I don't have a lot of playtime on the game, but after only a few hours, I cant see myself getting into it.
for an 8 year old game, the optimization is poor at best, all graphics on low/off, minus textures and view distance, and I still max out the VRAM on my 5070ti and stutter constantly.
The UI is painfully clunky, trying to setup your loadout requires several unnecessary clicks, right clicks, and shift combinations just to move items between slots, you cannot drag and drop anything, a basic feature I've seen in literally every other extraction shooter I've ever played, along with tons of small symbols over menus and gear that have no description so I don't know what half of it means. There really isn't any "loot" in this game, just equipment, weapons, and abilities/perks, there isn't really a dedicated stash at all, just menus of every equipable item with a number count at the bottom, it genuinely plays more like a rouge lite with PVP than an extraction shooter.
The TTK is basically 0ms at times because almost every gun in the game has 1 shot potential, most melee and throwables also have 1 shot potential, this wouldn't be as much of a issue for me if the movement wasn't so terrible, it feels like you're running in mud at all times, climbing a ladder requires an entire mantle and unmantle animation which takes several seconds, and you take fall damage if you fall more than like 3 feet, so if you get caught out in the open at any time, you're pretty much just dead, What also makes the PVP worse is that (I hate to say it) but the audio is kind of "too good" everything you do makes a ridiculous amount of noise, your footsteps are deafening, your teammates footsteps are deafening, AI movement audio is loud and nearly indistinguishable from a players, between stepping on glass (which is literally everywhere) walking through hanging sound traps, alertable crows, AI enemies, alertable dogs, branchs snapping etc, anything besides crouch walking around will just give away your position.
All of these things by themselves just seems like griping, but all of it together just makes for a really awful, boring PVP experience in my opinion, where most fights consist of you and an enemy shooting each other once, both backing up to heal, and then proceeding to crouch walk around and hold a head glitch waiting for a sound cue....or you just get one shot headshotted by any gun and you're just dead.
I'm not exactly sure how the matchmaking works in this game, and I'm absolutely no proponent of modern SBMM or EOMM practices, but my 2nd match on I went up against and died to a level 100 prestige player...lol, I know the player base isn't massive in this game, but I feel like at around 20k players there's surely some slightly better matchmaking to be had no?
The visibility is just plain terrible, almost every POI is just a smear of darkish brownish wood dirt and mud, and most of the player models just blend right in, most of my deaths I genuinely cant even see anyone on my screen, even with motion blur and depth of field off and anti aliasing maxed, the game just has a very blurry look to it, and if the random weather gets raining or foggy, just forget about being able to see anything.
TLDR: The concept of the game is cool, but doesn't really feel like a traditional extraction shooter, no actual "loot" stash or shops or markets etc, just fixed equipment purchasing. The near instant TTK with almost any weapon, poor visibility, horrible clunky movement, and over tuned sound design, all make for a ratty, campy, boring PVP experience in my opinion. UI design and optimization just feel poor and dated.
