Recent reviews by xwboy

I've spent quite a bit of time in this game and here are my impressions:

The Good:

-Non-lock combat with directional attacks and simple block mechanic
-Variety of playstyles: a heavily armored knight wielding a greatsword, a light-armored two-handed axe user who flanks the enemy, or maybe even a deadly but vulverable archer?
-Partial loot system makes getting kills rewarding but getting killed not a game-ruining experience
-Leveling is relatively easy and quick: there are quests scattered around the map and "world events" that bring many players together for great XP and loot
-Crafting is a worthwhile profession: it can make you lots of money and allows you to make the best gear available
-Speaking of that, recipes are lootable but require craters to use them to create armor and weapons. This creates a strong trade economy.
-Devs are dedicated and extremely active. Usually a patch per week that fixes a multitude of bugs and adds some new features.
-Sieges are fun. Really fun. Seeing the banner fly over the (newly added!) keep after breaking down several gates and fighting the player and NPC garrison is very satisfying. Defending a castle against superior numbers and winning is great and even losing can be rewarding - you'll go home with bags full of loot!
-Graphics are ok. Nothing to marvel at but good for an MMO. They are improving slightly as new graphics settings are added.

The Bad:

-Animations are a bit odd (especially jumping) and can sometimes be a bit glitchy. However, new motion-capture animations are promised to being coming in an update soon.
-The weapon balance isn't too good. Two-handed axes do insane damage, while greatswords are only viable if you're wearing heavy armor and need to conserve stamina. One handers are generally bad and are only good when a shield is needed for a formation or when facing large groups at a chokepoint. Spears fill a useful role for stabbing through gates and standing behind shieldwalls.
-Player counts on some servers are low (Russia, SE Asia, and Oceania mainly) but US and EU servers are always very populated.
-Community is generally helpful and positive, but there is some turmoil among the many guilds (which has sometimes led to civil war and teamkilling)

The Ugly:

-THE DESYNC: The desync is sometimes insanely bad, to the point where the location of an enemy will be shown to you with a one second delay, causing none of your hits to connect and blocking to be almost impossible. This isn't always a problem (most of the time the desync is fairly minor) but it's most annoying when playing an archer. The desync fix should come soon with the new animations.
-The optimization: This being an early access game, some lag is to be expected. If your system isn't too up-to-date, don't expect good framerates. Now that I'm playing on a 1070 and a 6700k I get 60-70 FPS at 1440p ultra, but on a laptop with a 940m I was getting 15-20 at 1080 on minimum/off settings. The game is constantly getting small performance bumps though.
-The faction system. Players can create characters of both factions and switch between them easily. This allows enemies to create characters that teamkill and open gates to make taking castles easier. This ruins the game for everyone.

tl;dr

The game is fun with good base mechanics. The combat is a highlight and the devs are hard at work, releasing patches frequently. The lag and "spies" can be game-ruining experiences at time, but the lag issue is already being addressed.

"I'm addicted... I play 2-3 hours of this game per day." -xwboy

So, yeah. This game is SO much fun to play. 2d games have never been my thing, but now this is my top game! I found out about this game while re-visiting my old YouTube favorite, paulsoaresjr's, channel. I was like, "Craft the World? Who thought of that name?"

Never judge a book by its cover.

Pros -

SUPER Deep Worlds

Easy to Learn

Monster invasions keep you working so you can defend against them

Goblin attacks are unexpected, which causes the game to be a challenge in the beggining

Many different bosses to fight

30+ hours of game time on the 1st campaign level

Customisable worlds

Rewards for working hard - NEW LEVELS!

Craft tree is long and fun to complete

Combat is easy to control and fun to do

End-game portal guards/recipe holders provide a REAL challenge

Cons-

Dwarves have an odd priority system (Killing sheep before mining mithryl?)

Dwarves sometimes just stand in place

Crafting is click and drag, which makes it kind of boring