Recent reviews by Deej

Great, and it's free. People saying it's spyware are "special"

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An enjoyable play your own way survival game that allows you to take your time and explore as much or as little as you want outside the main story driven objectives. I had a really good time and feel the length is very good, without feeling stretched out too far for the sake of adding content.

I only have a couple of complaints with the game and only one of which has no way around it really.

1. The combat isn't fun or very good imo, but the game let's you play in peaceful mode which leaves only boss fights unless you attack certain animals which only then will attack you in return. This is how I think the AI should have been by default, never the less I didn't have a problem once I set my game to peaceful mode.

2. Much of the late game stuff you get VERY late in the game, too late imo to ever really appreciate. I wish they would have restructured the blueprints a bit to scatter more ultra late game closer towards the mid/late game. Some blueprints if I recall correctly, you don't get until you are on the very last island, a weird decision which unfortunately like the combat, has no way around it. While you can play past the story completion to utilize the last blueprints you acquire, there's no much of a reason to do so. DLC if there was any that would start at the completion of the story would remedy this, but I'm guessing that isn't in the cards. Still a very good game.

Solid early access game, runs and looks great, only major gripe is no controller support but I can live without that for now. I'm unsure if there are bugs affecting some of my experience or if it's just me not knowing how to do something, but regardless I am really enjoying it so far.

Needs some serious QOL improvements before I would recommend.

1. No way to easily get back to your base if you build one. Considering how long it takes to build things and yet there's no real point to doing so other than you like to do it, should you die or get lost away from your base, good luck finding it again.

2. The game needs a creative mode and hostile enemies for the default survival mode. I don't like how you are forced to grind just to build, if players want to grind they can, but don't restrict creative mode for those who just like building things.

3. A map would be fantastic.

The game mechanically has a solid foundation, but there's really not much going on here. Some sort of background objectives that give players a sense of progression would be nice. The roadmap posted indicates some of these complaints will be added, but I feel currently there's just not enough of a game here currently that warrants a purchase.

I've started playing this again now that it's at full release, and unfortunately all of the problems I had with this game originally are still there.

The Climbing - Good lord it is way more frustrating than I've experienced in ANY other VR game to date. I feel like it's a minigame in itself just trying to pull yourself up on top of a ledge. Yes I'm aware you need to push forward while pulling yourself up but more often than not one of my hands will either be stuck in the geometry or I'll still slide back down below. I've never experienced anything more frustrating in a VR game than Blade & Sorcery's climbing mechanic, it's awful.

Enemy AI - Then just sort of run at you and try to surround you, with a flick of the wrist you can easily dispatch them. Their attacks are so fast you don't feel like there's any thought put into a dodge, block or parry system, just swing wildly and you'll be just fine.

Performance - It doesn't seem like the game is optimized all that well. Even on some pretty relaxed settings the game chugs at times randomly.

Audio - Soundscapes generally sound good, but the blending between areas is awful. You'll be walking along and when transitioning from an exterior to interior the audio can at times instantly change, it's jarring and immediately takes you out of immersion.

Summary - I don't hate the game, I've definitely played much worse, but the Crystal Hunt mode feels like a let down. The dungeon runs get very repetitive, and with the amount of climbing integrated into the level design it's a lot of constant frustration.

Original Review Below

Posting my initial impression/review (take with a big grain of salt having only played around an hour).

Giving this a thumbs down for now because I am hoping it'll get more attention from the developers even though I have a generally positive impression of the game so far. My biggest gripes are honestly pretty simple things to fix but were frustrating enough to warrant imo a thumbs down.

#1 I had to find a guide to figure out how to open the menu to adjust some VR related preferences and performance affecting values. The right hand left hand default binding is well, unintuitive and if necessary because of conflicts I would hope a better solution would be found. Yes I'm aware the tutorial does show the binding but despite this for whatever reason it was not clear (sorry I can't quite explain why). If no new binding is warranted, my suggestion would be to do a forced action (require the player to successfully open the menu) before proceeding to the next step and closing the tooltip.

#2 Climbing is well, frustrating. I found it unclear if I needed to continue holding the grips (I'm using whatever default settings there might be for gripping things). It took me several tries during the tutorial to figure it all out, and even then I am still having a hard time climbing things. The feedback seems to be missing as to whether or not you are actually holding onto the wall correctly before you need to let to to move your next hand, and often times I would for a reason not known to me, fall. The part in the tutorial when you need to jump from one ledge to another took me several tries to complete because turning in order to face the 2nd ledge would cause me to suddenly fall (even though I was still holding grip). As of this writing I'm still very confused about how to "correctly" climb, and think either I'm doing something wrong or the system has some bugs with it. Regardless it's by far the most frustrating thing I've experienced in the game so far.

