Recent reviews by Teoshen

Pros:
- Core combat loop is fun, the combat has a souls-lite feel (although not difficult enough in my opinion and with some other issues, especially as introduced in the latest patch).
- Crafting seems to actually matter.
- Game is beautiful and exploring is a blast. Anything you can see, you can go explore.
- Lore is interesting.
- Sound design is incredibly detailed and high-quality. Combat sound, gathering, directional sound from other players in the distance.
- There is a good amount of build diversity, although it is limited to certain archetypes still.
- Dungeons are fun, good difficulty level, good visuals, and a clean progression of mechanics.

Cons:
- Super grindy, made worse by the new patch. For some this isn't a con, it's a lot like Runescape with grinding skills up.
- Quests are uninspired and boring. The preferred way to level is doing town board quests, which is equally boring but takes less time running across the map.
- Huge number of bugs. Normally I don't put this as a con since all games have bugs to some extent, but the launch and first month of the game are tainted by the numbers of bugs and exploits that were not fixed quickly enough or for some bugs, at all. More exploits became known later and were also bandaged or not fixed.
- A lot of the game design in this game is questionable. It's hard to point out specific things because there are so many, but as you play, you start asking why they would do it this way (one specific thing would be the way that huge numbers of low-level mats are required to craft high-level materials, which makes late-game resources worth less than early-game resources).
- I also don't often mention this as a con, but the game engine itself is questionable. It was discovered that the game is client-based, which explains why a lot of the exploits are possible. This is a core design flaw, and would require a lot of development work to correct.
- Server cap and lack of sharding makes me scratch my head, it's a basic MMO design in the last few years that would be easy to implement and fix a lot of server population issues.
- PvP is poorly designed, wars are counter to the engine's limitations (capture point PvP funnels players to specfic small areas that will lag out the server, rather than spreading the fight out with multiple objectives).
- Story is boring, which is a disappointment for such an interesting world.

Overall:
I would say that this game is worth the box price if anything seemed appealing, however, especially with recent issues, the general gameplay isn't something I would recommend to the average person.
I feel that I got my money's worth, but logging in recently and playing with the new void gauntlet weapon made these issues amplified and it did not feel fun anymore.


REVISION:
This game has gone through a relaunch that has fixed the MSQ so that it is a full coherent story, removed a lot of the leveling grind, and made a lot of bugfixes. If the above review sounds at all appealing, this game is worth the money.

Pros:
- Borderlands gunplay and gun RNG is as good as ever.
- Classes are interesting and build diversity is decent.

Cons:
- Story is very weak.
- No special voice lines based on who you are (I would have thought playing the Siren would open some new conversations and they did not).
- Story starts to feel like a drag at a point before getting into the endgame.

Overall:
- Get this if you like shooting things. It's really good for people who like shooting things. Don't get this if you want a good story or want to feel connected to the character.

The good:
- This is the ARPG with the most depth, the most content, and the most build diversity of any ARPG on the market.
- Build diversity is massive. You can make builds in any flavor you want. Between gear, gems, and the passive tree, you can make some ridiculously diverse builds. You can make a build where you spin in circles to spew out traps that explode into celestial cats. You can set yourself on fire and run screaming through maps as you melt enemies. You can sling spells, shoot bows, slam earthquakes, summon minions, summon minions that explode, summon minions that burn enemies and then explode their corpses, summon corpses that create pools of caustic ground, set up a chain of damaging yourself to set off a loop of spells. Unique items interact in certain ways to open infinite possibility.
- It's fun.
- It's free.
- Lore and setting are really cool.
- Free content patches every 3-4 months.

The bad:
- This is a ocean of depth and is not friendly to new players. Expect to spend hours of youtube videos and playing around in third-party programs like Path of Building to have the slightest clue of what's happening. You can hop in and have fun without any knowledge, but at some point you will hit of a wall of difficulty and the game doesn't do great at explaining why you're failing or how to fix it, so while you can go into the game blind and have a great time, at some point you will probably need to watch a guide and spend some time in a PoB optimizing your build.

I recommend this game. However, I will give the caveat that this game is not for everybody. For me, a game about automation and logistics is right up my alley. But for some, this game will feel grindy and frustrating as you attempt to make your spaghetti factory work.

Overall, this game is a blast. I enjoy the puzzles of making a production line work, and it's made more difficult and consequently more satisfying when you manage to get it to look pretty too.

My complaints are:
- Early game is a slog, though this may be intentional to encourage automation early on. It's about the first 20 minutes, so when you can push through that and have your power and the first few electric miners set up, it feels much better.
- Late game around blue science and then a little later, advanced oil processing, it feels like a wall of complexity. I don't know if anything could be done to smooth that but be prepared that you will probably have a little more trouble around those areas if it's your first time.

And that's really it. This is a solid game that will capture anyone who likes automation, building supply chains, or long and complicated processes. I have 46 hours so far and I plan to put in a few hundred more.