Recent reviews by neona

It's basically WoW Dungeon Simulator 2025

though not without issues, it's already quite fun and a good way for me to scratch that healing itch without having to all the annoying grinding normally needed

(might make me resub to WoW or ffxiv when the playtest ends though...)

I've always wanted an ARPG that mixes in incremental mechanics and.. this is that!

I've only played 20 hours so far and am on my 5th loop but at least so far the game is very fun! Lots of interesting upgrades to get and things to do, and at least so far no shortage of content in sight. You definitely have to enjoy the grind, but at least so far it's stayed very entertaining for me. Items are very interesting and exciting, it's common to find items that are *massive* power spikes, and because you loop, you'll get to have that experience often.

The game looks decent, is overall well-polished, and feels good to play. Performance can get a little bad sometimes but.. as an ARPG player it comes with the territory a little bit I feel like. Still, hopefully we see some performance improvements.

The dev has said she plans to keep improving the game for a while, so I look forward to coming back to it during lulls between PoE1+2/LE/TL:I leagues

I'll try to remember to update this review if I pass 100-200 hours

A 7.5/10 open world action rpg that is also a survival crafting game with probably the best voxel building system on the market

makes me think of Fable for some reason

I wanted this game mostly for the building (powerful + very pretty), but the world is huge and I'm finding exploration + combat to be pretty fun

I really like that the voxel/destructible world makes things cheeseable, but in a surprisingly balanced way. Out of lockpicks but want through that door? Spend like half a pickaxe's durability to break it down. Want up a mountain? Dig your way there!

super fun arpg that feels kinda old school but has very interesting modern character building, with interesting stats to scale and lots of stuff to fiddle with
was a bit worried I wouldn't like the pixel graphics, but being isometric instead of topdown makes a big difference!
haven't spent much time in the endgame yet but really enjoyed levelling my first char through the story, and there does seem to be some good stuff to grind, though without updates it's obv not gonna have the kind of longevity of more popular arpgs (fine for the price imo!)
the procedurally generated maps are huge and while a tad monotonous I like them a lot, feels like you spend most of your time fighting and not fetchquesting, as an arpg should be

One of the best arpgs out there. Still in development to be sure, but has very interesting character building that's still a lot more approachable than stuff like PoE. Stuff like fairly locked-down classes is more restrictive than some more open-ended character building, but still has plenty of stuff to keep you interested for a while imo.

Optimistic about the direction they're going with economy stuff, but those who care a lot about that may still want to wait and see.

Before I say anything, I want to be very explicit that you should really really read the entire early access blurb and be actually okay with it before buying the game. They mean it (and as they say, there is still fun to be had imo). Since this is an MMO, if really frustrating bugs are gonna ruin the experience for you, you may want to give it another month for them to patch out the nasty launch bugs. The game was a lot more stable back in closed alpha, and I am currently confident that they'll get it back to that point - they're just actually having to handle larger scale now, and as in every single MMO launch I can remember experiencing in my life (and I am a longtime MMO genre fan) that has broken some stuff. They're working hard on it (daily patches), but it's still a bit extra rough right this minute.

That said, for me personally, Starbase is a dream game, and already one of my favorite games of all time. I have another 100 hours in the game from closed alpha that it doesn't show. If the game was literally never updated again and left in it's current buggy state, it would still be one of my favorite games of all time and I'd still put loads more time into it.

However, I do think they're going to keep updating it, and I suspect they will at least realize parts of their vision, but it's hard to say if they'll manage everything. The game is insanely ambitious, and if you just told me about it with words I probably wouldn'tve believed you someone could get that working. However, the base of the game, the wildest hardest part of making ships made of literally thousands of parts (current max for a single ship is 15 thousand parts) work at all in a multiplayer setting does work. They've already managed the impossible kickstarter/early access pitch part from my perspective. Now, turning that into a game that is good and not just a toy is a seperate task and we'll see where they get it. I'm optimistic but understand warinees. I do think it's important to remember that this is an established studio and this is not their first rodeo. While not a guarantee, for me personally it inspires more confidence. They've certainly been more open about development than most studios out there.

