Recent reviews by Cri

Best game I've ever played. I promise.
April 2021 peaked most players in over 2 years.
Bring it back. Make the comeback real.

As an avid DM of several years who primarily plays online I can't honestly recommend TaleSpire to another DM or group in good faith in it's current state. TL;DR at the bottom.

(Update 4/19/22: Coincidentally it has been exactly one year later and TaleSpire has done little to improve the ability for it to be used as a VTT program. Still no custom assets, still no character sheets, still no player version.)

They have added stats that can be tracked on each mini, though they are literally just a number you could write down anywhere else. And you likely will have to if you plan to use the program to run any sort of legitimate tabletop game because there are still no tools for note keeping, rules systems, character sheets, or any form of documentation otherwise needed to run even the most bare bones TTRPG.

(Update 4/19/21: I have worked and played in TaleSpire for several more days consistently and stick by my original observations of the product. Multiple people in the comments seem to have misunderstood my point of not recommending it so to avoid any more arguments I have added on to the TL;DR)

Don't get me wrong, TaleSpire has amazing potential, and if it follows it's stretch goals it could revolutionize the way we play tabletop RPGs online. With that being said, TaleSpire is good for other things, but is not that right now.

To put it plainly, there are several steps of improvement that must be made to compete on the Virtual Tapletop market that TaleSpire wishes to be a part of.

1. Every player must purchase the game at full price. This is ridiculous in comparison to every other virtual tabletop. Roll20, Fantasy Grounds, and FoundryVTT all are free options (albeit not 3D) that do not cost a dime for their players to join. This is the standard in the market, where the DM pays the way or subscribes at a fee and the players can connect for free. Getting a new player in to the hobby is hard enough as it is reading big books, buying dice, learning lots of rules, and feeling the intimidation of roleplaying. Don't make them purchase a program on top of it just to try it.

2. There are no character sheets. To make the players of the campaign purchase the game, and then use a third party service or a physical character sheet severly hinders the experience that is standard in most virtual table tops. As an example, even table top simulator, which I would recommend more than TaleSpire in it's current state, has a way to implement any RPG's character sheet.

3. No workshop, character importing, or customizable characters. This coupled with the small selection of non animated character pieces cripples any way to express your character in a unique way, pulling away a lot of what makes role playing so fun.

4. Lack of real fog of war or line of sight. This being a huge issue for any DM who doesn't want their entire map shown to the players... meaning all of them. There are work arounds but they seem incredibly difficult to plan for with the nature of a sandbox type of game.

5. Roofs are buggy, camera is wonky, and selecting and moving minis is difficult at times. (4/19/21 Update: A temporary fix for this in larger buildings is to keep your camera level on the right hand side, above the cut off point at all times, zooming in or keeping the camera near the edge of the building continues to cause issues but is not as distracting or constant.) This being the most fixable thing, roofs and upper levels don't disappear consistently, where the whole upper levels of a building with fade out when you enter through a door, but then come back around the edges (making it near impossible to get the mini back out of the building) when you step any further into the building.

6. No note keeping, campaign planning, handouts, or really any other features than the map and minis themselves. This being another side effect of TaleSpire trying to be a virtual tabletop, but really just being a 3D battle map maker, with no additional functionality.

TL;DR - TaleSpire is a 3D map maker, nothing more, nothing less. It has less features than any other VTT, costs too much for a whole party, and is buggy, but has potential to be good. Pick it up if you understand what that means, otherwise don't.

You should buy it if you're okay with:
1. the lack of features you may be used to
2. if you understand it has a lot of limitations as of right now
3. that it is buggy and in early access and
4, that 3rd party software is required if you would like to manage and run a campaign.

You can spend a little time playing it.

Runs nice, good atmosphere, combat is unique and very interesting. Starting out, the controls can be difficult but it adds to the suspense and difficulty sometimes in frantic situations.

Before I say anything about this game, I am writing this on about 20 hours of gameplay with 2 friends on a single player server. If you want it short and sweet, here it is. Conan Exiles is a great survival game, especially for a small number of friends where you can tweak the server settings (on the co-op mode) to make it more co-op friendly. It has it's difficulties otherwise, but it's a great game.

I would full heartedly recomend this game at face value to someone, but there are short comings none the less.

First and foremost, the game can feel grindy when it comes to resources. So far in to the game I've experienced a lot of doing the same things to build what we got so far. Granted it all feels worthwile, but the amount of times I've emptied the visible distance from our fortress of all stone, wood, and plant fibers is a bit absurd.
In a single player or co-op setting you'll want to make thralls or animals train faster, because otherwise you're going to wait literal hours for them and it doesn't need to be balanced since, well, you're playing alone.
Generally the only other major issue I've encountered is building placement, it bugs out a little sometimes and becomes very difficult to angle your mouse and character just right to get that one pixel that places the foundation between the other two.

Now don't take this the wrong way, by no means imaginable do these things break the experience entirely, or even just make the game bad. Other wise, the sense of adventure, fairly varied combat, and engaging progression make this game a blast.

9/10 would buy for my friends and I again.

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I used to play this game too much. Decent platform fighter.

I'd pay exactly the same amount to enjoy this experience again.