Recent reviews by Nnay

Graphics: 8/10
Gameplay: 7.5/10
Music: 8/10
Content: ?/10
Stability: 5/10
P2W: 0/10

Let's start with the most glaring issues:

I originally started playing this game because many people online said it was very light on p2w and that "you can only buy the base items for $$" but this is a lie. While yes, you cannot buy upgraded items on the auction house (which exclusively utilizes the cash shop currency), and you have to farm up the materials to upgrade the levels of the item, this is absolutely not the biggest issue as this easily just happens over time. Upgrading every item to level 9 (max level) isn't what will set you apart.

Items come with main stats, substats and unlockable traits and this is where it gets dicey.
Traits are what make or break your build and your competitive viability. In order to unlock new traits you can either use a special currency which you can't directly purchase with $$ (other than season pass) but you can also extract traits from items and sell them on the auction house.
This means that for $$ you can buy the base BiS (best in slot) item and all its traits as well as fully upgrade these traits as soon as you unlock the auction house (level 40).

Traits are by far the most important aspect of your character's strength and vastly outshines anything else.

Resulting in some of the most overtly p2w I have ever seen in a game. Some of these best in slot items cost up to $500 to fully trait, and due to the mechanic on how content is unlocked over time for everyone on the server, we don't even have the most rare items yet. On korean servers, these base items (without any traits) alone sell for over $1000.

Can you attain these without paying? Well... yes kind of.
Since everyone can extract traits, you can too. If you run a dungeon (you can only receive 3 item drops per day) you can get lucky and get a good item with a good trait, extract it and sell it on the auction house.
For some of the BiS items, you would need to get the most expensive item with the most expensive trait from a dungeon for up to 10 times. Just for the base.

So what? It just takes me longer then, I don't lose anything.
Well yes and no. Multiple aspects of the game incentivise PvP to an absurd degree. There are world bosses that spawn as "Conflict" or "Peace" bosses. Conflict are PvP, Peace are PvE.
This results in the strongest 3-4 guilds building an alliance and locking down every single Conflict boss.

Since field bosses only drop 1-2 items and every other spawn is a "Conflict" spawn, this means that every other item drop is guaranteed to belong to the strongest alliance.

This also applies to open world dungeons as these have some of the most valuable field boss drops.


In addition to this, open world dungeons become "Conflict" zones at ingame night-time. In addition to even that, the #1 open world kills ranked player receives a skill that forcibly induces ingame night-time.

In addition to this, one of the open world dungeons drops chests at night which when opened reward you with another chance to receive loot drops from dungeons, as well as coins that can be exchanged for gear.


It took about 3 weeks for the top 4 guilds to entirely kill the server. In those 3 weeks they have managed to get so far ahead of everyone else in terms of gear, that there is no feasible way to ever contest them.

Night time belongs to them, conflict bosses belong to them. Even non-conflict bosses in open world dungeons belong to them because they just make it night and kill everyone so they cannot come back.

In addition to that there are siege wars in which guilds can claim ownership of certain nodes (similar to black desert online). These guilds then receive a share of the auction house tax (cash shop currency) putting them even further ahead.
Since alliances can be up to 4 guilds and the top 4 guilds are likely in an alliance already, the ownership just rotates between these 4 and all 4 fight and defend the ownership against anyone else.

Again, the server belongs to them. Your money belongs to them. The auction house belongs to them. You either join them, or you eventually quit the game.


This wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue if you could grind your way out of it like in black desert (for example) but every grind is time-gated and you can only do so much per day before you don't get any more rewards.
This also wouldn't be nearly as much of an issue if alliances were smaller. Or if you could accidentally attack alliance members. As it is, if you try to compete with the top 4, you are a shrimp trying to fight an onslaught of 80+ fully BiS geared players. It's not open world PvP. It's an execution.


Combat itself is fun, rotations are neat but because the game is tab-target and essentially nothing is a skillshot, pvp is just a matter of trying to predictively block incoming stuns until you run out of stamina and considering the current meta where only longbow can detect invisibility and greatsword has 3 separate stuns/roots with a prone (you cannot get ouf prone. think of it as a hard stun against which everything that removes stuns does nothing) and this prone duration is increased everytime a greatsword (and only a greatsword) achieves a heavy attack (similar to crit but not really) you will mostly be stalling for time if a group of greatsword users charge you.

PvE would be fun if there was more content, especially challenging content.
I'm 255 hours in and there isn't a single boss where I don't skip essentially all mechanics. It's funny the first few times when it happens but it gets old very quick.


