Recent reviews by VolOpt

The only thing more entertaining than the game itself is the veritable salt mine it has created. The amount of people malding over its success is equal parts hilarious and cathartic.

That bit aside, it is an Early Access game and as such it is rough around the edges but it has a decent foundation. IF (and I stress IF) the Developers follow through with bug fixes and some content updates throughout the year.... I think it might actually have GOTY potential. On the other hand if they don't it could certainly fall off in a couple months but honestly that's still better than most AAA developers manage these days.

As Early Access experiences go, I'm certainly not disappointed and I'm looking forward to see where the game goes from here.

At the time of Writing I'm ~34hrs into the game and it is very much a progression of For The King and having just reached the 3rd act. Partly because I'm playing a few different games with a few groups.

The game is definitely not without its flaws and bugs but the Devs thus far seem to be active and receptive to input. There is currently a road map that spans into 2025 and I'm both enjoying it now and hopeful that the improvements/additions to the game will have me continuing to enjoy it into the future.

All things considered as of now I give it a thumbs up.

This game was fun when it was about Warframes

They keep tacking on content island after content island that seemingly desperately try to either minimize or virtually remove Warframes from the content loop. Almost like the game is desperately trying to be anything and everything except Warframe.

Problem is I was here to play Warframe, maybe I'll check out Soulframe when that eventually comes out. At least I will be going into that not expecting to play Warframe.

Edit: Seems like DE is finally maybe moving back towards the core game loop of Warframe focusing more one Warframes and Warframe related Tile sets after trying everything under the sun to not be Warframe.

I'd upgrade my review from Negative to Neutral but there is no such thing under Steam. So I guess it stays Negative for the foreseeable future but we're getting closer to maybe being Positive again. Kind of a shame that newer players will still have to slog through the non Warframe content at some point.

I give this a recommendation with two GIGANTIC caveats.

Caveat the first: This game NEEDS mods...
You're looking probably at least 5+ just to meet the barest of bones QoL to really make the game shine. Like having an actual avatar instead of being a set of disembodied hands or substantively interacting with the environment. Once you get through those it really starts to shine. It doesn't seem like there is a huge difference between looking at a floating hand vs being able to see your arm but there really is.

Caveat the second: The Price
IMHO this game is NOT worth the asking MSRP of $60, especially with all the tinkering that it needs under the hood. If you are going to buy it my advice is to buy it on sale.

At the time of this writing I think I've spent about as much time fighting with mods as I have playing the game, but I think I've finally hit a decent balance and can stop playing the introduction to the game on loop while trying to make sure things aren't going to explode.

There are a lot of other high fantasy VR games out there but from what I have seen of most of them at best they look like highly polished tech demos. While the Elder Scrolls VR Port certainly shows it's age it's the most complete world. It probably doesn't hurt that I've spent years avoiding the franchise so the experience is also completely new to me.

Even if I feel the need to tap on the Caveat sign one final time.

It can get kinda formulaic but the devs do (for better or worse) seem to try to keep things from getting too stale. And while it isn't rapid fire updating, the game does get updated periodically (at the time of writing)

Still a fun little game.

Lets start off with the negative, I absolutely HATE that this is under the EA umbrella because EA destroys everything they touch. So best of luck to the studio and developers because you're gonna heccin need it....

That aside, this is a superb game, the visuals, the music and last but certainly not least the gameplay is phenomenal.

First and foremost if you are going into this expecting Viking Minecraft, stop now because this is not that thing. Yes you can build your own base but this game is incredibly linear. Unlike Minecraft the bioms for example are essentially content gated. And the answer to pretty much any hangup you encounter is "you need to beat the next boss". For some that will be a selling point.

Secondly while is a fine base game but I wouldn't recommend it without mods.

I've also lost some faith NOT because of the apparently contentious stamina changes in H&H, I really didn't notice those nor do (I believe) any of the mods I use roll those food changes back, tho it is possible I'm running like 22+ mods, most of which are solidly QoL.

Where I actually lost faith was the Obliterator, which was essentially the implementation of the long asked for "trash can" which instead of being a simple base recipe, instead requires jumping through several layers of hoops. Including finding a randomly spawning vendor NPC somewhere in the world. Then can't even be place near your stockpiles (read inside your base) because for some reason it has an added AoE that will damage/destroy structures.

It took the simplest of QoL asks and cranked over complication to 11.

That more than anything else is why I worry for the future of this game.

When I was first exposed to raft (years ago) it was pretty basic and didn't have any sort of real structure or end game. Eventually they added the antenna and first non island structure to the game but that was about where I lost interest.

Since then this game has apparently expanded significantly to the point where I occasionally don't even recognize it but in the best possible way. It's great to play with friends and every time we run into something new it's been another "WHOA, this is awesome!" moment.

Axolot has IMO nailed this out of the park.

OK where to start, this game might have been fun and maybe it will be if I go back to it at some point in the future HOWEVER....

