Recent reviews by Nux

Started this game with good intentions to be a noble knight--

Got annoyed at my boss and took to over 40 Real-Life Hours of black smithing and medicine making later, maybe a bit of dice in between. I have no sense of time and reality is blurred amidst the whistling tune of hammer strikes against metal or the clink of bottles and liquids boiling.

What even is happening.

Game is good.

I just treat other players as NPCs with varying difficulty levels. It is effectively PVE to me at that point.

Yeah, the game is fun.

As a preface, this review is written December 2018, for Alpha 0.5.0.5c needless to say the game is incomplete, so understand that before spending money on it.

Pros:

-- Graphics, game runs off Cryengine, good physics simulation on pretty much everything from giblets to rocks, and general particle effect behavior. Game looks fantastic from what i have been able to see.

-- Gameplay:
- Satisfies the theorycrafter in me, with a unique talent tree system that allows you to mix and match segments to create your own class. Customization points include, leveling/talenting of individual abilities, the above mentioned passive skill tree, gearing with gem socketing.
- An attempt at unique environment mechanics, eg. Lightning striking water to harm more enemies that normally possible. (at the moment that appears to be the only interaction but looking forward to more)
- Every ability 'feels good', spells look good, melee feels like its impactful, and generally speaking no ability in the game (of the ones currently in the game that is) feel useless, any build can work provided one invests enough into it.
- Unique Resource generation for combat, between umbra/rage. I find that this was a good take on a one-size-fits-all solution to resource management between many different playstyles.


Cons:
-- Alpha. Incomplete world, story, character progression capped, and overall balance of the game needs to be tuned.

-- Story Development feels nearly nonexistant at this stage, maybe a mockup scenario with some name NPCs narrating the way and giving you tasks but there really was no introduction to it at all. You really are just thrown into the fray of things it feels. Without a fleshed out story, buying this game at this state feels more like paying for a tech demo, with promise that the game will eventually release in entirety.

-- Wonky controls, the game definitely needs more keybindings, while you are allowed to move the screen around 360 degrees, the tutorial indicated method was to use middle mouse button to drag the screen around, a keyboard alternate would have been much preferred. In general the keybinding guides need to be fleshed out a bit more to resolve this. Also fighting alongside friendly NPCs is hell for targetting.

-- Gameplay quirks:
- Resource System, in it's current state, while a neat idea, it needs to be balanced i found it far too easy to build to counter resource drain, and just essentially get near infinite power. It felt trivial towards the "Endgame" of this alpha, unsure if that was intended but it felt far too easy to build against.
- Map Generation feels like it was designed with template zones in mind, rather than truly randomized cells that some other games use. While running the "Endless" dungeons, i was starting to notice plenty of patterns between how halls winded into rooms noticing i was essentially running the same cave system 3 times in a row.
- Overall difficulty, 90% of the game felt too easy, probably due to balancing issues with some abilities feeling too powerful, for instance, being able to crowd control bosses by freezing them should not be a thing if you do not want to trivialize them to the point of being punching bags.


Summary (unbiased from the whole Diablo 4 dabocle that I am seeing from alot of other reviews):

The game is good. It feels good, it looks good, and it is headed in a good direction (i think). Granted I am woefully unfamiliar with the studio that runs this game, WOLCEN Studio, I am hopeful to see more updates from them in the future. They appear to have a solid grasp on core gameplay mechanics they want to achieve, and have a steady framework to build upon as development continues. I believe this game can be built into something great (especially if there are plans for multiplayer in the future) or level creation (they have a player housing creator, perhaps that tool can be adopted for community made maps). Go ahead and give it a shot if you acknowledge this is not a full game (it took me 5 hours to burn through the available content).

The only thing that can crush my review of this game is if the developers do not keep a steady flow of updates, either to the game via patches or the community via postings. My only fear is that WOLCEN Studio goes dark, and this game remains in it's current state.


Edit:
At the time of writing this review I noted that I was playing on Alpha, it should be noted that as of November 22 2018, there was an optional opt-in for one of the newer Tech Betas with the latest update to the game being December 5 2018. Just to subdue any doubts about developer activity (atleast for the time being).

Definitely better than I expected when started playing this game. At first I will say that it was incredibly difficult to get into solo, but picking this game up with a friend (or friends) this game scales accordingly and absolutely nails down multiplayer Coop for the entire genre in my opinion.

Pros
Character Progresson + Town (Account wide) progression will keep me coming back to the mines again and again.
Treasure Variety, Blessings, Wishing Well mechanics make the mines interesting to play at variable difficulties

Cons
The game can be incredibly brutal in the first few runs (but perhaps im just bad)
Depending on your perspective, the game can be considered very grindy

Awesome game that teases at your inner theory crafter, so many ways to build your character from the ground up with the massive world size, gigantic loot pool, dual class system + Devotion trees, and gear crafting/upgrading.