Gloria Victis is a tough game to recommend; I've played it at many points on and off since it existed, even before it was on Steam, and it's just... not enjoyable. They recently updated their engine, sent a whole email about it like it was a big deal... and the game is somehow worse than I remember.

Let's start with screenshots, on the NA server take those pictures and cut those player numbers in about half, that's about what you get at PEAK times. All other times you've got maybe 5 players per nation running around on the map. Because there is really no content in this game, the players have to make the content. And if there's no players... there is no content.

Graphically, the game looks pretty good, in screenshots. Even on max settings and at 100+ FPS something seems off. What's off is draw distances and lighting bugs. Let's say there's a piece of paper nailed to a sign. When viewing from a distance you see the paper, but the sign hasn't drawn it yet, theses objects for some reason have different draw distances. So you walk around the game world seeing this paper floating in mid-air, and once you move closer pop! There's the sign! This is the same with lighting, move a bit closer to a patch of shadows and all of a sudden there's light there. Move backwards and the shadow comes back. Now multiply this time 100 for any area you're in, again all at max settings and draw distances, installed on an SSD, and this is why the graphics seem off.

Now, the most important part for me; the gameplay. Gloria Victis touts itself as a skill-based MMO, but that is so, so far from the truth. Like many MMOs it's very gear based. Can't wait for the vets of this game to come to this review and downvote it, don't listen to them, people don't like being told they're not as good as they think. Sure, it has actual mount-and-blade like combat with active blocking, but it quickly hits a point where that doesn't matter. One part of that equation is that the game is very gear-based, another part is that the hit detection/server are awful; what you see is often not what is actually happening, and most of the vets know to take advantage of this.

There are 5 tiers of equipment, and in a mix of tier 3-4 armor (which should be average to slightly above average) I hit players in full Tier 5 gear for ~30 damage, while they hit me for ~200 damage. And that's in the heavier armor type in the game, the "tank" armor.

The max health pool is around 800-900 HP. So it takes them 4 hits to kill me and it would take me around 30 successful hits. Wearing that gear you wouldn't even have enough stamina to do 30 hits, let alone block/feint/kick etc.

The difference in gear from Tier 2 to Tier 4 is pretty minuscule, but tier 4 to tier 5 is huge. And the only way to get Tier 5 gear is to craft it, so good luck putting 300 hours into this game just crafting in order to be on a level playing field at all.

...and then get your arse whooped anyways because the only people still playing have been here for years, causing you to get your Tier 5 looted and you back to square one.

My recommendation to the devs is to tighten the gap a lot more on gear disparity; under no circumstances should Tier 5 gear be so ridiculously powerful. It should offer very slight advantage, not make you basically immune to anything below it.

This game asks a lot out of its new players, so new players don't stick around.

The playerbase is also such a cluster of whiny babies that, as a new player, you will be interrogated as people will think you're "spying" and that you're an alternate character/account of somebody in another nation. They take their little dying medieval MMO very seriously, it's kind of hilarious at times. And that will be the final negative here, the community. My god, the community, just a bunch of babies. Join the Discord if you don't believe me, more drama comes from these "grown men" than from a bunch of teenage girls.

Don't bother with this. We are in an MMO drought, but a crappy little MMO from a sketchy Eastern-European dev team that can't fix any of the problems in their own game isn't the answer. I'm not even going to talk about the bugs because there's too many to list.

Gloria Victis is a tough game to recommend; I've played it at many points on and off since it existed, even before it was on Steam, and it's just... not enjoyable. They recently updated their engine, sent a whole email about it like it was a big deal... and the game is somehow worse than I remember. Let's start with screenshots, on the NA server take those pictures and cut those player numbers in about half, that's about what you get at PEAK times. All other times you've got [i]maybe[/i] 5 players per nation running around on the map. Because there is really no content in this game, the players have to make the content. And if there's no players... there is no content. Graphically, the game looks pretty good, [i]in screenshots[/i]. Even on max settings and at 100+ FPS something seems off. What's off is draw distances and lighting bugs. Let's say there's a piece of paper nailed to a sign. When viewing from a distance you see the paper, but the sign hasn't drawn it yet, theses objects for some reason have different draw distances. So you walk around the game world seeing this paper floating in mid-air, and once you move closer pop! There's the sign! This is the same with lighting, move a bit closer to a patch of shadows and all of a sudden there's light there. Move backwards and the shadow comes back. Now multiply this time 100 for any area you're in, again all at max settings and draw distances, installed on an SSD, and this is why the graphics seem off. Now, the most important part for me; the gameplay. Gloria Victis touts itself as a skill-based MMO, but that is so, so far from the truth. Like many MMOs it's very gear based. Can't wait for the vets of this game to come to this review and downvote it, don't listen to them, people don't like being told they're not as good as they think. Sure, it has actual mount-and-blade like combat with active blocking, but it quickly hits a point where that doesn't matter. One part of that equation is that the game is very gear-based, another part is that the hit detection/server are awful; what you see is often not what is actually happening, and most of the vets know to take advantage of this. There are 5 tiers of equipment, and in a mix of tier 3-4 armor (which should be average to slightly above average) I hit players in full Tier 5 gear for ~30 damage, while they hit me for ~200 damage. And that's in the heavier armor type in the game, the "tank" armor. The max health pool is around 800-900 HP. So it takes them 4 hits to kill me and it would take me around 30 successful hits. Wearing that gear you wouldn't even have enough stamina to do 30 hits, let alone block/feint/kick etc. The difference in gear from Tier 2 to Tier 4 is pretty minuscule, but tier 4 to tier 5 is huge. And the only way to get Tier 5 gear is to craft it, so good luck putting 300 hours into this game just crafting in order to be on a level playing field at all. ...and then get your arse whooped anyways because the only people still playing have been here for years, causing you to get your Tier 5 looted and you back to square one. My recommendation to the devs is to tighten the gap a lot more on gear disparity; under no circumstances should Tier 5 gear be so ridiculously powerful. It should offer very slight advantage, not make you basically immune to anything below it. This game asks a lot out of its new players, so new players don't stick around. The playerbase is also such a cluster of whiny babies that, as a new player, you will be interrogated as people will think you're "spying" and that you're an alternate character/account of somebody in another nation. They take their little dying medieval MMO very seriously, it's kind of hilarious at times. And that will be the final negative here, the community. My god, the community, just a bunch of babies. Join the Discord if you don't believe me, more drama comes from these "grown men" than from a bunch of teenage girls. Don't bother with this. We are in an MMO drought, but a crappy little MMO from a sketchy Eastern-European dev team that can't fix any of the problems in their own game isn't the answer. I'm not even going to talk about the bugs because there's too many to list.