Now, I do not think Starbase is a game for everyone. People who are only interested in PvP and not stuff like ship design, general logistics, that sort of nerd stuff will probably find the game unsatisfying, especially at the moment. Much of this is due to the fact that much of infrastructure is player-constructed (and some major elements are coming staggered in patches over the next couple months). Players need time to build out this infrastructure so the world right now is much more barren than it will be in even a few months. You need stuff to contest for there to be interesting conflict.

I personally find the game so cool because much of how ships and the game works is less the result of videogame magic and more the result of interlocking systems. Hacking isn't a minigame, but it's possible to board a ship and screw with its computer systems by accessing them over the local data network, which is a physically defined thing made of cables and ducts, not some magic concept. (oh, yeah, there is an ingame programming language!) While there definitely some things that are magic video game logic, a lot of the time things work in an internally consistent way in the same way things in reality do, even if the specific way things work is not the same as reality. I have never played another game that has caused me to say "I need to debug my spaceship".

The game is also immersive for me in a way VERY few games are (I typically have difficulty experiencing immersion, and do not normally play games with the expectation or goal of it). While some of it is likely intangible, some reasons for this include: continuously first person experience with low HUD - you gotta add informational readouts as physical objects in your ship, consistent physicality of the world - you can just grab stuff and bolt it to your ship while floating in space, the fact that I have to like.. understand my ship and do simple maintenance and stuff, not being purely "point of interest" based in the way many space games are, large scale for stuff like stations and design that is very zero-g aware, and just so many things that add a physicality to the world. A lot of it probably sounds a bit mundane (and thus boring for some), but for me I think that mundanity adds a sense of reality most games lack, without being too time consuming or boring imo. I like that I need to have some sort of relationship with my vehicle in the way some have with cars or ships both in fiction and real life. For different people it will be different, but for example you still at a minimum need to know where the fuel rods are on your ship to change them, that sort of thing. If you have even a minimal eye for tweaking, your ship is likely to end up unique, even if it started as a standardized model. And not in a "oh I have 2 medium slots, I should put something in those" way, but in a "hmm, hopefully if I bolt some thrusters here my frame can take it, reinforcing my frame would be annoying" kind of way. This stuff either will or won't get you excited, and if it does then that suggests you will enjoy Starbase.

I've seen some reviews complaining about PvP aspects and while I agree that it can be frustrating, I think it's not unlike EVE - risk management is the name of the game. When you first leave the Safe Zone, use a ship that you don't mind losing it until you understand the risks better. Space is big, so a lot of it is just being careful (and at least for now you need visual to find people, and the belt has limited visibility - radiation detection is coming, but has not been detailed or added yet).

I could go on and on about the game for ages, but I think what I've said thus far either will or won't excite you. If you're more tentative about the game as described or not interested in all the mechanical/design elements.. consider coming back in 3-12 months to see where things are. We'll all have a better idea of how the game will exsist in the long term by then. Feel free to ask questions about how the game works in the comments of this review, I am happy to help figure out if the game is for you!

This game was really fun when I was super high, very funny

Can't comment on sober experience

Also, it's pretty short

Wolcen is a fun and polished take on the ARPG, with design that feels a little between Diablo 3 and Path of Exile with a few twists.

It looks/feels quite good from a production value standpoint, likely the best graphics I've seen in an ARPG (a bit better than PoE, and I haven't played Last Epoch yet so idk there). While the plot is very standard ARPG fare (ancient evil, save the world, etc), the presentation is easily the best I've ever seen in an ARPG, with a fair number of well done in-engine cutscenes and dialogue I actually felt like listening to (I tend to be the type to not pay a huge amount of attention to ARPG plots). I think the cutscenes make it easier to keep track of the story in a non-boring way. Voice acting is pretty good, and while npc archetypes are often pretty generic, the execution was good enough to keep me interested most of the time. It is currently a bit short (3 acts) and afaik planned to be extended eventually, but this didn't feel bad since it was pretty fun. I probably took around 20 hours to clear it, and I'd say most people would take 15-25 hours depending on how much exploring and side areas you do.

