355 people found this review helpful
12 people found this review funny
Not Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 5.0 hrs on record (4.4 hrs at review time)
Posted: 8 Dec, 2019 @ 10:19pm
Updated: 8 Dec, 2019 @ 10:25pm

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.
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Developer response:
NetEase BD  [developer] Posted: 9 Dec, 2019 @ 7:18pm
We are so glad to receive your worthful feeback.

The development team also realized that take out the early access tag was a mistake, and didn't give players what they expect. Accorading to Steam community policy, we cannot change the tag right now, Unfortunately. But we will keep releasing update to improve the quality of the game, you have our word.

· Providing more content in the open world is what we want to do, we are developing various new modes, enemies, storylines, and there are updates soon for Christmas.
· The handle and performance problems on VR are bothering us, which may not be solved immediately, but we will try our best. At present, there are some schemes being implemented, such as optimizing the performance of NPC creation process.
· Fixing bugs, fix losing game saves issue is our highest priority, currently
· About the perk and skills, our prototype design was expect players become more powerful when they stack some perk and skills (such as the 30 woods you mentioned). This is too much at present, probably. we will consider to make some adjustments after receive more players' feedback.

We are recommended to play story mode with more content. Exploration mode is a pure sandbox mode, and we should have more tips to illustrate this.

Thanks for your valuable feeback again.
11 Comments
The Trashgoblin 27 Oct, 2021 @ 5:34pm 
Boy must you feel stupid right about now huh
Fumbles007 27 Feb, 2020 @ 10:57am 
I almost did not buy this game after reading your review. I am glad I didn't listen :) The game is actually pretty good, and well worth the $20.00 your comments on "barebones" was 3 days after it launched on steam, with only 5 hours of playtime. How could you not expect bugs?

Furthermore, as with any game on release date or early access, feedback and bug reports are always sought out for. Hell, even World of Warcraft is still pushing out bug report forms and player suggestions.
Kalebur 1 Jan, 2020 @ 9:40pm 
This game has definitely seen more and more improvements and fixes and it is a deal breaker when playing in VR vs PC. To be quite frank, the combat in PC is very limited, but in VR it can be very engaging and enjoyable. It is also nice to see that the developers themselves replied very quickly and owned up to their vaults.
Sir Spoony 26 Dec, 2019 @ 1:43pm 
Thanks for the review. I won't be buying this game and moving on! Will look back next year sometime! :gearthumbsup::steamhappy:
droneattack 22 Dec, 2019 @ 11:02am 
I don't know how you find the combat clunky in VR. I find the combat engaging and I like how you have to break their armor and headshots are worth more. which game would you rather have it play like?
The Trashgoblin 21 Dec, 2019 @ 8:05am 
It doesnt adress the empty world or the horrid progression. The only thing that has now changed is that instead of setting my own waypoints the game does it for me. While it is in fact interesting and I like what is going on, it is just very unfun to play for exactly the same reasons I listed before. While I havent yet completed the story, I wouldnt play the game just for what I have seen, which brings me to the gameplay component again which also falls flat atm. Again, its a framework, but this game needs polish and more content in every way.

Seeing how the devs actually seem to care I remain hopeful for further updates. I will attempt to actually slog my way through the final story missions but I dont see what could be a gamechanger there. If there is something I will update.
The Trashgoblin 21 Dec, 2019 @ 8:05am 
If you have anything meaningful to say please speak up. Blindly defending a flawed product cause somehow the truth hurts your feelings will just result in a mediocore product.

To give a further update after trying the "Storymode", sadly I must say that it adresses almost none of the issues I had. Yes it introduces characters and gives you "quests", but these are so very basic that simply playing the game normally, like in sandbox mode, without changing a single thing, advances it.
Final_Legacy 11 Dec, 2019 @ 9:00pm 
Honestly I didnt even know this game came out, when I heard about it a couple months ago I was very excited. I will probably give it a go when an update comes out around Christmas, hopefully the VR will work well. If devs can support this game will be super awesome.
Maximum Derek 11 Dec, 2019 @ 6:03pm 
This reply from the dev owning to their mistakes does make me want to buy this game
The Trashgoblin 10 Dec, 2019 @ 10:51am 
Thank you for your comment, both from Filaboia and Mike. I did not anything indicating this but I will attempt to play the story mode again.

As for Mike, THANK YOU. I half expected there to be total radio silence and that the game slowly sinks into the back of steams catalouge never to be seen again. Its great that you seem committed to changes and listen, I really want this game to succeed and I wish you the best. I will continue to play and offer feedback along the way.