Recent reviews by momokarun enthusiast

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I grew up playing Runescape in the mid/late 2000s, and it was probably the single most influential game for me. Nothing else was able to match the magic of Runescape for me. To this day, I still play Oldschool Runescape. Naturally when I learned about Brighter Shores and Andrew Gower being the creator, I was super excited. Despite that, I'll try to keep this review as objective as possible despite my obvious bias towards the creator. Having played the game for about 80 hours now, I think I've got a decent sense of how things work and how it's all interconnected. Please keep in mind this is early access, and there is a lot that hasn't made its way into the game yet, like player to player trading and PvP, and things are always subject to change.

This is not an "active" game. The majority of the game activities are fairly passive in the sense that you're just pointing and clicking occasionally and sometimes watching your character perform an action for a while, making it great to play alongside other activities like other games, watching shows, reading, etc. There are even activities your character can perform while you're offline to passively grind, albeit at a much slower rate than if you were actively playing. Still, it's better than nothing. If you're someone who enjoys the simplicity of laid back grinding and watching your skill levels steadily climb, you'll probably enjoy Brighter Shores as is.

The profession system has been a subject of hot debate since release, and I think it deserves more credit than it's been given. Even though each region comes with new professions (particularly combat, which is one of my gripes), they are all heavily interconnected which makes it so a profession is never made obsolete. For example, making potent healing potions at 35 alchemy (Episode 1 profession) requires ingredients that are dropped by monsters in Episode 3 killed through that episode's combat profession. You can always skip that gathering process and simply buy the ingredients, but that will drain your money with the offset of faster leveling. Anyone familiar with Runescape's skill systems should be well versed in these sorts of considerations.

Additionally, each episode coming with new professions means that highly active players can't get way ahead of the curve and clear all the new content immediately upon release and ultimately leave the earlier areas abandoned. This largely removes the idea of dead content which is a big problem in a lot of MMOs. That being said, the system of your weapons, armor, and combat levels being tied to each region still feels off. Andrew is very open to feedback and has already implemented lots of changes based on player feedback, and he is considering things like certain special combat activities requiring levels from multiple combat professions or global benefits of combat levels so they don't feel so isolated. The ability to craft weapons in Episode 3 that can be tuned to any episode makes this overall issue a lot less annoying, and armor crafting should be coming in the future as well to further improve things.

Combat as it stands is very barebones as there aren't any faction-specific skills or spells yet, but these are planned updates. The three factions you choose between feel largely cosmetic right now as a result, but they resemble the combat triangle from Runescape meaning each one is strong against one faction and weak to another. The non-combat professions are fairly fun and have a fair bit of variety to them for the most part with some of them involving entertaining minigames, like the potent potions in alchemy. Unlocking new episodes and their professions doesn't feel like a herculean task, but some of the side quests require pretty high skill levels and don't give great rewards despite the time investment. There are a couple side quests like Spider's Nest (episode 2) which greatly open up the game. Spider's Nest unlocks a global bank deposit system which makes gathering professions much more tolerable and efficient. It's not really indicated by the game that this system is locked in this way, so some of the early game can feel pretty bad before completing that quest.

All in all, I've really enjoyed my time with Brighter Shores thus far, and I'm looking forward to seeing how it grows from here. If you enjoy simple, laidback skills, grinding, and number-go-up dopamine, you'll probably like this game too. Just be aware that the game really opens up with unlocking episodes and completing certain quests, and that the early game can feel somewhat painful before some of those quest unlocks. (Do Spider's Nest ASAP if you play!) The combat levels being unique to each episode feels really weird at first, but unlocking weapon crafting in episode 3 helps a lot. Andrew is very open to community feedback and is actively updating the game already. I definitely encourage you to give it a shot especially given the first two episodes are free to play.