Embers Adrift

TLDR: This game was dead on arrival with no more than about twenty-five-ish players on at any given time. I wanted to like this, I really did. I do enjoy the old style MMO. The slow burn is cathartic for me. Sadly, there are so many little dev team choices that I just hate. For starters The Armor Weight system is trash. You cannot fully equip yourself without suffering massive penalties. Going slightly “overweight” massively drops your movement speed, combat movement speed, attack speed, and how much fall damage you take. So even if you have a full set of gear, you cannot wear it. Get used to just carrying a chest piece, boots, or gloves in your bag because the penalties are too steep to put them on. The second problem is your “Bank”. The storage space is abysmal. Five spaces to start with, unless you pay a $10 a month subscription to get five more “bonus” spaces. They will let you buy five more spaces at a time for handfuls of silver, so there is that. Do you remember all that armor you have but can’t equip? Well pony up some coin or you’re keeping it in your bags. Don’t have money for storage space? Why don’t you do like every other game and gather crafting items, build stuff, and sell them to venders for quick coin! ... except you can’t. NOPE, venders don’t want your merch, or the materials you farmed up; so, you’ll have to sell it on the auction house... and hope one of the nineteen other players will buy it. Yeah, nineteen other players. Check the Steam charts. When people say “It has a low population” that is a half-truth. A low population for a “MMO” is a couple thousand people, this game has an all-time peak of eighty-six players. At the time of writing this there are twenty players online, and I’m one of them. That isn’t a low population, that is a NO population. No population is a big problem for a game designed around group play. Good luck finding a group. That is the massive problem with these niche “old school” titles that want to force group interactions. NO ONE PLAYS THEM for long so the population plummets and the games become impossible to play alone. Sadly, alone is probably the only way you’ll be playing it. Let’s talk about the classes for a second. You basically have nine different styles of “Warrior” or a D&D Fighter. They are broken down into three categories. Defenders: which are fighters that have more armor weight points so they can actually USE the armor you’re carrying around which give them more defense than the other classes. (Granted, if the weight system wasn’t trash EVERYONE could wear the armor, but never mind that for now.) Strikers: which are fighters that focus on dealing damage rather than worrying about wearing heavy armor. Support: which are fighters that can use first aid. This is “low fantasy” so there are no casters or pure magic users. So, pick your fighter type and get dropped into a world with little to no story, or reason to be there. Seriously, save yourself the time and cash and pass on this. Sure, if you’re playing with a buddy, you’ll have a good time... but you can have fun throwing rocks at a wall with the right company, so that isn’t saying much.

Heres is another NO POPULATION- low player count review. the game is geared towards the 20 high level players, you need a solid 5 other friends to do anything in the game. they promote a rewarding solo play, but you cant. oh that deer is grey so 10 levels lower than me. ahh but it has 3 chevrons, in the wild for no reason at all. it pillages you. well just turn to the other players and get help. the elite, 90% of the time dont even respond to questions asked in world chat. so now you are forced to not play. not progress. or wait for other players who need exactly what you need too. with 50 max players at a time, and thats when 20 or more level 40+ are on. so now you have about the other 20 players are 15-35 (and are being carried by the high levels because of Boxing/PLing), leaving about 5 players 1-15. now of those 5 players. 3 have finished it. 1 is still trying to figure out how to talk in world chat and that is 1 other person. so you invite them. and you go do the harder thing. but wait. there is a 3 chevron mob. oh well. just refund it like the rest have before you. without the ability to reliably solo content. you will never build a player base to support the demand for the group content. and if you do bring up ♥♥♥♥♥♥ mechanics or say the population is low and say why you think its low. the 20 people the game is basically made for will come in and defend why they like it. well, if you dont like money not a bad business strategy. but i doubt llama and nick and a few others can keep the developing to continue. but imagine. if things changed. and the 25 new players a week actually stayed. then 50 more would join, then 200 would come. then the group content that is made, could actually be completed. and that would be rewarding. but my all means, Keep the "This bunny is in the starting area but you need level 10 Hunter to skin it, while this one next to it is level 5 hunter to skin it." and this whole area is your level. and your quest is there. but there are 1 2 and 3 chevron mobs, and the archer back pedal because the min range on their bow is 6m while they are shooting you with said bow at 0m. because the 20 people think its a fun and challenging concept, but that archer just back pedals in to other mobs with giant social radius, and now your 1 mob became 3 aggroed mobs. and those yelled for friends so you have 6 more coming. but 2 of those mobs are 2 chevrons so they are like 2.5 mobs each. and the 3 chevron are like 4 mobs each. the chevron system is dumb. pantheon did it. just scattered difficulty mobs all over the place. if youre solo you cant kill the group mobs, and if youre a group. why would you want to kill solo easy mobs that dont reward much. but my all means. keep it like it is. im sure the 500 reviews that say Low population/ group content are just silly little kids that dont appreciate the "Everquest" difficulty. Come with 5 friends with no lives. or dont come at all. The Devs are so dismissive of concerns and so angrily defensive. Devs delete comments and post in discord to make it look like they are doing a great job, then the fan girls come out, its the same 4 people just defending the game vs new players. i have seen about 15 new players join in the month and a half i played. and was kinda saddened when they quit. and im starting to understand. and the veteran players are always defending the arguments like, Oh you think leveling is bad just wait until you hit 50 and there is nothing to do.