There is also a TON of jank when it comes to movement as well as server stability issues. I could and would overlook them if the p2w wasn't as blatant.


tl;dr:
a potentially good game that is entirely destroyed by greed.
Just another microtransaction p2w mmorpg. Much more p2w than black desert. Basically as p2w as any competitive gacha mobile game

holy mother of jank

NPCs & AI Behaviour: 2/10

npcs are bugged to absolute oblivion, from waypoints being bonked causing npcs to walk into trashcans forever to them giving me the bulging eye death stare while walking past me and then proceed to walk into a wall. they also don't react to being aimed at with a gun or if you blow an entire clip into the ground next to their feet. they generally don't give much of a ♥♥♥♥ about anything you do and react to you hitting them like a tranquilized cat would.

this also applies to guards/police. stand in front of them, point the gun at them and blast your entire stockpile of ammunition right past their ear and they won't even budge. steal a cup and refuse to pay the 15 schillings fine and the entire city mounts a nuclear war against you.

some npcs will try to open doors to reach you when you're in combat with them, others will just run away once their pathfinding gets interrupted by anything, even if they could reach you with ranged weapons. it's quite hit or miss and doesn't follow a replicatable logic.

fighting a melee monster/human and need to reload and heal? climb on a crate and watch them fail to reach you and run away (most of the time)
fighting a ranged monster/human and need to reload and heal? close a few doors behind you and watch them give up their chase and run away (most of the time)

it gets one point above the minimum score because it could always be worse.



space & ship: 1/10

space exploration is equivalent to cyberpunk 2077 as in there is none. the only difference is that cyberpunk doesn't pretend there is whereas starfield does. you can't fly to a planet and land on it like in no man's sky and there's really nothing to explore and find in space, ever. the only means of getting anywhere and actually do something is by fast travel.

space combat really isn't that interesting either, avorion does it infinitely better and it doesn't have the janky forced 30fps recticle.

ship modification is very restrictive and borderline pointless. it feels mostly shoehorned and offers no room to be creative

overall this is easily the worst implementation of space and space travel I have ever seen in a game. there's absolutely no meaningful content and it genuinely feels more like a forced extra step of UI for fast travelling. the fact that any development time has gone into this is astounding as it adds absolutely nothing to the game besides boredom.


combat: 2/10

the game has no FOV slider because you're a child and you can't be trusted with that power I guess.

combat itself is quite bad. enemies are either pushovers or bullet sponges with no in-betweens. the mining laser easily overpowers my entire arsenal of other weapons, including legendaries and it's the first weapon you get. for some reason bethesda decided that starfield should behave similar to fallout when it comes to ammunition so you fairly easily run out of it for your favourite weapons. luckily the mining laser has infinite ammo so unless you really want to roleplay a sniper there's rarely a reason to pick a different weapon than the mining laser.

hot tip here: if you press and hold RBM you can see the outer bars in your crosshair moving towards the center, this is your laser beam increasing in focus and power. this is so overly unbalanced that it causes the mining laser to genuinely be the best weapon in the game once you include ammo management. however it's important that this is in the game because most other weapons are so absurdly weak that it feels like you're unloading on a wall that sometimes shoots back


story: 4/10

the main story writing is really really bad. the general idea is cool I think but the execution is really poor. feels like an rpg-lite from the early 2000s in that aspect. dialogues with most npcs feels forced and poorly executed. basically feels like a power fantasy without the power because it takes you 3 ammo clips to the head to kill an enemy after level 10.

it's certainly not the worst writing I've encountered in gaming but coming from a AAA studio it's quite unfortunate. certainly below average albeit not as much as other aspects of the game


exploration: 5/10

exploration is okay ish, it kinda feels like no man's sky did a few years ago. not bad but also not very rewarding with the downside that in contrast to no man's sky, you can't fly your ship around on the planet, you can only fast travel with it.

generally planets look quite nice and have some flora and fauna to scan (basically cloned from no man's sky) but there's a distinct lack of variety with most planet featuring at most 8 different animals or plant species + a few anomalies you can scan.

overall it's a very mediocre experience. not bad but there's also really nothing good about it either.



base building: 4/10

there's not much to do, really, except for building fairly uninteresting towers to "defend" your base and resource extraction + crafting setups. it's not bad per se but also not inspiring or interesting. as with many other things it's a major step down from no man's sky in depth and scale and simply falls short.


side quests: 6.5/10

now we have to split side quests into two seperate types here,

#1 side quests in cities/settlements

#2 side quest encounters in the wild

the side quests in cities/settlements are easily a 3/10. uninteresting npcs with uninteresting stories doing uninteresting things and asking you to perform uninteresting chores. I haven't encountered a side quest from a city that revolved around more than me walking a few minutes, pressing E and coming back to be hailed as a kween.

side quests encountered in the wild while exploring random planets/moons however were quite fun. honestly the most enjoyment I had in the entire game. there are many abandoned stations or mining rigs and reading through some of the logs or listening to recordings from npcs that have passed on was a nice experience.

