tldr: this game is designed to tickle your joy receptors at every opportunity and to get you hooked. the graphics are beautiful, the combat can be entertaining, enemies might pose a challenge, which feels rewarding to overcome. some npc are memorable and fit well into the alright story.
so, on the surface, at first glance, it should be a good game, no?
at its core the game relies on three key selling points: the sensory experience with its graphics and sound design, its fast paced and captivating content unlocked through its action based combat systems, and the social satisfaction via prestige, leaderboards and events.
as context for the following, i do think that in a RPG, you want to immerse yourself in a different world, you want your character to grow - in capability or style - and to grow with them; to git gud, to understand the lore of the world. in a MMO, you want to be part of a cherished group.
starting with the story, i think it is coherent and plausible, somewhat engaging but it felt slightly rushed from the beginning. i have no strong feelings about it; some characters are memorable, mysteries are intriguing and the world is interesting. your character is the faceless canvas to project yourself into the world; a no-name brat that is destined to be the hero. the character lacks any real peronsality, as not to conflict with the intentions of the player, and you as a player have no agency over what is happening at all.
the central part of the gameplay loop - combat - got surprisingly boring, surprisingly quick; you only need to be fast enough to press your buttons and, after some trial and error, know the timing of individual enemies. beyond that, its the same over and over: the enemy attacks, you defend and counterattack once the opportunity arises.
every trash mob has two types of attacks - bland ones, and ones that can be punished harder with a counter. boss enemies get a third variant that can not be parried but only evaded. every trash mob can be parried/countered, every boss has moves that must be dodged. thus, if you focus on one or the other way of defense, you can do your thing with every opponent. the timings differ, the animations are different, but at its base, its without fault always the same layout that does not favor any build, weapon or adaptation at all.
as for your tools? you get to equip two weapons that have five moves in total, that should be complementing each other if it were a better game. to get into more detail: there's one spammable basic attack, there's an equally spammable 'heavy' attack that is effectively as hard hitting and fast as the basic attack and there is one move to switch your weapons while performing a pretty basic attack. the remaining two moves have cooldowns and are usually quite flashy and - in comparison to the three other moves - more potent. sadly, they usually do two flavors of the same thing; the fan, for example adds a heal over time paired with a healing over time zone. dual blades come with an ability for movement paired with damage, and a move for damage only. the single sword provides an additional ability for damage, paired with a move that deals damages and moves the character. with so few abilities, they should be much more focused on filling different needs, really.
there is no way to individually swap these abilities, there's only a handful of weapons that have either one or two styles of moves. additional, passive choices can add a chance for bleed or poison effects, or give the opportunity for a generic hit after certain attacks, or various other small boosts or generic effects. there is fundamentally no way to customize or expand your fighting style and unlocking these individual tools can be done easily in half an hour or less for each of them, once you decide on what to get and have access to the general zone.
movement around the world is, while appearing varied at first, also disappointing; walking and running works well and as intended, swimming always drains your stamina until you drown - or stay still for long periods to replenish your energy. once flying is unlocked, you are spending more time in the wind-up animation than with the traveling itself and riding the horse is janky, not much faster than on foot and much slower than flying. as many variants of traversal as would fit in the setting and genre, but riding, swimming and flying is done quite poorly, while basic walking and running would have been really hard to mess up.
what about the customization in terms of style, cosmetics? some pretty, but comparatively simple unlocks are gifted to you early on, with all the many other things. some other hairstyles or clothings can be unlocked in the course of the game. but most is locked behind the cash shop and/or loot boxes.
an example for all the weapon designs: there's exactly one default design that is applied to every weapon of that type (spear, sword, etc) and one other design that can be gained by playing: with loot boxes, contained in certain boss loot, that may individually be aquired every 160 minutes or more. then there's one or two weapon skins that can be bought directly with money at prizes that will get you entire other games. but the vast majority of the skins is locked behind layers of lootboxes, various chained in-game currencies to fuel the lootboxes and rng-pity-mechanics if your 200th roll went bad again. i can only guess at how many hundreds of moneys one has to throw at the game to get one desired skin.
there's tons and tons of game systems, spread around many, many more menus; there's more different game systems than i have ever seen in a single other game, and every one that i have engaged with has pretty graphics, but is mechanicly shallow. while there might be quite a lot more, i have already tested: homesteading/basebuilding with farming and industry options, the gathering of collectables or crafting materials, crafting, fishing, pet companions, mounts and puzzles, healing with a card game as well as debating with a card game, maybe more. none of them were engaging or revolutinary in any way and some were clearly designed to form player habits with timers, daily rewards and similar ways of repeated engagement.
in summary: at the beginning of the game, there's quite a number of ways to chose your style and to pick some minor specializations, while you are being showered with rewards, free stuff and satisfying sounds and animations. the game does have a very, very satisfying starting experience, if dopamine fueled highs are your goal. but once i saw the progression that followed, i was quite disenchanted: no new mechanics and only incremental, grinding stat changes for each and every single equipment slot and abilty in a system that sells this as ' character progression'. and as soon as your rewards from the gift boxes run out, you realize that spending 10k of a currency for a +1 for a single equipment slot is a steep prize, when an enemy drops like 30 coins of that type. from my experience, the grind i experienced in the early game is factors of magnitude less time consuming than the typical end game grind; because if you still play at that point, you are very much invested enough in the game, that paying a hundred moneys for that booster might just seem a wise investment, compared to hundreds of hours of your life...
i don't mind playing a game that hits me with satisfying sounds and flashy animations with the intention of releasing happy-chemicals in my body. but i do mind if the game that delivers that to me is a cluster of shallow systems designed to form addictions, a piece of software that has gambling at its core with a dizzying amount of lootboxes and menu layers to distort any orientation or feeling for monetary value spent. this is a game that aims to reward whales with social validation by awarding boons to those players that show up and admire the whales.
a sad product, all in all. the social messaging could not be clearer.
