Recent reviews by Izanagi

While I am giving it a thumbs up I just wanna start this by saying there are definitely quite a few performance/optimization issues.

My personal experience so far has been pretty good (knock on wood), tried a bunch of settings and tweaks during the benchmark however this seems to have come to naught as the benchmark was not indicative of the full product at all (at least from my experience). In this case I am talking about the sections where it runs around the gameplay area. Configuring the EXACT same settings from the benchmark into the full product actually gave me a worse result, about a 10fps difference (which with this game is a lot).

So I scrapped all of that (fml), then turned on fsr + fg instead of nvidia dlss. I am not kidding fsr + fg runs and looks better (on my system at least) than the game ever did with dlss. I am able to run a steady 100fps on all high settings, no blur, no input latency (at least not that I can notice), nothing.
For reference I am on a 5900x, 3070ti (strix), 64ram system. The fsr is set to native and scaling on 98.

Nonetheless there are definitely areas where this game looks worse than world, something seems to be up with the lighting. And then there are areas/moments where the game can look really good. The new moves are fun to play around with, multiplayer so far has been smooth too, the story is "meh" and the low rank hunts are as easy as people reported if this is your first monster hunter game your experience might differ but in general it does seem like they rlly squashed the hp on the low rank. Additonally there seems to be something up with the shaders, fair amount of reports coming in about textures not rendering properly or being stuck in lower resolution, personally experienced this in the everforge on many of the rocks not wanting to render.

Now for me I have had very little issues, aside from the rocks and the way the game looks at times (mostly during the small cutscenes that play out in the world itself) but thats not been getting in the way of me having fun hence why I'm giving it a thumbs up but if you are looking at getting this game please for the love of god check your specs and everything first because there is no sure fire way to run this game, 2 identical machines can have vastly different results.
If you are on the fence I would probably wait for a patch or 2 or try as much as you can in the "2 hour window", you could try the benchmark but that one really is not quite as indicative as people wanna have you believe (now ofcourse if you are running 20-30fps in there then you're gonna have a sht time but you get the point)

Honestly I'm 50/50 on this. It is a fun game every once in a while but I can't see myself playing more than 2 or 3 matches a day. Half the time you'll just run into people who will only spam one type of unit and just steamroll over everything. There are plenty of modes and lots of units to play around with but I wish there was something to prevent spamming units. At the end of the day I do enjoy playing the game so I'll give it a thumbs up but yeah

----------------- Update 2 -----------------
Sooo after the latest Talandre update I can't play anymore. The second I boot the game I get a virus warning.
Looking through multiple forums incl discord and steam forum it would seem several anti virus softwares are flagging this and some people are actually getting infinite loops that are crashing their pcs entirely. People are being told to just make an exception in their anti virus software (really this is how systems get infected lol) but apparently someone has done some research and found out they are potentially using a dangerous library so yeah I won't be touching this for quite some time until this is sorted though I have little hope as it seems largely ignored and people are just piling on each other telling them to make exception in the software, which to me is the dumbest thing ever, if an anti virus program warns you "hey this is dangerous" then why on earth do you wanna invite it in...

Changed review to thumbs down

P.S.
Their current "catch up" mechanic is quite sht too. They are making you watch participating streamers who are given a limited amount of keys that give catch up gear that puts you at around 3.5k gear score. You then have to get lucky to get a key in either a raffle or be quick enough to snipe it from chat as some streamers just drop them in bulk in their chats. This is stupid. I know the gear has limitations but it is not a catch up mechanic or system if only a select few can make use of it.
It would have made more sense to just make it a free claimable dlc through their steam page or just a news post with a single code in it for everyone..

----------------- Update 1 -----------------
Game has gone to downhill a bit. Or should I say the community.. so much toxicity lately its nuts. Overall its still fairly enjoyable but the grind/daily chores are getting to me at this point. Playerbase dropped significantly.
Something to keep in mind perhaps

----------------- Original Review -----------------
Now that things have settled down and been sorted out (well for most part) it is pretty fun.

The p2w is really not bad at all, people like to cry a lot on this but if you just play the game you can make lucent like water from turning unwanted equipment into lithographs and selling that or even the traits, some traits go for 1.4k+.
The cash shop only has cosmetics. The battle pass could be considered a little p2w but in reality it does not give as much as people like to believe. Level pass is a once time permanent purchase which gives little bonusses (not particularly much) and both are 500 lucent which you can make very quickly once you reach level 40 so really you wouldn't even have to spend a dime on this game if you don't want to

Also every build has a counter so you can't really pay to win in that sense since you will get clapped by someone who runs a counter build to yours no matter how high your gear score is.

The optimization is not "that" great. For the scale yeah sure it looks impressive but you will drop fps a lot. It never seems really stable unless you are in dungeons. I see it go up and down a lot and I don't have a bad pc either.