The whole reason I got into this game was the Archipelago of Blue Steel promotion (which was apparently a rerun of a previous Archipelago promo) and IMHO they bungled the hell out of this promotion. The first event apparently having 30 days to grind out all of the ships where this event gives you all of 12(?) days to grind out five ships, four of which are functionally identical but have a different texture. Where the unique ships are largely relegated to the cash shop but from what I gathered where something you could grind out in the first event. Which again was 30 days not 12.....

Compounded by the fact that you have to unlock them in a sequential order and each unlock cycle has in itself a set of sequential tasks.... So while you're playing if you don't manage to get anything done that checks off some part of the individual sub task you are currently working on ..... feels like a complete waste of time and amounts to little more than a hill of frustration. It just ended up making the bulk of my games feel worse (in the enjoyment category) than they probably where.

Dear Developers, when you add an event to your game with such a limited timeframe where it is very VERY possible to go many games without being able to make >>ANY<< progress towards said goal(s)..... that is a recipe for burnout. Great way to introduce new players to your game BTW.

General errors and issues,

Matches will sometimes abruptly end for no apparent reason as none of the victory parameters seem to have been met. There will still be multiple enemies spread across the map, neither team is anywhere near the point cap, there is plenty of time left on the clock and in the event of "capture the base" neither base is remotely in danger of being capped . Which is particularly frustrating when you are trying to do any number of mutually exclusive tasks and get nothing done because whelp the game decided it was just over~ for..... reasons~

I also can't for the life of me figure out why it is that they where able to get the torpedo refresh timer conveniently placed as a giant yellow countdown timer on the weapon selection icon for Destroyers but for Cruisers there is no indication on the torpedo icon. Instead you have to kinda squint as a super tiny bar above the tiny munitions bars, above the weapon icons themselves. That is grayed out into the background of the UI unless the torpedoes are actively selected.

For whatever reason the game has recently started showing a "Hall of Fame" prompt at the end of matches.... that needs to be interacted with before it will allow you to actually go to the end of mission screen to exit back to the main UI and start another mission. Which really doesn't seem like much and it probably shouldn't be but with how much I've not been enjoying my time in this game little UI inconveniences like that become far more evident and as someone who already dislikes needless player interacts... that's just that much more sand in the gears for a mission that I probably made zero event progress in so I'm already having a bad time.

I don't particularly mind slow games but it got to a point where the only way I could keep hammering myself against the event grind wall was to banish warships to my 2nd screen. Which is a vertical layout and I have to give the devs this much, for the most part World of Warships was able to rescale most of the UI to work on that screen with almost no issue. Unfortunately it was on my second screen because I was playing >>>TWO<<< other games while I waited for my ship(s) to slow crawl to a point where I could actually engage with the enemy.

Honestly I don't think most of these things would be so much an issue if again, it hasn't been for how poorly implemented this event was both with the way they structured the grind and the time it was to be run. The combination of which took a game that I think I could have enjoyed and managed to suck the fun clean out of it.

I look up and Steam tells me I've played for 87(ish hours) at the time of this review and all of that has been spent either prepping to a point where I could engage with the event or hammering my face against the wall for the event and I'm not even done..... and I'm really not sure if I have it in me to finish because it just stopped being fun. In large part because of how the event was structured.

Again not sure if I'm going to finish the event but at this point it feels almost like an obligation. I know either way I'll likely be taking a decent break from the game and maybe when/if I come back I can do so without a IMHO unrealistic event schedule and I realize that for seasoned players it probably isn't "that bad" but a good part of the reason you have cross over events like this is to bring new players in.

Either way as it stands I can't find myself recommending this game at present.

Addendum:
The penalty system is super irritating, especially when you're already frustrated with the game. I get that they don't want people to teamkill or troll but they really need to make some improvements to how it detects what is or isn't "intentional"

Oh hey you have a task that requires you to get torpedo hits, no one is around so you target/fire your torpedos at an enemy that is a fair distance away but well within striking range only to have a friendly unit change course, jetting in from off screen and expertly slam into your torpedos that have been traveling for the last 15-30 seconds.... GG enjoy your penalty.

And I don't even know how it determines who slammed in to who when there are collisions because there have been times I've been going in a strait line since the start of the mission only to have someone Tbone into me...... and I get the warning? OK game GG, I'm sorry you didn't see the slow as hecc battleship that has been moving slowly in a strait line for the last 3minutes to an objective.

There are moments when the game is legit fun but they have just been totally overshadowed.

Backed this game on Kickstarter and really was liking how it was shaping up but then the developer was apparently bought out by a larger publisher who allowed them to continue some work on the game to some extent. However that plug was pulled and a lot of the kickstarter milestones just never materialized.

As such It is a cute game that just feels very unfinished, because it really wasn't even tho it was eventually labeled as such.

If I could give this a neutral I would but steam doesn't give that option and I really can't give it a "yes" as it stands.