I'm certain this is will be the high point for most people as it feels rewarding to me going out of my way of exploring a seemingly deserted planet/moon for half an hour.


graphics: I have no idea/10

now this is easily the most difficult aspect to rate because jesus christ is it inconsistent.
weapons look great, armors look great, humans look like you took a grinding stone to skyrim characters' skin and slapped the default rubber material my 13 year old cousin made in unity with the help of a step-by-step tutorial from 2004.

some areas are gorgeous and have great lighting while cities look bland and overlit.

basically some things are just slightly below average in 2023 while other things look like a joke.
maybe a 3/10 in total?



tl;dr:
starfield is aggressively bethesda in every facet of its existence
it does absolutely nothing right and everything it tries to do, it does wrong.
it desperately wants to be both cyberpunk and no man's sky and is infinitely worse than either and regresses on basic functionality we had in previous bethesda games despite being made in the same old engine as any other bethesda game

all in all:
3.5/10

and imho this is generous because I've omitted other aspects that would further lower the score



will you find enjoyment? probably at times, yeah
is it a good game? no

I expected nothing and was disappointed

I'm still going to continue playing, desperately looking for the things people rate 10/10 but I have little hope

15€ for 70minutes? idunno

it's generally fun but the performance is atrocious

it's essentially what i hoped.

Graphics & Performance: 6.5/10
it's abundantly obvious that this is not a AAA game and I don't have the feeling it's trying to be.
the graphics are immediately dated but they're not horrid.
the performance is what I would expect from an early access open world unity game. it runs fine on my machine but I definitely am overkilling. if you have a weaker system, you should probably wait for the full release.

Atmosphere: 9/10
this to me is what made the turn based tainted grail so great. the atmosphere is captivating, dark and eerie.
everything is broken, everyone is suffering. the wyrdness is scary and unknown and I absolutely love it

Music: 9/10
all tainted grail scores fit perfectly. a very rustic and dreary vibe

Combat: 6.5/10
very similar to elder scrolls including all the exploits to cheese fights. adding the dash is a very welcome change that makes it much more enjoyable than elder scrolls, but combat is still fairly basic.

Lore: 9/10
obviously this is entirely subjective, as is music atmosphere or combat, but I genuinely love the story and lore of tainted grail. I don't want to spoil anything but tainted grail has an amazing mix of fantasy, magic and mystery for my taste

Overall: 8/10
As expected, it is early access so you will encounter a decent amount of bugs and lack of polish. There are some voice lines missing and temporarily voiced with text to speech which may be jarring, but again, is expected for such an early access.
That being said, it's certainly a good game and has fascinating potential. I can't wait to see what else is coming.

If you have other rpgs on you waiting list, give those a spin first as I'm sure fall of avalon will only get better until you're done with them.

the performance is kinda ass. I wouldn't recommend buying it on PC but it does look like it has the potential to be a good game. ps5 maybe?

it ends at some point.

the combat is a bit too arcady, especially compared to older titles (matter of taste of course).

generally the game is a tad too easy through the various extra movement possibilities you have and the afflicted monsters don't make it that much more challenging.

it is a good monster hunter game though and an excellent time killer while we wait for the next A-Team release.


the first title update gives the game much needed extra endgame content and I'm looking forward to the other upcoming title updates

good to play during those unnecessary meetings you're forced to attend because someone feels like it

tl;dr: great game. 8/10

Pro:
- Nice and calm music
- Interesting crafting/building
finding new materials unlocks new blueprints/recipes for new tools/armor/weapons or building blocks. apart from that the progression system is quite generic but well executed. no need to reinvent the wheel.
constructions need integrity and will break if there's not enough reasonable support - which results in you naturally building more realistic structures rather than having support beams only for style reasons.
- Good enough combat
blocking at the right time results in a parry, temporarily stunning the opponent, critical hits can stun as well, headshots deal more damage, Blunt/Pierce/Slashing damage differences depending on enemy make sense and make up for weapon durability not being particularly high.
- Building roads - leveling ground - elevating ground
much needed in games like this and thankfully it delivers
- Semi realistic physics
fall speed and weight affects damage, both dealt to you as well as dealt to other things. this can result in tree cascading when chopping down one, leaving you with more durability on your axe 8) or you can kill enemies with it which is also fun
- Interesting graphics
I personally love the mix of high quality lighting/bloom effects (thanks, unity) with pixelart-esque visuals in a 3d setting. makes for a very unique experience
- Story
there actually is some sort of story which makes it much more interesting for people who aren't too much into just survival builder games
- Food system
instead of requiring you to constantly eat and killing you otherwise, there are incentives for eating regularly and having a balanced diet. this results in you not being forced to eat when you're just chilling in your homebase and redecorating, while being strong enough to be important when you're out and about.
- Ships
you can make ships. that's pretty awesome

Con:
- Performance
it's a unity game and it performs as such. it's better than I had expected but you'll still frequently experience fps dips.
not a killer but noticable
- Small decisions
While I understand that Bronze is predominantly copper and therefore requires more of it than tin, it doesn't really make sense to have bronze hidden in veins while pure tin just sprouts out of the ground near rivers/ocean. this makes crafting bronze a tad tedious at first which doesn't really contribute to having fun. also not a killer but still, could have been pulled off a bit better.


Overall, as do most people, I can really recommend getting Valheim if you're into survival builder games. I haven't tried it solo but in a group of at least 2 people, it's great fun. Development is active and I expect a good amount of nice patches in the near future.

There's honestly not much bad I can say about it, it's just fun.
If the performance is improved in future versions, it's a clear 9/10 for this genre