Recent reviews by BlueSpider

Definitley one of the better Indie games I've played. Should say ahead of time I'm not a Kickstarter backer just found this game browsing through Steam.

There are a lot of things I enjoy about this game, i'll get into that below.

What I like:
-Progression. While it's still in an early state the progession system isn't bad. Each dungeon level you get treasure, which you can in turn open back at the Hub. The items you get from them range from gems to empower your weapons, armour, dye, and weapons. You definitley see yourself powering up overtime atleast early in the game.
-The Art style. Love the graphics and how the game looks and feels.
-Soundtrack. Honestly love the music.
-The bosses. Each boss has several mechanics to watch out for. Feels like Zelda boss fights, and it's fun to see yourself figure out the mechanics of a boss after fighting it a few times.
-Loot/Customization. Love the customization in this game. There are a ton of Dyes to collect, multiple armour sets, and quite a few weapons.
-Gem. There's acutally a reason to clear every room in each dungeon. You gain "souls" which you use to purchase upgrades for your weapon every run.

What I dislike:
-After a while when the progression slows down it feels a bit grindy and repetitive. I don't personally have an issue with this but it is an issue nontheless.
-I honestly dislike the Charger enemy type. Super annoying and tedious to fight, but I guess what is a game if there arent any challenges.
-Keyboard/Mouse support isn't fantastic. Would definitley like to see you be able to rebind the keys.

What I would like to see:
-Armour giving stats. This could add for build variation not just through the weapon. Pretty sure it said in the Kickstarter sets would give bonuses when the full set is equipped but i have yet to notice that even with a full set.
-Able to switch keybindings for keyboard/mouse.

Honestly the game has a good solid core expirence that just needs to be extended upon. Obviously the game needs additional content down the road, but I have confidence the Devs will deliver and make this a fantastic little game.

I'm going to be honest, I really wish Steam reviews had a neutral because I can both recommend and not recommend this game depending on the person. The nostalgia hits hard right off the bat and the game has a really good foundation to build upon. That being said the game/devs have a lot to work on and there are still a solid amount of glaring issues with the game. I almost think it's a bit unfair to judge the game in the current state because it really feels like EARLY EARLY ACCESS.

I've been a fairly long time player of AE games and hit level 15 before writing this review.

Progression:
Progression while having a good foundation and core is pretty frustrating and most of the time not fun at all. Leveling feels a little to long past level 4 with quests just being repeats essentially (EX: Kill 4 Skeletons, Kill 7 Gargoyles, then Kill 10 Skeletons). It's utterly painful to level past 12-13, as there are only enough quests to get you there basically. After that your best option is to go to a bridge and spam 2 abilities the entire time until you're level 15. It's really honestly quite terrible because it's to much of a grind basically doing nothing. The main reason a lot of people automatically dislike this game is because you don't feel like your progressing essentially at all. The first few zones are fine but once you get a little deeper into the game the flaws really show. On top of that you will enter some zones under leveled/under geared due to there not being enough quests to level you up.

On another subject we have gear. Gear progression is surprisingly not terrible. In each zone the mobs drop crafting materials that you turn into gear. The gear then costs a bit of gold to craft and takes a certain amount of time, you can however pay to speed up the timer (not worth it at all unless you're extremely lazy/can't wait), timers range from 5 minutes -> 5 hours (with some minor items being 24 hours that you don't need) but generally fall into the 1-2 hour period. It's a really cool foundation for gear progression but can definitely fall culprit like level progression to feeling grindy at certain points. Level 15 is where the flaws start to show. You're basically forced to build more tanky to a degree because of how hard some mobs/bosses hit. Build diversity isn't great which is another glaring issue.

Honestly just making more enemy types to give variety would be a great addition to the game and give it a little flare. I understand AE is working on some more zones so we will see how those zones turn out.

Combat:
Combat is fine, it's like any other RPG. You have your basic attack, 3 other abilities, and basically 1 ultimate (although it just feels like 4 abilities). It can feel buggy at times due to what it feels like lag so that might just be the servers. You can animation cancel some abilities which is cool and adds a slight skill ceiling to the game. Aggro on the other hand needs some work. Right now the mobs target the biggest threat (aka the guy dealing the most damage) which is a pretty big problem. One class, The Guardian has a taunt of sorts but right after you use it if someone bursts really hard the boss automatically goes over to them which kinda sucks because Guardian is the one meant to be tanking. I get Artix doesn't want traditional tanks in a sense so the game isn't to easy but this leaves little room for DPS builds to shine due to how hard some level 15 mobs can hit (even the trash). Combat is honestly fine right now but can definitely be improved upon, hopefully we see some improvements in the future.

End-Game:
Oh boy you finally hit level 15 how exciting. I mean it is exciting to a degree, but there's not much to do. You do have a few options though. You can go back and finish off some quests you didn't do, farm the level 15 dungeon and craft some sweet new level 15 gear (you can also get some cool gear drops from the bosses there), farm Acevorah for Vorah dagger, farm event dungeons (if there are any going on if not you're out of luck on that front), go back to the bridge to farm Gold, help people and just mess around elsewhere. As you can see there isn't much to do. Sure there are some 1% drops you can get but that's honestly just fake progression that really doesn't amount to much other then showing off. While feeling powerful and carrying people through the final dungeon is fun it slowly loses it's exciting feel and goes back to being a little grindy especially on some Holiday content. Artix has said we can expect raids and stuff in the future so I still have hope. Like everything else it has a good foundation it just suffers from the game being so early into development.

