I will start this off by saying I am not one of the dozens of butthurt kickstarter backers that are giving this game negative reviews. I also was not dumb enough to pay 30 dollars for this game, a ridiculous asking price. It is well known that the game makers completely abandoned this game almost right away, so points off for that. While this game has all the working pieces of an RPG, very few things are done right. You start off in this cool looking hub town on the water. Unfortunately it is basically empty, with a blacksmith, a few quest givers, a trainer, and a lot of hollow empty space. The graphics of the game are good for such an indie team. I did have regularly random stuttering later in the game, that got annoying. Also it is nice how different enemies can attack each other, which you don't see in many games. Also, you can build statues in the city, including ones of yourself, but too bad there are only 3 total sculptures to choose from. You have an apartment, of which there is basically nothing to do besides change the wallpaper. The game also has decent playtime. That is where all the positives end.
Lets start with combat. Enemies can knock you over and stuck lock you, as well as auto hit you with abilities. The kick button is useless as enemies get right back up and you do no damage. The block and parry both don’t really work, but the computer has no problem using them. They also can use super overpowered elemental attacks, like venom, that are way better than others, as it hits you for damage over time for like 10 seconds, messes with your vision, and drains all stamina and energy (yeah that seems fair). Then every time you use a rifle to attack, you have to reload between each shot. There are 2 2-handed weapons, 2 guns, and 2 1-handed weapons. The models never change, and nothing else is ever introduced. Attacking with melee attacks you constantly go through people and it doesn’t hit them.
The abilities are bad. It looks like you have a huge skill tree, but its really like 5 abilities, and you can just continue to get more elemental variations of the same attack, which you do for each attack. This also doesn’t work with the toolbar because it only supports about 7, and just 1 ability takes up the whole thing. It isn’t clear the difference in damage or whatever else between different elements. There are only 2 classes. My guy had a bunch of abilities that did the same thing, such as bombs, satchels, lanterns, rockets, grenades, so getting multiple of the same ability called something else doesn’t help. Needed more variety. Also my turrets would constantly shoot over guys and attack guys far away, instead of those standing right in front of them. Using abilities for some reason CONSUMES RESOURCES. Yes it is as dumb as it sounds. So if you don’t pick up enough of 1 resource or run out, you can’t use them anymore.
Guys don’t drop any weapons. They only drop crafting materials. This makes killing guys boring because just crafting 1 thing requires like 600 of materials, something I couldn’t get with over 15 hours in the game. This means you don’t ever care what you get, because you usually get low level crafting stuff you don’t need, and if you do get a good resource you know you need tons of it so it doesn’t matter. Also there are tons of different color variations of the same resource, meaning your gathering will be split and you won’t get enough of anything. Also crafting things requires 2 different types of materials, meaning you can have enough of 1 type but still not be able to craft it because you don't have enough of the other. You cannot buy new weapons and armor, as the starting vendor weapons never upgrade. This causes you to switch weapons and armor 1-2 times during the entire game, yup it sucks that much. Since vendors never upgrade money is worthless besides buying a few materials. I had 300000k and nothing to spend it on.
Then there are the quests. There is no feasible story or anything. You basically get random quests with no cohesion. I had no idea what the main quest was as it was never labeled. Then I would stop getting quests from the main quest giver and then after doing other side quests I would suddenly get more quests from her again. The environments are super repetitive. Each quest you run around 1 of 3 total places: a swamp, a forest, or an underground cave. They use the EXACT same textures and layouts from all the previous levels over and over (you will notice 1 above ground cave used 20 times). All of the environments are super big and super empty and full of nothing. But every quest makes you run for 10 min through these empty big environments just to waste time, instead of getting to anything good. There are difficulty settings for each quest, but choosing a harder or easier one doesn't change the rewards at all, which means it is useless. Boss fights are boring as the guys are the same models as the other enemies just with more health and a name attached to them.
Lets not forget about health. First off, when you get hurt you lose total health, and you can only heal a certain point of your health with berries, meaning you keep losing health with each hit even if you heal (yeah stupid). Using healing things make you stand in one place to get hit more, instead of making sense (hate when games do that). The game thinks it’s an MMO, because even in single player you cannot pause the game for some reason, and there is no saving. If you die during a quest you have to restart the entire thing. Funny though because multiplayer no longer works, as you can’t join a game, invite a friend to play privately, or anything. The bland repetitive level design and quests of fetch/kill are MMO like though. The enemies suck too. There are about 10 total different enemy models, but you will only fight 4-5 of them throughout the entire game. This, combined with mission and level design, make every level feel the exact same. Just move along. 5/10.