A solid old-school MMO with a distinct identity… but terrible optimization. ✔️ Slow but interesting gameplay in a group ✔️ Good sandbox/social atmosphere ❌ Poor performance, lag, and slow loading times () ❌ Outdated tech despite very basic graphics The game has charm… but you often get the feeling that it’s glitching for no reason. 👉 Good concept, frustrating technical execution.

It's a game with a ton of group content and no player population I can't recommend this game to anyone in it's current state. Edit: First game I've ever removed from my steam library it was that scuffed.

I only played for a few minutes. But the combat was jank, the optimization wasnt very smooth, the class options were boring, the ui was hard to read on a 4k monitor even scaled up, I can see why the devs arent dumping money into advertising this. On top of it being basically a dead game. I didnt even have a desire to hit the first level up to see what bonuses you get. That says something.

My main issue with this game is they fully designed it around being party based, that is fine and all but the game population is dead. Exp is very slow and quite boring solo even with the changes they have made to help solo players, at the end of the day it doesn't come close to the exp and fun you have with a 6 man group dungeon diving of which I never got to full try the best party we got together was 5 players for the second dungeon around lv 15. I once saw 25~ players online but over half were level 50 probably logged on to do a raid or something. The one other thing that just becomes annoying is that every inner dungeon/ember vein feels the same there isn't much variation in them. The game has charm and has some unique systems but I cant recommend due to the population of the game sadly. If you enjoy a very grindy solo experience you might enjoy this game.

Case study of what not to do as a game dev

It's 5 dollars on sale. Is it going to be amazing? If you like old school MMORPGS, it's actually really decent... still, It's a weird take on old school mmos. It tries to be even more difficult than they were, pretending the internet doesn't exist to get around no map, no quest help, etc and we're not just going to play it annoyingly alt tabbing back and forth between a wiki and the game... I'll buy it and check back every now and then continuing my character like I do with Project Gorgon whenever I get the itch. There's zero reason to get a subscription, you can play the whole game without... so the entry is 5 dollars, and that's it. Edit* I got to level 10 and I'm kind of hitting a wall. I actually REALLY like the game, it's one of those slow burn games that gets better and better the more you learn about it, and how things are. The problem is there's no players, and everything is completely geared around you having a group of at least 3 people. This wouldn't be so bad if the entire game was made around having to have 3 people, but since a lot of the game CAN be played solo (open world there's plenty of areas to solo, and the ember dungeons can be solo'd) this means most players are too busy playing solo, and doing solo things to group. So your chances of getting a group between lack of players (3-4 people on in your lvl range), language barrier, and people just wanting to play solo are next to none. 18 hours played and of that one hour was spent duo with another person. We could not complete the group content, instead did the solo content together. I really want to recommend the game because for 5 dollars it's absolutely worth it, and selfishly I want to promote it so I can play it in a group. However, I will caution you that you will run into two main areas of frustration: Questing sucks. Possibly the worst questing system in an MMO. The rewards are too good to not do the quests, so you will still end up doing them and all this does is waste your time. "Find" where to go. "Find" where to turn this in. It's just a time sink and a frustration. Grouping content is not content anymore. If that's fine to you, and you're okay playing until people join (and potentially missing out on early game content because you out level it) then absolutely grab it it's really good and I enjoy it more than Project Gorgon. Ultimately my complains come from a place of love, not hate. I actually really enjoy the game after forcing myself to play through from lvl 5 to 10 the game started to cook. The first 1-5 were rough, for sure. The graphics aren't pretty but there's charm here somewhere... You can tell the devs love the game and are putting their heart soul into it, and I really want to see all that soul has to offer while eating the heart. So I say buy it, and join me in this weird embrace.

Embers Adrift and Pantheon Rise of the fallen..... I have no idea why ppl doesn´t invade these games. Pantheon have a bit of players but some took a break until some day in July, when the big wipe are coming and Embers Adrift? How come mmorpg-players doesn´t jump into it (at once)? Both games looks so good, are fun to play.. Old school and ..GOOD!

i can't say anything positive at this time. the ui was a pain & definetly could have been done better, i experienced so much lag/rubberbanding that was frustrating & difficult to do combat. it says rewarding for solo play but i struggled & i'm not inexperienced in this game play style. sadly i do not recommend this game