[h1] Modded Minecraft Without Having To Download Mods [/h1]
That's basically what this game is. Which isn't bad, actually. What the game is, by default, is quite literally what I mod Minecraft into. I've grown tired of having to do that though, and in my search for a survival-crafting-hacknslashy-character customizationy kind of game, I thought Craftopia would scratch that itch.
It did not.
Main reason being; it ain't finished. Far from it. There's tons of game here, truth be told. Other players have already garnered hundreds of hours. Just watch a playthrough on youtube or whatever. You've got like 7 different, large biomes, tons of enemies, leveled dungeons, and so on.
The problem?
Action is clunky. I wouldn't mind it if enemies actually suffered hitstun, but they don't, so it feels like you're hitting things with a wet noodle, while trudging through mud. Nevermind the fact that base combat, while certainly more engaging than your typical survival, open world like game (which isn't exactly a high bar where this game's competitors are literally "mash left mouse till enemy dies"), there isn't much player skill involved. Mashing buttons to kill enemies might be fun for players who don't crave technical design, but as a Devil May Cry (DMC) enjoyer, if I can't do some flashy air combos on enemies, or there isn't some sort of parry mechanic, perfect dodge, or combo variety (having the ability to change your attack pattern, leading to different animations that do different damage that have different effects. For example, Dragon's Dogma has "pause combos," and depending on your weapon and class choice, these different "pause combos" do different damage and have a different amount of "stun" they do (stun being a way to knock down enemies, or cause them to stagger), giving you a reason to use one combo over another given the situation at the moment, other than trying to do something that looks and feels cool, emphasis on the FEEL COOL part, which DMC does way better anyway), then I'm quickly dissatisfied. The game does have a perfect dodge mechanic, so that's nice I guess, and it does have skills, which can spice up combat, which is nice, but it's all very status quo: Equip more powerful gear to power-level your way to victory. Those two things alone don't change the fact that I'm still doing the same 3 hit combo, and enemies still don't suffer hitstun, and I still can't do a launching attack, jump cancel the animation, proceed to aircombo the bugger, slam down on the ground, switch to a range weapon to snipe the enemy while they get up from a distance, and send them flying off a cliff. If the game let me do this, I wouldn't have wrote this review. I would be playing the game. And doing that. Because that's awesome. Instead, this game's combat is more about the typical RPG horsecrap that ruins technical mechanics; power leveling. All you gotta do is stack buffs, use the most powerful weapons, level-up your character OVER the recommended level, and just turn your brain off. Bleh. Game would be better if it was more DMC or Dragon's Dogma than it was Zelda in the combat department, even if it's combat is already leagues better than something like Minecraft (which quickly falls into MC's favor as soon as you introduce combat mods. Granted, I'm comparing vanilla Craftopia to a modded game which isn't exactly a fair comparison). Hell, it'd be an easy fix too. Just add some combo variety for all weapon types, so I don't do the same 3 attacks stringed together all the damn time. Let me air juggle enemies. Let me do air combos! I'm not asking for perfection I'm just asking for something that's more than just slash 3 times dodge slash 3 times dodge! Is that too much to ask for? Anime Minecraft Zelda-like open-world survival craft game with DMC combat? How quickly I would shill money for that game you have no idea. Alas...this ain't the game... And no, using different weapon types doesn't change the fact that ALL WEAPONS have SPECIFIC combo structures WITH NO DIFFERENTIATION. You want to experiment? You can disengage after an attack with a dodge, and then sprint at the enemy to do a sprint attack, and then do the same 3 hit combo again. That's about it. Or abuse map geometry by dodge rolling off to spam air attacks (which is actually kinda neat but it's not enough by itself).
I don't want to be too harsh to a game that clearly isn't finished. 5 years of dev time, and they have this much to show for it, and it's actually decent. Problem is, scope and size and breadth mean nothing without that illustrious POLISH, which this game don't have enough of, especially in performance. In time, I'm sure that will EVENTUALLY get addressed. Games take a long time to make, especially these kinds. My favorite game of all time, OG RE4, took 8 long, development hell years, and it spawned 3 different games out of it, including 2 different franchises, one of which I already mentioned prior, and it's considered one of the best games ever made in general! By that metric, this game has at least another 3 years to go before it's gonna be "done," let alone "good."
I hope the devs can make this game a lot better. Truly. The foundation for something genuinely novel is here, but it requires polish, fine-tuning, more meaningful content (like expanded combat mechanics), performance improvements, functional non-obtuse multiplayer (click "invite friend to game" they accept BAM you're in multiplayer kind of thing).
Another thing holding the game back is it's limited character creator. It's near bare minimum, and you either give in to playing cute anime girls or you make twink anime boys. There needs to be more body options, like being tall, fat, short, thin, muscular, voluptuous even. There needs to be more face options. There needs to be more eye options beyond color. More hair options, and the boy hairs need physics too dammit! There needs to be more armor in the game, and more armor colors. The best costume is the female mechanic looking clothes and there's only one color; orange. Where's the red? Green? Blue? Purple? There's only like 10 hat options, and despite this game being weeb gosh darn central where in the hell is my ninja clothes!? Where is my ninja mask, with the unnecessarily long scarf that always flows in the wind even if I'm in doors!? Where is it? While I'm at it...WHY ARE THERE NO DAGGERS?!
Obviously, I didn't get very far into the game, (most of my playtime spent tinkering with graphics options, and then sprinting to the first combat encounter to experiment with mechanics), so I didn't bother with any of the "survival-craft-build" crap games like these do. The combat is literally the only reason why I gave it a try, because it's really the only thing that sets this apart from it's competitors. And then this game's combat is better...but I'd rather play DMC, and the whole point is that I don't want to play DMC, I want to play Minecraft...but Minecraft with DMC combat. That game doesn't exist, that mod doesn't even exist, and this game's not even close. If I was more of a Zelda combat fan, then sure, this would exceed my expectations ten-fold. That is not the case, unfortunately, so I refunded the game.
If anyone in the comments has any desire to enlighten me on more engaging, hidden combat tech this game has to offer, please, let me know, because I crave an open-world, survival, crafting game, whose combat lets me tolerate the mind-numbing BOREDOM that is resource accumulation, which is a problem that every single survival, crafting, open world-esque game has.
I'll give it some more time before I decide to give this a shot again. As of now, it doesn't have enough of what I'm looking for, but like I said, 3 years is more than enough time for stuff like that to change. I hope a dev from Pocketpair sees this, and considers implementing the things I mentioned. You would have a happy customer if you did...and another sale...