Combat-wise It has a bit more of a focus on an active playstyle, with a powerful active dodge and lots of things to dodge. A large portion of enemy attacks are conveyed via ground telegraphs that are easy to read outside of a few tilesets with bad contrast - think somewhere between ffxiv and wildstar on telegraph readability and consistency. Many attacks where ground telegraphs wouldn't make sense do still have animation telegraphs in addition to learnable enemy patterns, so it's all quite readable. Many bosses are bullet hell style, and even most minibosses have more going on than 2/3rds of map bosses in PoE, so they're fun to fight.

Character customization (builds) seems to allow for a pretty wide range of options, but not so much so that you need to start with a build guide to succeed at all like PoE. You get a sizable passive tree to fiddle with, in addition to abilities that have modifiers similar to runes in Diablo 3, except there are way more of them and you can have a bunch active on a given skill at once, so the customization is far deeper. I was able to roll my own build just fine for the story - probably not well optimized at all, but I had lots of fun so I'm happy with it. Respeccing appears to be quite cheap compared to PoE, so I'm perfectly fine just going at it till I hit a wall and then looking up a build later.

I played a dual pistol ranger-y character with some focus on mobility and it has been quite fun. I took a passive that lets you accumulate a significant damage bonus if you don't get hit, so some of that fun probably came from the self-imposed challenge to not get hit. I didn't have too much difficulty in the story, but this is in part due to the fact that the game has a downed/revive system, basically allowing you to die 3 times before it's a "real" death - because of this my character has never actually died, though every time I was downed it really felt like it should've counted as a death. Heck, only on one boss did I revive more than once (and more often I didn't at all). So in a fashion it wasn't that hard, but I had quite a bit of fun so I didn't mind. I suppose one upside is that if you're play on hardcore this means you're far less likely to lose your character to a lag spike or other technical issue, so I'm a lot more likely to consider playing HC in this than PoE.

Normally I wouldn't mention visual character customization, but Wolcen does a surprisingly good job with it. It has a character creator with... a middling number of options, but more than I've ever seen in an ARPG. Additionally, it has a great wardrobe & dye system - the appearance of any armor you pick up is automatically added to your library of skins, and you learn dyes from items that drop in the world. You can open a screen to change armor skins and dyes at any time and change them for free, and I'd give it an A- for dye coverage of armor - armor can have as many as 8 different dyeable areas, and I have thus far seen very few undyeable areas of armor, with those that I have seen being exclusively been metal fasteners, so it looks fine.

I cannot yet speak to things like balance and endgame quality, though I had quite a lot of fun doing the story and already feel I've gotten my money's worth. Looking things over I suspect I'll be occupied for at least another 20 hours before things slow down, quite possibly far more. Do I think there is currently enough content to play for hundreds or thousands of hours like PoE? No. Is there stuff to do? Definitely. It seems just recently they started their first league "chronicle". There's a monster hunting league mechanic that has a very PoE feel, which makes me optimistic. If they keep up leagues with a decent cadence and port those mechanics back to the main game like PoE does then I'm hopeful for the longer term state of the game. It does seem like a game I might come back to every league or three when I'm burned out on the current PoE league.

A note on this review: I think I picked the game up at a good time, since many complaints I've seen in other reviews appear have been resolved, at least in my experience. A lot of this was in a patch a couple weeks before I picked up the game. (no obvious bugs, only 2 crashes so far, stat rework, loot filter, lots of other changes) Keep this in mind when looking at older reviews, though ofc ymmv.

While I have many nitpicks, this is competent ARPG with decent stat, loot, and build complexity. If you're into ARPGs it's definitely worth a play.

How much I played: The entire base game campaign, most of it on veteran ('hard-ish') difficulty. Took maybe 30-35 hours.

