Recent reviews by Shronkle

Okay so this was pretty ranty, so I'll summarise it (rants at the bottom)

I'm about 40 - 50 quests at time of revision (rant was about ~30).

So the new dungeons and raids are legitimately fun. Up to the third and they are pretty much the only thing getting me through MSQ. While some of the class changes are.. whatever I'm sure this is where most of the fun will come from.

Sucks. It is decent at the 40-ish mark where I'm at, but everything before feels like filler. The lack of being able to hear / read dialouge when going from a to B means you need to have these constant pit stops where the characters say the most mundane things.

Also the story kinda forgets you exist? Given our feats why do we just stand by and do nothing half the time? Literally just watch as preventable things happen? I've gone back top my ARR head-cannon where my character is just propping out a cardboard cut out during these events, and is really just fishing nearby.

I feel like at least three hours has been cut-scenes that are just observations about point B or the trip there "Wow is that an X, what a lovely shade of blue!" *Characters slowly emote and look at each other for 40s before camera cinematically fades up*.

Another downside is the Succesion contest (Spoiler for the quest right before Dawntrail I guess?). We aren't exactly there to explore, we have a task that needs to be completed. We are supposed to adventure and explore but are forced to participate in essentially The Greatest Race . Kinda feels like we were lied to.



Big, kinda interesting and cool. But the scale serves 0 purpose other then to make travelling back and forth unbearable. I just had to auto run for 4 minutes strait (no riding map) To get to a quest marker... again. You have to do this 4 min walk of (basically) silence twice in the same zone (hell within ~5 quests in between) because the map is so large for no reason and convenient aetherite scary I guess.

Finding the fishing spots is fun! Aether currents less so but it gives you an actual excuse to see half the zones.

It's frustrating because I kinda want to change to a recommend, I know I will enjoy gearing and doing high level content, but the slog of the MSQ is so dissapointing. It feels like that had to reach a certian run time so padded it out to 100 quests, when the first 30-ish quests could have been over in 10.

If your in it for the end game and gameplay you will probably enjoy this, but you will need to slog through a story that waits ~10 hours before being "decent".




I get not raising stakes even further, especially after last expansion.
But The story starts off really Meh. and it looks like they went bigger (but barren) = better.

Given who we are, being sidelined and having to take crap from characters we can stomp (and if we can't then that's just power scaling BS ) is grating. If any of the antagonists are supposed to be intimidating, uh they're not. I was kinda hoping for like, political intrigue and being torn between who to back etc etc.~~

Unfortunately it's just a lot of shonen anime weak protagonist crap with 2D villains, where we only ever hear about how cool people / things are and it's assumed we want to help and will always root for the protagonist, despite no real leg work being done to make them likeable / explain why the hell I'm okay being dragged around on their "adventure", doing boring busy-work.

The best part (story wise) is probably the first dungeon, it is the first engaging thing in the expansion and kinda has "Wacky Races" vibes which is cute and adventure-y.

When they said getting back to our roots as adventurers I was expecting more new undiscovered places and... IDK exploring? Not 3 hours of fetch quests / go here quests then a kinda fun dungeon.


All of this is amplified by the lack of walk and talk. Walk to point A BLABLHABLAHBLAH walk to point B, BLAHBLAHBLAHBLAH, Crawl half way across a map in silence to point C BLABLABLAH... you ghet the picture. So much time is spent in silent transit, then dialouge dump then silent transit. A lot of the (lets be real padding dialoufge) could probs be played while moving but that requires A). voice acting or B). smarter auto walk that avoids mobs and goes from a to b while I read text.

Super upsetting that, if I wasn't with friends and looking forward to raids etc. I probably would've dropped this expansion already. Seems some people think this is just a filler ark so we shouldn't expect anything... like that's a good thing?

I'll change this if it gets good enough to warrant such a meh start, but the whole mindset of oh it gets good eventually so put up with being bored for several hours.... not a fan.

