecraft – past the initial panic of the approaching night (I knew there were zombies) – taking a more detailed look at the game's assets, textures and lighting and thinking to myself "it plays well...", a staple of sandbox games, especially first person, "...but it looks terrible!". After a while, a bit dull as well.

On was my quest to look for the perfect resource pack (then called simply "texture pack") and add-on that would hopefully bring a little more gameplay outside of building massively intricate structures in Creative mode. Finding resource packs that were also compatible with the add-ons I had was a herculean task, but I eventually managed and had a blast while it lasted.

The issue is that, with every update, my texture packs and add-ons would take anything between weeks and months to get updated and I was stuck with playing an older version of the game, fervent to dive into the just-released gameplay.
Portal Knights takes all that anguish and throws it out the window. It delivers, out of the box, not only the smoothest gameplay I've ever seen on a block-sandbox (my 6-year-old system runs this game at 60fps, it's a work of art) but also an alluring, carefully designed graphic style complete with dynamic lighting and custom models for structures, objects and monsters.

All that is made possible, of course, because of the – admittedly, and quite positively – small bit of lore they've designed the game around. Your world has been shattered by an event called The Fracture and, as such, you will explore small floating islands one by one, by means of *drum roll* portals! That not only helps gate the content while providing both some peace and an element of progression but also makes the whole game take a smaller toll on your computer. The brief loading screen between the island transition can get annoying, especially if you're moving your home base from one island to another, but in general, it doesn't hinder the gameplay.

Combat is satisfying, if not a little repetitive, at least until you get ahold of some more elaborate spells and skills. My personal opinion is that I am willing to let go of extremely developed combat systems in a game in which I focus on building. It might not be the same for everyone, but then again, if combat is your priority, perhaps you're better off tearing down the latest Diablo III seasonal event.

You can choose to play as either a wizard, warrior or ranger, and they all sell their fantasy reasonably well, each with their specific skill trees that give you access to meaningful choices based on how you prefer playing the game. If that wasn't enough, there are craftable abilities that you can equip with any class, so playing a battlemage, or a druid-like archer isn't completely out of the picture. It might not be optimal, but it will get you through the game just fine. Progressing through the game and seeing all the different enemy and creature models did make me feel like playing another race, but sadly that is not an option in the game's current state. It might come eventually, however, so I'll be patiently waiting. For now, the wide range of character customisation gives me enough tools to tailor a character that resonates with who I am.

More often than not I've been taken aback by how much thought has been given to details and there have been breathtaking moments in which I had to stop and watch a sunset paint the green fields of my home island yellow, and then orange. The sound of birds chirping slowly giving way to the crickets as night falls and the multicoloured sky is filled with stars. Everything looks and sounds solid and lovely – each notch (see what I did there?) into the stone texture looks right, each hit of your pickax on ore or gem sounds satisfying. It's hard not to want to mine and gather everything to a point where it feels like your limited bag space and restrictive eight actionbar slots are veritable ball-and-chains.

My only concern considering the state of things has to do with scale, as most of the crafting stations you are able to craft feel like they've been plucked from a giant's house and placed into your house. A drafting table that was supposed to be somewhere you sit on and draw looks like a large physician's whiteboard, the anvil is about the same height as the characters themselves, but the tables and chairs are scaled correctly, so the stark contrast between the stuff that's in your house leaves me wondering what went into their minds when designing these gigantic crafting stations. If they ever implement different races, I wonder what a halfling would feel when entering a standard sized house only to find out he needs a rope in order to use his workbench.

Finally, some features might be lacking at the moment, such as passive animals, breeding and horseback riding, but those are certain to come, along with many others that will surely feel right when they're introduced.

In general, Portal Knights is an extremely quality title that has already given me multiple hours of fun and it redefines both the sandbox genre and the concept of an Early Access game. It is very close to Minecraft in terms of content (albeit it being different content) and has room to grow vastly. It plays a lot better too, so if you're looking for an upgrade, Portal Knights is the way to go.