Interesting things I liked:
-The constitution system is great and I hope other games steal it (basically, you have a secondary resource bar that is consumed to recover health when out of combat, enabling short-term and longer-term health management in this same game, which I love)
-Lots of stats on gear, even early on - it felt like gear was interesting within the first few hours, and I actually had to think about it for the whole game
-actually have to make story choices that affect gameplay (what factions like you etc)
-faction reputations to grind with interesting rewards
-items can grant abilities that are actually useful, one was part of my build for 2/3rds of the game (it was a damage ability with lifesteal to help with survivability)
-the execution is a bit iffy, but I enjoy that it goes for a lovecraftian horror aesthetic over the more traditional demonic aesthetic, it's a nice change of pace

Various complaints (that are not major enough to really detract from the game too much):
-Something about the graphics (esp ability effects) feels very.. idk, slightly cloying and dated/off-looking? Might be the engine. Either way, I have some difficult-to-quantify complaints about the visuals, but it's not a huge deal.
-Most areas are not randomly generated, and for some reason this seems to result in more obnoxious to navigate areas. There is some randomization of obstacles and pathways, but not enough to matter much
-I don't like the whole system where you have to put points into a spec before you can allocate actual abilities/passives - but this is only a minor annoyance once you're 10-20 levels in
-Common ARPG problem of getting good gear early on that's hard to find an upgrade for. I found a good hat like 1/4th the way into the game and then never replaced it because I couldn't find a hat that was a dps increase for the rest of the game
-it uses the 'ol 'play through the game 3 times on one char over multiple difficulties' crap, which isn't very fun imo - but maybe I'll give it a shot after the DLC if I pick that up
-a lot of melee bosses and enemies are just annoying as a ranged character, end up having to do lots of tedious kiting - please developers, bullet hell style arpg bosses are way more fun than buffed up enemy ones

Background
I finished the game and did a decent bit of side content, Played as a stealth/combat hacker on normal difficulty. This review was written at 60 or so hours of gameplay.

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General
The game is good. Perhaps not industry-changing in the way some seemed to expect, but good. The story is good and well done, the characters are reliably compelling, and the voice acting is good too.
The real star of the show, though, is the city. It really is a feat of design and engineering. It's great to look at, but also just so so detailed. Have you ever been playing a more on-rails game and go through a side street or alleyway and think "damn, they really got the vibe right?" This game has a hundred of those. It's almost so good that you don't think about it sometimes - I worry that it'll ruin other open world cities for me a little. Streets are bustling in a way that makes them feel alive, Often, the game has you or lets you take a ride in the passenger seat of an NPC's car, and these give a great moment to gawk at the city as it passes you by. There's a button to skip these rides one the NPC is done talking, but I never used it once because watching the city was interesting enough.

Story
Story-wise, the game varies between good and great most of the time. The narrative side content is excellent too, and there is a lot, probably more than the main story. Side stories introduce new characters and flesh out ones you meet in the main story. One thing I will say is that the game really leans on story, so if you want a more gameplay-focused game you might not enjoy this. It feels like I spent much more time talking to NPCs and engaging in everyday tasks than I did sneaking and shooting. I saw this as a good thing that makes the game feel much more real, but that's may be personal taste.
The dialogue system is pretty cool, and something I hope other games imitate. You can usually move around while in conversation seamlessly, even just ♥♥♥♥ off if you want. When you can't, it's usually because you had to sit down for the conversation, which makes it less awkward. It takes some getting used to, but often you can choose to cut other characters off or to let them keep speaking by just.. not saying anything. Sometimes dialogue/action options are time-limited with a timer-bar showing how long you have to act (or not act, if you don't want to), and this overall works pretty well.I worry about it having accessibility issues though. The game also occasionally had the classic issue of your character saying something with different tone/connotations/content than you expected because the choice was too vague, but this only happened a few times. My biggest complaint is that you can't use number keys to select dialogue options, and are instead stuck with the scroll wheel, which is occasionally frustrating.

