ICARUS

1) I think if you want a better experience with this game when you're just starting out, to just start at Olympia and pick the bottom right corner. Me and a friend unfortunately started in the top left corner, which is very identical biome (with just higher level mobs), and when I wanted to start doing missions, I had to traverse back and forth for 10 minutes to: - Kill 26 deer At a biome that looks exactly identical to mine! But it HAD to be deer killed ALL THE WAY IN THE DESIGNATED CIRCLE. Fine, not too bad. We complete that, traverse back up to the top left part of the map thinking maybe the next mission won't be as bad. The next mission: Go to a shooting range and try some weaponry out! (All the way BACK and FURTHER than where you killed the deer last time! :-) ) ...Ok, fine. We traverse again, traveling at least for 15 minutes, We go to the gun range and get some high-level weaponry we had yet to craft for ourselves, and it was cool that we got to keep those items. We head back up because a majority of our stuff is in our base back at the top left of the map, and we've gotten far along to start using some Tier 4 technology and a majority of our items are from Tier 3 and require ores that are not always so easy to get. We decide that all the traveling back and forth, even with mounts to ride, just simply not worth the trouble. So my friend and I play and basically explore the area where we settled our base in, fight a couple of bosses, and find big caves that help us along in leveling up and keeping progressions going. We reach a peak where the technology we have and the weapons/gear we have are pretty good, but not as good as the items we can get if started doing more missions/operations. We start another operation: Go back to the other side of the map, collect 500 cooked meat, 500 fur, 1000 leather, and then when you do that, go even FURTHER into the other side of the map, and collect FIVE HUNDRED BERRIES, TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY WATERMELONS, THREE HUNDRED CARROTS, and TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY PUMPKINS. I think that if I had just started on the correct side of the map--which had ZERO indicator that starting there was the ideal position. We chose a different area because it looked identical to the starting area with more challenge (stronger mobs, bears, etc.), but we didn't think that "more of a challenge" meant that things would get SIGNIFICANTLY MORE TEDIOUS. It is one thing to have things be a long grind because there will be so much to see, so much to do, so much to test out and problem solve for. But it's another thing to make us do an INSANE fetch quest with RIDICULOUS numbers. We built a farm, we gathered crops, and I had to mfn use a wiki and cheat to basically solve this quest JUST to earn the in-game currency. Maybe I ruined my own experience because I chose the "wrong" starting area (with no indicator as to what kind of challenges I was in for, like having to commute via mount for 15-20 minutes, and not knowing that all the missions were going to be in that ONE area), maybe I shouldn't have soared through the tech tree and explored the land around be, but I think that the operations that Icarus has are just not respectful of the players' time. What's more is that there is a level cap when it comes to how many points you can put into your skill trees, so you better pick the RIGHT one (because you can pick w/e you want, sure, but some missions and some playstyles do not mesh together well), but you can have an unlimited amount of blueprint points per level so you can use all of the technology available on the planet. But honestly Icarus is kind of a game that, while beautiful, just does not respect the players' time. And to think that if I collected all of those fruits and vegetables, and send it up to complete the mission, I don't get to keep any of that hard work I did to gather those! I think the devs had a particular experience in mind for Open World players, and if I had known that I would have to be commuting for 15-20 minutes just to go complete missions on the other side of the map, I would've picked the other side so I can save time. But goodness gracious, these operations are the definition of tedious. 2) Also, getting stuck on trees is insane. I know there's an Unstuck feature, but why do I get teleported back SO DAMN FAR from where I got stuck??? 3) And jumping while you're on a mount is just straight up awkward. If you're in the arctic, you better watch your step making sure you don't fall into the major crevasses in the ground. Because if you do, you're gonna be spending a couple of minutes or so trying to awkwardly jump your way out from the sides; because some of those crevasses in the earth don't actually have an easy ramp exit out. It feels like jumping with your mount is more of a visual animation, but the actual "hitboxes" that are "jumping" are seemingly just NOT doing it. 4) I decided at one point to take my moa and ride it out all the way into the desert just to explore. The game is visually really appealing but I have to admit, each of the biomes just have similar mobs to kill. Your wolf in the Forest biome is.. a wolf again in the "Mountain" biome. And in the desert? The wolf is a hyena. And if you're in the arctic? The wolf is.. just a snow wolf. Show me a palette swap without showing me a palette swap. TL;DR I've gotten to tier 5 (the max) of the technology tree and I find that the missions/operations, while necessary to get the otherwise difficult-to-acquire in-game currency, took place in incredibly inconvenient locations, and I feel disappointed because I did WANT a challenge, but tedium is not a challenge--it's just a waste of time grinding away at Black Desert/Crimson Desert level tasks. The devs just threw on an extra "0" onto how many XYZ items to get and called that "a challenge."