Classes:
I'm not gonna sit to much on this because there are only 4 Classes in the game. Mage (DPS), Rogue (DPS), Warrior (Tank/DPS), Guardian (Tank). It's to early to judge but it looks like they're going the route of all their past games with how they make classes. I urge Artix to look at some other cool mechanics they could use to make classes (a resource other than mana, 2 form characters (etc)). Classes are pretty cool but The Guardian class is locked behind a $20 paywall and is arguably the most fun class to play (well for me personally).

Micro-transactions:
Oh boy. You're probably expecting this game to be filled with them everywhere due to it being an Artix game and also being able to be played on mobile. I'm gonna be honest, I was surprised at first with the lack of not being able to literally buy progression. Sure you can speed up crafting and stuff but it's ultimatley not worth it. It's headed in the right direction so lets hope and pray Artix doesn't screw it up and it ends up like basically all their other games. The only major paywall is The Guardian pack. You can pay either $20 or $50. The $20 version gives you the Class, 2500 of the games currency (Dragon Crystals), Guardian gear (which is fairly useless after early levels you can however upgrade the weapon to 15), access to the Guardian Tower with some fairly useless quests (I shouldn't say useless they've stated it will lead somewhere but for now it's pretty useless, Founder/Guardian Badge. The $50 on the other hand gives everything above, 7,500 more Dragon Crystals (10,000 in total), Dragon Guardian armour/wings (again useless past a certain point), and a pretty cool looking mount. These packages are actually a pretty good deal for the game, but are quite expensive for what the game is in its current state. These packages are a great way to support the Devs however so if you wan't to do that it's a great idea! Overall while you can pay for the game to progress faster it's not littered with micro-transactions YET.

Graphics/Gameplay:
I don't mind the graphics personally but I can see why you might. What they're going for is a classic feel back to their older games while still keeping it a bit fresh/updated in 3D. I personally like it but it definitely looks/feels outdated. You could blame the fact it needs to play on mobile as well. I know a lot of people care about graphics but honestly judge for yourself. Gameplay is a little buggy at times but overall fairly smooth so no real complaints there.


Honestly I'm bit hesitant to thumbs up this game due to some of its glaring issues. But Artix seems committed (well they kinda have to be due to their Kickstarter) so we will see what happens. Not to mention I sorta enjoyed the game even with its flaws. Like I've said multiple times the foundation the game was built upon is honestly fantastic and just needs to be worked on. I urge Artix not to rush the development and not release the game itself to early unless they're 100% satisfied with how the game works. Artix has a huge issue with its past games in the form of micro-transactions. So far it seems to be under control but we will see what the future holds. I will keep this review updated if anything drastically changes in the future.

Honestly this game has a lot of potential and I have enjoyed my time thus far with it. It's a fairly simple Battle Royale simulation (like Hunger games). I really don't feel like I need to go over the basics of the game it's pretty self explanatory but I will below.

Essentially you pick who you want to fight against each other (you can creates custom characters, use workshop characters, or use the base characters) and then they go at it on a randomly generated (or created) map of your choosing. You can create "event" circles that essentially are there to harm competitors. You can create landmines to hinder competitors and call in airdrops to give competitors supplies. Last person standing wins.

WARNING! Wall of text below.

Will update as game is updated.

Good:
-Easy character creator.
-Good range of base characters.
-Easy to use map creator.
-Easy to use event creator.
-Fairly simple UI (at first you might be a little confused but after 1 game it's fairly simple to navigate and understand).
-Character interaction/item interaction (people will team-up/have an invisible inventory so it adds an extra layer of watching who gets to airdrops and such).
-Time speed up (so you're not waiting around forever in the final 5 or so).
-Pretty decent variety of maps.
-Easy to upload content to workshop.
-Workshop in general adds an extra layer to the game.
-Harambe.


Bad:
-A lot of bugs that need to be fixed and QoL improvements (creating group with same name as another un-checks all in that group, unable to edit "catchphrase", etc.).
-Some crashes here and there.
-Lack of animation, mainly for preset events (although it's somewhat understood due to custom events).
-Ways people are killed are repeated multiple times over and over.
-Doesn't tell you what stats do exactly. It's fairly simple to infer what they are but overall it's a bit hard to understand what they mean from the get-go.
-Crashing after deciding not to pick a character portrait for a custom character.
-Lack of settings option (more resolutions mainly).
-A controls menu (mouse scroll to make events small/bigger and stuff like that).
-There's another game on steam called Ultimate Arena.


Some suggestions for the developer:
-Make a separate box for kills/unique interactions. I want to be able to read both but especially at the start of the game it's very difficult. (Be able to toggle them on and off).
-Possible view of characters inventories.
-Give the player some better interaction with contestants. Like give them the ability to heal contestants and stuff like that. It's in a great general direction currently but could be improved upon.
-Different shaped events (like a straight line for an bombing run or something like that).
-More unique events (like feasts, airdrops that take a while to hit the ground and other stuff like that).
-Tired meter? I know it's based on stats but it would be nice knowing when people would fall asleep.
-More variety in loot (I see a lot of bricks and spears) - could also tie in with inventory system and kill lines.

I've really enjoyed commentating Battle Royale's since my friends can't see my screen and overall completely enjoyed by experience for $3(USD). I personally created the Dota 2 character/Map and based their stats somewhat off stats from the actual game.

Like every game it's a unique experience for everyone but I personally tried to highlight what I enjoyed. For $3 in my opinion you cannot go wrong.