Gameplay
Things are a lot more uneven here, but I still enjoyed it overall.
Hacking is fun, if a bit awkward until you're used to it - I really wish I could use the number keys to decide which quickhack to use instead of the scroll wheel, but it wasn't a huge deal.
Gunplay is honestly pretty good, better than I expected. I didn't use guns all that much after the first half or so of the game, but when I did they were fun. There's something that just feels like magic when you have a shotgun with homing pellets. I did next to no melee combat, so I can't really comment on that.
Stealth is pretty decent too, definitely gave me pleasant Deus Ex vibes. While there's a lot of open-world games with stealth gameplay, they're nearly all third person, which is just.. not the same, imo. It being first person really adds to it. Even the simple fetch-questy minor side missions were often very fun for me because I could take my time to scout out the target and find a good way to sneak in. There are regularly many ways to get to your objective, especially if you take the time to look around.
Driving is kinda weird, though I was playing with wasd. Vehicle physics are just.. odd, can't quite place it. Still fun though, so it wasn't a big deal. I spent a lot of my time driving around the city on a motorcycle in first person, and I definitely recommend it. Hell, I often drove instead of fast travelling just because it was fun and the city is always a joy to look at.
Another complaint I have is that the gear/loot system is just.. a bit undercooked? The vast majority of clothes just have an armor value, and when they are fancy enough to have mod slots, you need to have mods to put in, which I never really had more than a few of. I ended up never using clothing mods due to fear of gear churn. If I keep playing to max out my character I'm sure I'll be able to get cool gear with slots and stuff that I can customize, which I do look forward to, but gear getting interesting should be happening at the 10-15 hour mark, not the 40-60 hour mark. Guns were a bit better and more exciting, though still experienced some similar issues. The game's crafting/upgrade system just.. never felt worth using, so I basically never did. Just seemed too expensive for gear that would get replaced anyway. All I remember ever crafting was one green sniper rifle and a scattering of quickhacks (which are the exception and definitely worth crafting). I hope they overhaul gear a bit eventually, but I'm not holding my breath on it.

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The Bad
Now that all that's out of the way, there are definitely some things to be wary of. The game is, in its launch state, very very buggy. Like nearly Bethesda-tier. The vast majority of bugs I encountered were cosmetic and just silly looking, and I only encountered bugs that disrupted progression a couple times. In both instances a quick save and load fixed it. So right now the bugs may be distracting or immersion-breaking, but not game-breaking. Make sure to update your graphics drivers, this will eliminate some of the visual bugs. Vehicle physics are really buggy for some reason, don't be surprised to see a car tossed up into the air for no apparent reason on occasion. Vehicles are also kind of invulnerable? Not sure if it's supposed to be like that. If you want a less buggy experience, maybe wait a few months.
Performance-wise.. the game could probably run better, but it actually ran about how I would expect a game to. Was usually having framerates in the 25-40 area, but I was also playing at 1440p on a 1070 with many settings at high or ultra. I have seen reports of other people having worse luck. It does sound like there are some performance-related bugs that will likely be fixed, so I expect it to improve.
Far and away my biggest complaint is the enemy AI. It felt like they never tried much to find me if I was hidden (like, after they found a body/etc), making the stealth gameplay feel a bit lower-risk than it should've. In general really the enemy AI is disappointing though, it just.. isn't great at responding to you. I really hope they address this in the future - I've seen people suggest that the AI is a placeholder because there was better AI that was too buggy to ship, but I haven't seen anything to confirm this.

Misc
While the marketing for the game went really edgy, the game is (thankfully) not overwhelmingly edgy, though it definitely is a bit.
The game did a better job of engaging in traditional cyberpunk social themes than I expected, though it's still a AAA game so you can't expect it to rock the boat too much. Still, the game does highlight that capitalism bad. One thing that helps is you're not some corporate super soldier like in some cyberpunk games, but instead you're a regular person beaten down by the system like everyone else.

Overall
I would recommend this game without question to anyone that enjoys cyberpunk as a genre. If the game gets patched up well over the next few months, I'd say it's worth playing for anyone that enjoys RPGs and open-world games.