All in all I'd say its an 8/10 at the moment

==UPDATE BELOW==
Its a fun game.
Sure there are some issues (1 big one being major lags during some prime wars, making them actually impossible to complete) but those are being worked on and they communicate pretty well by today's standards + compensate ok too. Base building is probably one of the better ones from all the survival type games I've played, definitely lost track of time a couple times when working on my base. The deviants are a nice touch, no p2w stuff though I do wish some of the cosmetics weren't so expensive like 30-50€ for a pack containing a few skins for your base is a bit much but I get they gotta make money somehow with this being a free game.

The wipes are a thing but we haven't gone through one yet so there isn't much to say here other than from what they've shared you really don't lose that much during the seasonal wipes because it seems like its pretty much only char level and world wipe which isn't bad since you level really really fast anyways. Sure your base goes poof but you can save that as a blueprint for quick rebuilds so not much of an issue either.

Seasonal phases are ok with their 1 week timers thought later on there doesn't seem to be all that much that gets unlocked in new phases. For example my server is on phase 3 right now which unlocked hard modes, it took only 2 hours to finish that so now all you do is grind them over and over again in hopes of getting some good mods or calibration blueprints. In terms of difficulty I wouldn't say they got that much more difficult than their normal versions, especially if you using the match making or create a team yourself (though you don't really have to create teams, there are only a few build options out there and when you build into them properly you can solo everything)

But overall I'd say you'll probably have a good time, I've certainly lost track of time multiple times while playing.
Besides its free so there isn't much to lose either. Definitely worth a try at the very least

===UPDATE August 19th 2024===
After putting in ~160 hours I can still say it is a fun game however now that the season "wipe" for season 1 has happened and most of us transferred to season "2" which really is just the exact same as season 1 but hard mode (yes yes new scenario late sept/oct) I can say that this doesn't feel like it was well thought out.
Sure you can transfer some of your items however here is the catch. If you have a boat load of resources you can't just pick and choose which ones you want to transfer because that transfer window only shows a limited amount of inventory slots (no scroll bar or at least nowhere near long enough) say for example you have 35k resources that go over and 15k of those are logs then that entire transfer window is clogged with logs so you'd have to sell or delete all of them just to get to some other resources which can then also clog things up like copper ores (and yes your base build also gets converted back to its resources and that gets dropped into your eternaland backack), dirty water does this as well so if you had a lot of pumps or water stored in water storage then that clogs the whole thing.

This exact same thing happens for deviants as well. They ALL transfer but here is the thing, the player deviant backpack/inventory space is about 2 - 2.5 times larger than the eternaland export window so if your favorite deviants happen to be at the bottom (which will happen if you left them in the units or picked em up) then you have to sell off some of your other deviants just to get your favorite ones to go up that list. Now I imagine this will worsen as seasons progress cuz it automatically fills your eternaland depot so they will stack and stack and stack so if the devs do not implement a larger export window or at least a proper scrollbar you will be forced to either delete or sell off most of your deviants (same were to go for resources). Now why would this be a problem? Because they said they were gonna add a system in which you can level up/upgrade your deviants by using other ones as fodder, so if you wanted to do that well gl thats not gonna happen with your eternaland stash.

To add to all this, you get 20k export points per season. Which at first looked like plenty but in reality its absolutely nothing at all. If you were to export your weapons (because they have the calibrations you want etc) then you're instantly down half your export points. You can also export your loot bonus controllers which have a much much much lower value, I still had 77 left from last season and it made barely a dent in the export budget, meanwhile 1 weapon yeets 2-3k and a single deviant costs 800 points. And don't get me started on the resources, the values just seem way off. I get that it requires balancing otherwise people would have lots of resources right out of the gate but that was the whole point, to give existing players a boost after the wipe so they're not stuck on stages and to get your favorite loadout back (which would only be viable once later phases open up or when you reach the approriate level cuz level requirements on them still exists) but this is not happening at all. If you go for your loadout you won't have enough left for your deviants.

Aside from this the latest "update" added a lootbox thats way too over the top if you ask me. Sure you don't have to buy it ofcourse but if you want those cosmetics well pray to rng or get all 150 boxes and pay like 300-400. If this is the future I don't know how to feel if I'm honest. Yes it will be fun at first but you're just repeating the same loop over and over and over

After your first wipe you will feel like "what's the point" new scenarios with new maps will likely help spice things up a little bit again but this inbetween hard mode server stuff is just lazy. All that is done is you get a little bit more rewards and the enemies have a larger HP pool and hit harder and more frequent and you have to eat like every 10 seconds that is it. There was a bit about only certain weapon effects (like unstable bomber) having effect on shielded enemies for example but in reality I don't think you will run into those cases that often, in the time I've been on the hard mode server I only ran into 2 mobs that had this shield. Oh and not to mention these servers also have their very own 6-7day phase timers as well so with the exact same season goals (only slightly higher starchrom rewards) so yeah have fun with that.

