tl:dr - this is Enshrouded that "we have at home". And that is said with Enshrouded not being too great itself in mind.
A total slop which brings nothing new to the genre and is just copying previous games.
Not even a pirate or naval game despite it's appearance. Tedious and unrewarding.
[h2]Co-op[/h2]
This is not actually a co-op. Developers made some band-aids on a single player game so several people can play on one server in paralell.
You can't even be a crew of one ship, everyone will have to build their own ship.
And resources don't scale, so have fun cutting wood for 3 hours but as 6 people on different islands.
God forbid one of the players to skip a session. You'll have to catch up on quests alone, and everyone will have to wait.
[h2]Survival mechanics[/h2]
This game is posing as a survival, but actually it is akin to a mobile gacha trying every thing imaginable to keep you playing longer.
But in gachas there are at least some sense why developer would want such a thing, yet in Windrose there is none.
You get diabolically penalized for every death, losing loot, active food, stamina regeneration and having to get back to your body sometimes for half an hour of real time. It is quite easily mitigated. Mitigated if you don't forget to do all the things as building a bed and bonfire at every island, bringing food etc.
All the resources for food, bonfires and beds are easily available. Bed and bonfire is literally just grass and wood which is plenty everywhere on any island.
So it's not a survival, more of a checklist simulator. But when you forget something, you'll get punished beyond measure, and this is going to be frustrating. Well, you can tell by the length of this review.
[h2]RPG system[/h2]
RPG system is pretty much Avowed but even worse, without active abilities.
You can level your stats and sometimes choose talents.
Stats, as per usual, are just flat increases of your damage, stamina and health.
Talents are pretty much the same but more akin to perks. They feel very weak as you only get 1-2 talent points for a level, and every talent is like 3% of damage/crit/something. If you've played World of Warcraft, imagine a talent tree which only has first three rows, that'd be it.
So when you level up you get +% of "something" and that's it.
I personally would prefer that leveling my character would actually change my gameplay somehow, open new paths and abilities etc. Instead of that i am only able to use light attack, heavy attack, shoot and dodge for all game long without anything changing whatsoever.
And leveling. I'd vote for a president that'd prohibit making games with RPG elements without giving experience for killing enemies.
Here you only get experience for completing quests and exploration.
Imagine that it is better to just run around some point of interest looting chests while kiting all the enemies looney-tunes style rather than actually kill anyone.
There are a ♥♥♥♥ ton of enemies in this game and killing all of them only gives you loot, and most of that loot is utterly useless.
So in a combat-oriented game you'll feel that combat is a chore that needs to be avoided.
[h2]Combat[/h2]
I must admit that i suck ass at such games as Dark Souls. I've almost managed to finish the first one, but it was too tedious to endlessly try to kill some boss to learn all the patterns while also being frustrated becase of some random ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.
And this game's combat is Dark Souls from Wish. Only key difference is that you can't roll and can only dodge instead. Otherwise it's the same with parries, light and heavy attack, and attacks using stamina.
But that is a difference in combat. Yet these games are completely different in everything else, and that is why this combat there sucks even more ass than i do at Dark Souls.
Why exactly i hate it with my gut:
1. Pretty much everyone will two-shot you even in the best available armor. One mistake with parrying or dodging means running from the spawn point, which can be quite far away. Remember the survival part and consider how many times you'll die without a respawn point nearby, or without food, or whatever else.
2. Parrying is absolutely unrewarding because it does not increase your damage. In Dark Souls a parry is almost a one shot to the enemy. Here it is just a short stun with the same damage.
3. If you don't want to die your combat will boing down to repeating the same pattern of two hits and dodging back.
4. Enemies are damage sponges. Yes, you get two shot, but even a 3rd level boar requires at least several hits. Enemies of your level are usually killed with 10+ hits.
5. There are ♥♥♥♥ ton of enemies that charge you while being rubberbanded to your character. And yes, this is going to kill you with one shot
6. Fighting in confined spaces are a pain in the ass. Camera will be your enemy too.
7. Using guns with half an hour reloading doesn't feel as powerful as it should. It is far easier to just kill an enemy in melee than running around with a gun.
[h2]Naval battles[/h2]
Aside from the fact that you can't be a ship's crew on co-op, naval battles even more of a slop than usual combat:
1. There are always 3-4 enemy ships that attack you simultaneously, there are no 1x1 fights at all
2. They hit like truck. You'll have to upgrade everything imaginable to at least stand a chance if you're of the same level.
3. They drop almost nothing of value but insignias needed to gain reputation. This is again some World of Warcraft kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ which i don't find fun or engaging
4. Battle itself is just shooting cannons until one of you is dying. Boarding feels useless as it is infinitely easier to just sink the enemy ship
5. Hitreg of these cannons would make Escape from Tarkov on 900+ ping blush
And as they don't give you experience either you'll probably avoid these most of the time.
Maybe for first couple of fights it's fun, but it gets stale real fast.
[h2]Base building[/h2]
This is 81392th Minecraft reiteration, just worse.
Absolutely the same as in any other game of this genre, nothing new.
And as useless as usual. A couple of leaves formed as a roof will do for the rest of the game, everything else is just workstations and chests.
[h2]Exploration[/h2]
Every island is aboslutely the same as the previous one. You get new enemies when getting into new biomes, but that's it.
An island is just some animals, bushes and trees that can be gathered.
It also has points of interest, of which all are literally just a several chests with loot.
What loot exactly you might ask? 99% of times it will be green-blue-purple random items that are either used to upgrade gear or just have to be sold to vendors and have no other purpose.
1% of times it is actually a unique weapons.
I understand that it is hard to populate game with actually different things, so lazy developers just use this formula of endless resources of several grades that player can use.
But what is the point of "exploration" when you literally always getting same things? That is boring af and feels like you're farming resources rather than exploring anything. I fail to see much difference between mining copper in a cave and killing mobs in the same cave in order to loot another EPIC INGOT OF GODLY LEGENDARY +1 DAMAGE WEAPON UPGRADE.
