Recent reviews by The Trashgoblin

This is mostly focused on the most recent update.

Opening up with the fact that the new UI is absolutely atrocious. But at the same time, devs have responded on steam, they are aware. And lets be honest, any actual new player does not know the old UI and will have less difficulties with it since there is no whiplash to several years of ingrained processes.

With that outta the way, Hunt is currently in the best state it has been in years. The event is taking the best parts from past events, middle of the map cache, more options for event points, more ways to earn said points. Pacts are decent and each fits a gameplay niche. The wild target this time functioning differently from rotjaw is interesting enough.

The Map is good, and while it has my probably least favourite compound in the entire game, the total package makes up for that. Plently of long fights and close quarters compounds, with the compounds having more ways inside which encourages roaming for both attackers and defenders. Also general loot is more readily available with tents and houses you find generally having something of actual use. And it has been more stable and has had less bugs for me than any of the other 3 maps, so I hope they will get the engine update and some work aswell.

Gameplay wise the new guns are good, the new ammo choices are good, perk reworks are good. I think medium range is the weakest right now but the new 145 damage gun certainly makes me raise my eyebrows.

If you are a new player, the game is on sale regularily, try it. If you are an old player, you asked for this.

First and Foremost:

This game is not finished. This is early access and the fact that it is not labled as such really makes it seem like a cashgrab.

I will start with the Pros and Cons and then tell you a bit about my experience. I hope the devs read this aswell.

Pros:
Nice Artstyle
Pretty world
Good overall asthetic, the mesh between setpieces in the world and equipment fits quite nicely
World is pretty big compared to other games
Good sense of exploration and freedom

Cons:
Combat is barebones and janky
Buildng is barebones and not thought out
Leveling is too fast, the stats and perks need some heavy reworking
Performance is abysmal
Story is nonexistant
Villager system is barebones
The research system is barebones
Random bugs, sometimes gamebreaking
Most of the systems in place seem like placeholders
No content

Summed up impression: The framework of a game that is the offspring of Breath of the wild and VRchat, as thought up by studio ghibli.

Lets start with my experience here:

You get dropped into a kinda hubworld with no explanation of anything really, you get basic WASD buttons shown and E to use things but nothing else. I had the lobby randomly switch between being totally empty and being filled with 20 people screaming different langauges at each other at full volume, even with voice turned off. This is where the negatives of the VR aspect comes in. Its like the devs took inspiration from VRchat in all the worst ways without the tools to counteract any of it.

Moving on, you have access to a world finder for public worlds, a "room" for your character where you can switch between the current 2 playable characters and change appearance if you unlocked anything for that. Seems like more chars are planned? (early access impression again) And, every other portal you can use to either create a private or public world.
You do this by placing a shard of the world to create and then loading in. It seems there are quests and storylines you are supposed to play in a world however I have not found out how to actually activate those and havent found a person that has. The only world I was able to create was kind of a free form sandbox exploration thing where the only goal was to "not let your village center die".

The world loads and I am put next to a totem pole, my village center, with 2 villager npc who are friendly to me. ( I created this world 4 times to check and every time it was the same with the same spawns, its not generated, its set). Instantly these 2 aggro 6 level 10 bandits that have spawned 15 meters from the village and combat begins. Seeing how this is clearly made for VR the combat is janky, rigid and quite frankly a joke as I manage to cheese these bandits and instantly level up like 6 times. Meele is horrible and Ranged combat barely working, its a cluster♥♥♥♥ really.

With that problem dealt with I begin building and crafting, gathering mats etc. I find out about research nodes and them unlocking things, get instantly disappointed upon learning that they basicly spawn duplicates and that all in all there is maybe like 20 building recipes and 30 crafting ones, half of them mandatory with no variation whatsoever. I learn that villagers work on a happiness system with food and water and buildings have appearance scores etc. yet you cant really rasise that by building decorations since those dont exist at all? Poorly thought out, seems like an afterthought to just get something in so they can slap crafting/building onto it.

