Recent reviews by Vercas

A lovely and mildly traumatic game.

Best game ever. Nothing else to say. Worth every penny.

A very nice game overall with a shockingly positive community.
Bought a battle pass just to send the devs some financial support. They deserve it.

This is not your standard issue MMO, and the seasons & phases system has clearly pissed off a lot of people.
Very little of what you do in this game is persistent. This isn't WoW.
I personally don't mind it, since I'm looking to have fun playing a game, I'm not looking for a second job or a second life.
It's also incredibly friendly to people who actually have things to do and can only play 1-2 hours a day max.

Money only really buys you cosmetics in this game (I think - there's **tons** of things to buy) but most of them can be obtained through in-game means as well. And there's lots of mechanics that let you earn the currencies you need, as well as means of converting the various currencies to the one you actually need.
I don't know why people complain about the devs selling cosmetics. You get the entire game for free, that's more than they owe us.

The game is clearly a labour of love for the devs, and it's obvious in some of its mechanics (e.g. the ability to **actually play a piano**), as well as in the art. The level of polish is beyond your typical "commercial product #N" game.

Also, the game clearly changes quite a bit over time. People (including my friends who played 3-4 months ago) complained about having to grind a lot - this is no longer the case, I can assure you.

Fun with friends.
You need friends.

A short but incredibly fun experience with a friend.

I happily report that my friendships have *not* been ruined.
The game is good. Get it.

The factory will grow.

For a game that isn't even finished yet, it comes with a ton of content already.
The game world is huge, and so incredibly beautiful.
The graphics are incredibly good and the game is already far more optimised than your average AAA title.
Bugs are also incredibly rare. Reading the patch notes could make you believe this game's full of bugs - but I've played all the early access content with my friends (60+ hours) and we've encountered a grand total of 2 bugs, none of which were actually game-breaking, only minor annoyances that got fixed after a game restart.
In terms of bugs/stability, it's entire parallel universes ahead of any game that comes close in design or scope.
Even the multiplayer is rock solid at this stage.
As someone who has some experience in game development, I just appreciate the level of technical excellence and hard work behind this game.

As far as game mechanics go:
- The combat is not really an exotic formula, but it's a bit uncommon. You can use any weapon in your action bars, but you also have a specialised ranged weapon equipped (staff or bow) that you can use any time. Took me a while to figure out that this is how staves are meant to be used. :>
- Blocking attacks actually works and is useful!
- You're gonna be flying a lot. And it's fun.
- Building is incredibly fun, and the voxel system is amazing. Basically, you only build basic shapes and the game figures out (quite accurately) what they're meant to be, and adds its own decorations around each voxel.
- The progression as is right now requires you to read at least the quest descriptions to figure out what you need to do. It's also a good idea to read the various scrolls, books, manuscripts, and obelisks you find in the game. They give you pretty decent clues. If you're not in the mood for reading those, you better be in the mood for Googling what to do next and sifting through entire paragraphs in random guides, 'cuz that's what you'll have to do.

The game's balancing mechanics are horrible by design. You're rewarded for either being awful at the game, or for not playing at all. They punish you for being good.
Why should I bother playing against other players who are, according to their SBBM algorithm, at the same skill level, when I need 10 bullets to kill them and they need 3 bullets to kill me with the same weapon?
Cross-play is awful if you play with a keyboard and mouse. The controller players literally don't even need to aim. As long as they wiggle both sticks on their controller, they'll aim straight for your head. They're immune to stun, gas, and some other things.
The variety in weapons is just snake oil. Any decent tuning will make the weapons feel more or less identical, do the same amount of damage, but just look differently.
The user interface is awful and clunky. There's 3 sets of "tabs" in the main menu, and honestly the entire thing looks like it was design by a newbie for tablets.
It has fewer features than Modern Warfare 2019.

This is not very different from the tens of thousands of mobile games designed to frustrate you just enough to get you to come back.

If you're unlucky enough to like this game, it'll be nearly barren by the end of this year when the next Call of Duty releases. By the end of next year it will be on life support.

It didn't even take a month from release for cheaters to show up in multiplayer games, Warzone, and DMZ. It's not as bad as MW2019/Warzone just yet.

Simply amazing.