#3 This 3rd issue isn't unique to this game as I have experienced it in every physics based VR melee game to date, which is rubberbanding and weapons getting (stuck) on things/enemies. When enemies get really close and you go for a swing, weapons tend to get "glued" to them and things start to feel glitchy. I'm more forgiving to this issue because I have yet to see anyone really solve it to date. I think when it works as good as it does, Blade & Sorcery does probably the best job of physics based melee in any VR game I've played to date, I just hope there is still effort being made to solve this obviously difficult problem.

#4 Again as I expect this because it's still in early access, but I think players (myself included) want more than an endless horde arena mode. We want exploration, dungeon crawling and progression. I've yet to dive too deep into the long term plans for this project but think I've seen some plans for related content being discussed.

I like what B&S is doing, I think it's definitely worth supporting this game while in early access. The negative review is my way of saying cool tech demo, please improve X + Y and add more content to extend gameplay value. If there was a lot more gameplay content, it would be easier to forgive some of the issues I found frustrating. I will update my review after Version 1 releases and I've had a chance to put in more time to see how much has improved at that time. Again I really like the direction B&S is going, really hoping it gets the content and refinement deserves down the road.

Additional feedback

There's some settings I just don't care for, the archery does not feel as good as some others I've played (Skyrim VR realistic setting) as one example. When drawing back an arrow, clicking grip again to release feels unintuitive and unnatural. Releasing grip when you have an arrow at full draw the expected result is to fire.

AI positioning and patrols feel a bit too optimal for sneaking behind them. There's some I've encountered in places staring at a torch on a wall, which felt cheap and too scripted (too easy). I noticed the changelog mentioned new stealth takedowns which might explain the designer wanting to make it easy for players to try, I just felt it was a bit overdone and too easy. Personally I was wanting more of a challenge, stealth felt a bit too easy to do with too big of a reward for such little effort on my part.

Level design, so far most of what I've seen looks solid but there are missed opportunities to add existing features. There's one level where I had wandered into a large library coming from a stairwell. There was an obvious playable area overlooking it which I would have been able to reach had a hanging lantern been placed there. In this sandbox type of game I think it's a good idea to fit as many options as possible into these arenas and let players do whatever they can think of (as long as it's in line with existing features). I'm not sure if you can climb the bookshelves (I tried many times unsuccessfully), a missed opportunity imo to combo that with hanging lanterns above to swing from one to another.

I'll continue updating with feedback as I put more time into this game.

I want to give this a positive review, however I find there are many improvements it requires. First of all, I like that they give you several options to adjust how grindy the game feels (which is really extreme by default), however other parts of the game are still hard locked.

The level up system is extremely lengthy, not necessarily a complaint, but I found myself having to do things I don't really enjoy doing just for the sake of the grind in order to be able to unlock something I want to do. Most of my issues with this game is that it makes you run from point a to b, then back to a, over to c for no real reason other than forced exploration. Let the players do this because they want to, it's simply not fun to run for 5 minutes to then click thru a minute of voiceless npc text only to repeat it again dozens of times.

There's a weird absence of audio as well.
-no dialogue spoken
-no UI audio

Performance wise the game runs alright, could be better but it's passable.

There's a strange balance between SIM and casual going on which I think leads to some of my frustration. Farming is pretty detailed, and you have to consume water/food, but you can drink directly from any source without boiling it first? There's also no swimming, you just walk/run everywhere and all the water is never over your head, not a complaint it just feels strange. The grind to unlock things is what makes it feel more of a SIM, but the mechanics feel more casual.

I was hoping the game would be more fun but after 8 hours, I realized the game was just too grindy, not enough really to explore, and I don't find managing npc's at all fun or rewarding. I wish there was a less grindy way to play this game, just build what I want without the extremely long grind.

Had/might still have promise but graphical/performance issues make it unplayable. Might revisit this down the road but I'm quite disappointed as my initial play time during the beta was positive. Performance got worse since pre-release up until now and an unresolved graphical issue with vegetation (everything has crazy pixelation) which I've seen mass reporting of but no solutions from the devs. Requested a refund, might revisit in a year to see if it's improved.

1/18 Checked to see if anything significant changed, still not seeing much developer reaction to feedback in reviews. Difficulty still seems overly high, performance isn't great, and lack of developer reaction to complaints does not bode well for the future of this game. Disappointing.

So good, so fun, crazy there's no sequel.

Really enjoyable most of the way, eventually I hit a wall of "I'm not sure what to do now or how to find X" so I had to refer to a guide after some time of wandering around aimlessly. Overall it's a very enjoyable game and you never feel under any pressure to rush through anything (other than drowning of course), and I really like the different biomes.

There's enough things to unlock and build, but a small amount which is required to complete the game which I like. You don't have to unlock every blueprint but some definitely are worth the extra time imo. The soundtrack and audio is really nice as well, the creature sounds are really well designed.

If you're looking for a solid PVE survival game I definitely put this at the top of the list. It's far from a perfect game and has it's fair share of annoyances and some really surprising bugs involving the prawn suit and alien temples which to my surprise have gone unfixed as of this writing. I'd give this an 8/10 because the bug I'm referring to is so bad and so easy to reproduce I'm amazed it exists.