CW: Inevitable Runescape comparisons.

This is an incremental idle/clicker disguised as an mmo. It's mechanically very shallow. Click on the resource to gather the resource. Click the crafting station and wait to turn resources into finished products. Sell products to vendors. Repeat. The level cap in each skill is 500.

Some resources require a tool. Tools can be incrementally enchanted to increase your experience rates by a factor of a little bit more than one.

Combat is far more interesting. Click the mob, then watch your health bar. If it gets too low, you can choose to run or eat a potion or die. Sometimes they drop gear with bigger numbers on them.

As you level up, mobs and resources in the world get replaced with bigger-number versions of themselves. In fact, most progress in this game is just getting things with bigger numbers on them.

There are three skills in the first two episodes: Click the Resource, Click the Crafting Station, and Click the Mob. They're called something else and they were copy-and-pasted a few times so there're actually nine in total because why would you want to do something once when you can do it three times?

Quests will often interrupt themselves with an arbitrary skill grind partway through so that you don't accidentally get immersed in the story.

Runescape has a variety of different activities in terms of how many things you can click on and in what order. Brighter Shores tries to take this design and streamline it to the point where you practically don't have to do anything. In fact, you don't have to do anything. At level 20 in each skill, you unlock offline training, so you can gain exp and resources while playing something better.

Very well-polished mmo especially for early access. You can tell it was made by the Gowers and this is a good thing imo. I have played RuneScape for almost 20 years and have become fed up with the current Jagex regime and the bot crisis that devalues the time I invest in the game. Brighter Shores, as the name suggests, is a refreshing new take on the MMO genre and I feel like my time is better spent grinding a game that isn't dictated by money-hungry corporate fools. Brighter Shores is a more pure, modern, and exciting MMO/sequel to RuneScape and I am so glad I get to experience its early stages.

I really want to give this game a positive review, but I can't in good conscience. After playing for 70 hours, I start to realize I have more things I dislike about the game than like. It's like a feeling of pushback and thoughts like what I am doing does not make me hopeful for the next level; rather, it makes me feel dreadful because it's another chore that does not unlock anything significant.


Combat: I have played Runescape in the past, but this combat is just not it; it's too RNG-based. You hit from 0 to MAX. I can appreciate simple combat like Runescape, but this is something else. Where is the fun?

Itemzation: This one is probably the biggest challenge for me. If I play an RPG, I expect a sense of discovering, finding, crafting interesting loot, or finding something unique... But what we get is just bland green to legendary same weapon type in the current level range nothing interesting but more RNG.

Mobs: Fighting is not enjoyable either you think you have better gear until the same mob levels up " Level Scaling" changes skin and name and now your gear is worthless you never feel like you get strong but you're running on a treadmill with no way of feeling like your investment payed off.

For now, as the game stands, it's not worth my time and investment. Maybe one day it will be more than the sum of its parts. I will keep a close watch on how things change over time and might change my mind, but right now (I don't recommend it).