Leafling

[h1]The game is still in a wonky situation, and much better to play with a friend than alone.[/h1] The game has had its fair share of ups and downs, and with the game re-releasing (in a somewhat unfinished state however), I feel it's fair to review how it stands now. Note that I did 'thumbs down', but if there were a middle ground, it would've been more appropriate as the game does have redeeming points. tl;dr though I recommend reading til the end: Game is fine when server doesn't crash. Find a buddy to play with. You can do nearly what you want though you'll find some stuff just sucks or doesn't work. Mostly PvE oriented for now. Great soundtracks. Decent community. Main Admin is meh at times. [hr][/hr] [u][b]Classes[/b][/u] Leafling has something over 30 classes with your usual healers/tanks/mages/dps, some hybrid & fantasy classes and gathering classes (for mining, woodcutting and fishing). You'd think that having so many choices to indulge in is a good thing, but that's where the downfall is: some classes have felt terrible to play for months and are unused while some, coincidentally frequently used, get very frequent changes, meaning that in reality, players stick to a handful of classes at best, which is a shame. I'm also not a fan of having to switch to this Lumberjack class just so I can cut trees for example, it adds so many unnecessary clicks and steps as a player, when we used to just swap our weapons to our hatchet and swap back when we were done.. The bottom line is that having this large variety means you can find 2/3 classes you enjoy (Great!), but it also means that you may never encounter some classes purely because they barely receive attention: the development team has focused so much on creating classes that they seemingly now have too many to handle balancing them all appropriately. [u][b]Levelling[/b][/u] In Leafling, you now level up your classes individually, meaning you can't freely change classes and keep your current level anymore. While the development team has shared their decision to carry out this drastic change and put forward that it adds replayability to the game, taking your main classes to the highest level still remains a grind in which players go to the optimal source of Exp in each zone and don't touch anything else: for example levelling some classes from 40 to 45 can be utter pain, and instead of entering the dungeon (where the boss has the highest exp of the zone) and killing countless mobs with high HP and no Exp to their name, some prefer doing a repeatable woodcutting quest.. Safe to say the rest of that zone is still unknown to many many players. [u][b]Items and Gear spells[/b][/u] Leafling has too many items. This issue was identified a year ago, and the solution proposed was to give each equippable item a different 'Gear Spell' (ie equipping that item means you can use its corresponding gear spell). This for me doesn't change anything and only added more issues: for months on end did players keep reporting that some items were lacking their spell or that the spell doesn't work at all. Thankfully, this was addressed, even though there are still reports to this day, albeit less frequent. As a result of having so many items (equipment and crafting materials), some players (mostly veterans) are reaching near the limit of their bank storage of 1000 slots, and there is apparently no plan from the development team to extend the amount of slots. So what happens when more people reach this limit is up in the air.. Having so many equipments does have an upside: you can make countless combinations to suit whatever play style you want: you want to play a Cleric that has a Shiv ? No worries, let me get that for you mate. Want to play an Assassin with a Shield ? Consider it done. If you're fine with combing through the in-game Wiki tab to see what you could do, then you'll probably have a blast with this. [u][b]PvE Content[/b][/u] Leafling has decent PvE content given the limits of the engine it relies on, and has much improved in that aspect over the last couple of months. Dungeons can be entered solo or in group and there are 4/8-people raids. Dungeon Boss fights are somewhat interactive and require movement. No one really knows if the raids are good as having 4 or 8 people at any given time that are interested in doing these raids is tough. Filler mobs in all zones are relatively easy to kill, but don't give you much Exp. There is end-level content when you reach level 50, more group-oriented. [u][b]PvP Content[/b][/u] PvP-what is that ? Omegalul. This barely exists in Leafling, albeit plans still existing. PvP used to be omnipresent more than a year ago when the game was arguably at its peak player count-wise, but after a poorly managed PvP debacle named 'Season 1', the development team's focus shifted away from this. There have been plans to [i]finally[/i] open the Colosseum, but they've been delayed harder my worst train trip for my holidays. The other PvP zone 'Crimson Meadows' has also been for the longest time a mere shadow of its former self, but there are supposedly plans [i]again[/i] to revive it. There have been some Tournaments organised, but all of them had been managed badly, with heavy changes made in the 48h prior to the beginning nullifying practice from players, too short notice given (read: 3 hours) and an overall sense of unprofessionalism. Don't expect much PvP for now. [u][b]Music and Audio[/b][/u] The game has its own soundtracks for each zone and boss fights. They're great and most of them in tune with their map. <3 Akemi. [u][b]Community and Development team[/b][/u] If you decide to play this game, I strongly recommend finding a buddy to do so with, as it'll be much more fun than playing it alone, as the player base is relatively small in itself (there are high hopes that it goes beyond its peak of a year ago, but if that isn't hopium or whatever these young-ones say then I don't know what is). Nonetheless, you will meet some new players like yourselves or some veterans that can always answer any question and won't hesitate to give you a helping hand, and if not, the moderators will gladly answer. The development team is fairly small as of now, but to their credit post frequent updates (though some can be unfinished or bugged). Some longtime players give a hand every now and then either as official Developers or as a feedback team. However it's important to note that many of these have stopped helping due to issues with the main Admin, with the most recent occurrence being swept under the rug and their contribution (which was MASSIVE) not thanked for: I don't care what the issue was but not thanking them for what they did in a few weeks what would've taken the main Admin longer is downright disrespectful. Come to think of it, I'm not sure the previous were thanked either, [i]huh[/i]. The main Admin can sometimes be unprofessional, as can be seen from some of their responses to other Steam Reviews (unless they've edited them later when they realised they're unprofessional, like a relapse) or often being passive-aggressive, stubborn and has been known to do shady things. When reading other reviews, you will likely come across some mentioning those shady things and others along the lines of 'don't believe those people, they're just haters': these couldn't be more delusional and too innocent, as these events for the most part did occur. The game's cash-shop, which is thankfully only a cosmetic currency as the game isn't p2w, has remained ugly and 'bugged' for a year, and the Admin has asked in the past to message them directly instead of using the shop as Steam would be taking a cut. This is too much of a coincidence for me, and I find it disgraceful that you wouldn't want to give back slightly to your platform without which nothing of this would've been possible, and leave your shop in an undesirable state to coerce the internal circuit and fix it for the re-release.