Will mess up your wrist, unless you complete a challenge, (which will REALLY mess up your wrist)
to get an auto clicker feature which should be an accessibility feature TBH.

Also micro-transactions are pretty bad (60 (AUD) dollar "DLC"? thats less then the highest token pack too!), the batteries / energy which directly enhances most of the game-play is... a choice.
40 hours in and I cant find a way to increase passive energy generation and every reset just feels weaker and more tedious.

Cute and fun!

I ugly cried.

Very nice movement, a little awkward sometimes, navigation can be a pain. As of time of comment final boss is meh, or maybe I'm just absolutely god tier and need another nerf.

Would be nice to have clear direction that:
A) most projectiles can be parried
B) what is / isn't parriable
C) Every enemy has contact damage (made the first fight confusing)
D) Stronger gates maybe on areas that need specific abilities. I made it all the way to Right before the ascendant flame upgrade, via the lever elevator had to backtrack heaps for one of the 3 core abilities I'd missed. Though maybe just clearer navigation then? Since it is rewarding getting things earlier then you should. Feels like you've beaten the game on a meta level or something.

Still those are nit-picks. It was really solid. I loved dashing around and trying to BS my way into places I shouldnt be

Cheap arcade fun that is worth much more then it's cost.
Can be buggy / slow but who cares it's like 20 dollars for it and all it's DLC

Maybe it was good for it's time, but game play does not hold up.
No health regen between fights so stock up on consumables (limited inv slots too), some enemies just get super armour on most of their attacks (you don't) meaning (YAY) stun locked.
No point waiting away for their combo to finish because they get this cool backstep where they can fully dodge your attacks because despite being locked on you don't move closer, just flail unitl they jab you into another stun lock.
Camera is a pain, even when locked onto enemies in confined spaces your character can just block the enemy so you don't see them (or the heavy attack they're charging).
Hell even the first person look mode (out of combat) is garbage, if you interact (observe) something it exits you out of look mode, so you have to re-enter every time. (going off it's introduction in the funeral, unless this is a clever tutorial in which case it should show the prompt do x times like the beginning tutorials)

Maybe I would be better at combat if the 3 tutorial fights weren't spread over like half an hour and maybe I would've remembered how to fight if there wasn't another hour of cut-scenes after the tutorial. Maybe "it gets better after x time" but I'm pessimistic. If it's a fighting game let me keep fighting, If it's a story game make the story consistently good. It's both so make both feel half cooked?

Might just breeze through on easy (yuck) just to see if the story checks out, it's the strongest of the two so far. I'll update if it's really something.

Cute little demo, lack of 4K sucks but expected from such a project.
Solid hook into the mystery, however a little fast / rushed in getting there.
A longer setup could have a much greater payoff, though it's unfair to expect an hour + of setup / story.
It's great for a short 20 - 30 minute prolouge.

30 mins in character creation was fun
50 mins of gameplay wasn't.
It's bold to have dodge and parry / timed block mechanics in an online game like this,
if the camera wasn't disgusting to control maybe that could be cool, the only free aim mode is this awkward (why is awkward such a weird word to look at I don't like it ) over the shoulder?
Played their long range caster and there was like 0 indicator of where I was aiming with AOE skills (in free free aim mode).
died like 5 times in the stupid intro mission (which was so predictable like c'mon, at least make me feel more then indifference for the characters before making them my only motivation to fight the bad guys ) because turns out this thin line pointing to a tiny patch on the ground has a gigantic hitbox when it lands.

Maybe I didn't give this enough time? But these felt like core game features that turbo sucked, not just an enemy type I didn't like. I feel like AUS ping will make this combat at best terrible.

This will become(?) a sunk cost fallacy before it becomes fun (at least for me).

Took 14 hours to download, 1.3 to uninstall

Fun with great build diversity.
Something fast paced and fun I can play for an hour or so until i get one shot for standing still for too long.