A fairy tale that did not come true..
Another fairy tale, how early access shit in the stroller. At the moment, there is nothing in the game that could hold on to long hours of adventure in a new and interesting world, especially in co-op, and even more so online, which has not yet been introduced and will have to wait for a very long time. Everything in the game is implemented out of hand.
Of similar projects, the recent V-Rising and Valheim immediately come to mind. They were clearly inspired by them somewhere, or simply borrowed by mechanics. But there is not that level of implementation, despite the fact that this game costs more than V-Rising and Valheim, when they have many, many times more content at the start of early access. The funny thing is that this game has been in development for quite a long time, more than one year.
Previously, the developers provided a demo mode of the game, in which we could see what awaits us in the game. The funny thing is that now they give almost the same thing for money. Previously, in the demo, you could visit the first major island, defeat the boss and look at crafting and construction out of the corner of your ear and left eye. Now, we are given the same one large island, and a bunch of small and medium-sized islands are added to it for exploration. They give you another story boss, and a slightly different construction system with the ability to create a little more things.
Overall, the project looks very nice and promising. True, implementation will have to wait for another year, apparently. Looking at the Roadmap, updates will be released within a year at least, + on top of everything else, they have already prepared a large pack of small Dls.
In short, based on what we have:
Pros:
- nice visuals and a beautiful, interesting world. I even felt nostalgic for Fable.
Cons:
-crude and wooden combat system. The character is weak and slow, and does not respond well to control. Poor combat system, especially magic and abilities. All the magic in the game is a staff that shoots a fireball. Archery requires close range, because... arrows like to stick in the air, or get stuck in the grass without hitting the enemy. The swords are incredibly slow (all of them), given the poor balance of the enemies in the game, and the inability to properly dodge and block/parry incoming damage.
- questionable and sluggishly assembled character progression system. The leveling tree is not systematized. At this stage it is very small and of little interest.
- terrible interface. Inventory is a separate story, it feels like they were originally going to make a mobile game. Wildly inconvenient. This is what should have been borrowed from Valheim or V-Rising.
-crafting is terribly implemented, in particular it suffers from a poor interface. Poor and boring at this stage, very annoying in places. When cooking food over a fire, you need to wait a long time until one portion is cooked, while creating armor and weapons only requires the availability of resources without waiting. I'm not against expectations, I'm even for it, but with normal implementation.
-no construction. You can build anywhere, but there is nothing. There is zero variety, and besides a box with a roof, it’s not really possible to build anything at the moment. Stone buildings are not available as there is no stone processing machine. Only wooden structures are available.
-too much farming in places, sometimes the amount of resource required is too much. This is especially true for construction.
What's the result? We have a demo version for money. Now the game is not worth your money or your time. We will have to wait at least another year for some miracle from this project.