That said I will still recommend it because first of all its free and when you first join a season and every start out on the same level etc it is good fun. I mean it got me for 160h so it isn't terrible but I would watch out for how they plan to progress as seasons go on and what'll happen in terms of monetization because that lootbox is.. yeah.. oh on that part before I forget that lootbox was also bugged, it showed you unlocked a rewards but then you didn't actually have it like the facility prints and they recently had a "oopsie" with crystigin (premium currency) where some users suddenly got it for free essentially and then the devs proceeded to put all those people into the negatives based on how much they accidentally got and from my understanding this also happened to people who didn't even use it so those people now owe them money somehow.

In light of everything, at the moment I would rate it 7/10

[Review updated jan 13th 2025]
My initial review was positive however those days are over,
Game used to be fun but nowadays it is filled with team killing idiots. It is not the accidental deaths from stratagems either, they just turn around and shoot you. Most notably at the end of the mission. This is extremely annoying when you are trying to extract samples because they will just kill you and leave the samples, they won't even pick them up...
Now some might say "oh you just got an unlucky match" no, no this is not the case. This behavior has been consistent throughout and is a major pain in the ass especially when you are trying to grind out the big boy samples on the higher difficulties.

The worst part about this is, when you try to report them for team killing (an option the devs give you when reporting) it legit says you can not report people for team killing. Then why the fk is the option in the game, there have been multiple runs where it is 1 person killing the entire party and just leaving making us lose samples because they didn't pick them up, then when the 3 of the pt want to report the team killing ***hat the game tells us we can't report them for team killing..

If you want to pick this game up i would strongly recommend only playing with friends or just running solo because more often than not you will not be able to grind samples if you just match make since this type of behavior seems to be on the rise

Nice little game at 15 bucks. Its a nice game to play if you want to relax a bit. Can make some pretty nice looking cities too but it is true you will get through the content quite fast, nonetheless at the current price its a nice game to play while relaxing every now and then and lets be honest most city builder type games are the same.
If you are looking for some extremely indepth city builder you likely won't find it here though but what'd you expect really at this price. Not saying its shallow but you won't scratch your micro-managing itch here.

Most of the negative reviews were because of the bad servers/queue however, today there was an update on this front which seems to have worked pretty well.
They've updated the servers. Size increased by 50% as well as sped up the queue according to their discord. Went in to test it tonight and sure enough got in after 5 minutes. They also said they'd compensate every user due to their shortcomings on the server side.

Gameplay is fun too, especially with friends. However I will say the melee combat does feel a little floaty, guns feel much better. For melee I have to switch to a controller (ps5) to make it feel better.

Founder pack items not being delivered is still a thing as well however there is a workaround for it which imo is rather odd. You have to swap your language to some other one (I went from english to french) then load into a different zone, after the loading you'll receive the items. Then you can swap your language back. How a language setting affects this beyond me but hey I got my items so can't complain.

Another thing I dislike are the loading screens. They can take a long time and you can get stuck in them. However while you see a loading screen your character is actually already loaded. If you are in a bad spot you'll get mugged by mobs then be met with a respawn screen after the loading screen is finally gone.

That aside the game is actually fun and the devs are very transparent. There are issues yes but it doesn't take away from the fun to be had, if you truly understand EA you'll have an enjoyable time.

It feels similar to warframe in terms of character and weapon progression even the mods are there in the form of echoes, that character you get from the exalted founder pack feels very much like a prime warframe as well. You can make fairly diverse builds if you want to but I did find that building full weapon power seems to be the way to go, in future meta will probably shift but for now 90% just go full weapon power.

There is p2w in the sense that you can just pay to unlock characters and weapons if you don't want to grind, but everything in that regard can also be obtained ingame so you are not forced into buying them, similar to warframe. Aside from that its all cosmetics.
There is a battle pass but this one is better than the ones in most other games, from what I've gathered the premium passes never expire, you can continue to get your rewards from them even after the season.

That said if you're unsure about this game in its EA state then join their discord first and look around to see what issues there are and how often updates happen. If you're still unsure I'd wait until 2024 when they are said to go free to play. This EA is a chance to buy in to play early and get some nice founder goodies.

Scratched my JRPG itch. Story was imo pretty good, finished story in roughly 32h and still plenty to do once you finish the game.
9/10

Honestly one the better experiences I've had with early access titles.
For what it is in its current state its pretty fun and there are already lots of updates on the horizon.
Though I'd recommend finding a company as solo play gets boring fast

It's good, kinda reminds me of ffxiv.
For once there is truly no P2W.
Does it have issues? Yes ofcourse, which mmo doesn't.
NA had some stability issues but on EU everything has been smooth sailing