Speaking of that, about gathering. It goes off stats you raise with leveling yet you always have a chance of succeeding, the "requirements" to harvest basicly any material in the game you can have from leveling up after a single fight, thats how totally useless the entire system is. After about 2 hours of playing I was so overleveld that cutting down a single tree would drop me close to 30 wood onto the floor in a pile that I could not carry since harvesting perks seem to stack. Putting crafting unlocks between stat increases and actual passives also seems weird. Very poorly thought out and balanced. And then on the other hand I took 30 minutes to find 5 resin cause it would give me a single one every 10 trees or so, it was pretty bad.

Moving on, I found vehicles and actually had a blast exploring, the setpieces, the locations, the creatures. When the game doesnt ♥♥♥♥ itself performance wise its amazing, I actually had fun driving my motorcycle around a desert and looking at ruins and certain creatures I wont spoil, it felt great. I found questgivers and more villagers, collected research items. This is where I had fun, which makes the next part so devastating:

That alone cannot hold the game up. The devs put attention into crafting that world, but not into anything else. The world is amazing but ultimatly empty. Found a ruin? Maybe it has a single chest, same as a random hut you find on the way that is the same hut you have seen 100 times. Weird statues holding a floating orb in a cove at a forest? Does Nothing. Why not climb the mountain with the weird stone formation on top to see the surronding land? Great, but there is nothing on it. Distilled down I basicly raced from glowly research item to glowy research item while looking at the scenery and in the end my reward were like 10 recipes that mostly do not impact the gameplay in any way.

And unless I missed something that is the current game. I have about 4 hours total now and I have everything. Sure my villagers are whinging and moaning about happyness but there is no impact to that. I dont need them. There hasnt been any attacks on my village, the defences I built are basicly useless. I havent died to hunger or thirst once. I dont even know if there IS a game over.

So all in all: great presentation, abysmal gameplay. Falls flat as a VR game since its an empty sandbox essentially. Falls flat as a non VR game for the same reasons, just that you get all the bugs of a VR game on top, like the camera fusing into your body or menus disappearing etc. And thats not mentioning untranslated chinese items, items with missing code or description, the villagers clearly using wrong voicelines for the situation, horrible AI pathfinding, horrible and glitchly physics (for example that standing on a mechanic parts node while destroying it will railgun you into the sky, try it) and just straight up game crashes and performance spikes.

I really want to like the game, I really do but there isnt much game here. PLEASE DEVS IF YOU READ THIS, think about putting this in early access. The other reviews are right, this isnt a finished product and selling it as such will harm it, as the mostly negative ratings are clearly showing. Work on it in EA, get input, expand it, iron out the bugs. I have unironically played porn games soley funded by patreon that are more fleshed out and have more depth to them than this game in its current state. How this is possible with Netease behind the game is just confusing to me. I just hope that this isnt vaporware and will be dead in 2 years. You have a great framework, please rethink your approach and expand it. I write this cause I want the game to be what the Promo material and trailers show, not what it currently is.

After playing the normal game with friends and reaching a godlike status where nothing can touch us we decided to try a mod for a more survival feel that added and changed a lot.

After several maps and hours poured into this True survival mod it ended with 30 boomers storming our tower and taking out the entire lobby. After that we decided that nothing we can possibly do,except moving bases every day, will ever change this and we might aswell end it all. We collapsed the entire bottom ring of the tower hoping to let the tower collapse onto us and end it all.

The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ thing floated and wouldnt do it.

Never in any game have I been cucked like this, I hear people on camsites pay for this ♥♥♥♥. I give it a 10/10.

DO NOT BUY THIS. Seriously. Buggy as hell, the landscape and geometry and boring and not even put together right ( giant spaces between walls and floor, floating houses), boring combat, the "dark elves" look like humans except that they have red armor travelling is tedious as the enviroments are plain. The only fairly decent thing about this game is the voiceacting. If it gets better later on I dont know, I stopped after 3 quests. The most boring rpg I have ever played.