Recent reviews by Sudeus Minmaximus

Yeah, just buy it if you have the least interest in roguelite deck builders or solitaire games. It's worth every single penny. Accessible and simple to grasp but complex to master, you'll spend hours and hours. It utilizes poker hands as its main gameplay mechanism, but an interest in poker is not required--it's not a poker game in the traditional sense. Deserves its reputation. Grab it if you're bored or in a gaming funk. You won't regret it.

If you have appropriate expectations, this is an addictive short-session (up to 30 minutes, in the current build) roguelite that's well worth the current $2.99 CAD price tag. Know that you only control you unit's movement; all attacks are automatic. This threw me at first--everyone had been calling it a deconstructed action RPG so I had expected a clickfest. But what it is is very good, and surprisingly addictive. I see it more as the 2D analog of Devil Daggers than an RPG in a conventional sense. My main complaint is typical for this type of game--the beginning of each run is boring, as are the repetitive enemy patterns. But I still got 12 hours of enjoyment for the cost of a cup of coffee, and the game's still in active development!

New World is a game with a lot of smart genre refinements, but it should have stayed in beta for another 6-12 months. I've had the opportunity to accumulate 700+ hours played since launch and I've enjoyed the vast majority of it, but there are so many nagging bugs and UI issues that remain two months later. They're acknowledged on a list of known issues, but other matters are repeatedly prioritized. Often these are valid issues such as server problems and dupes/exploits, but it's still very frustrating.

The game itself is addictive and fun. The endgame is a grind, but you have multiple tasks to work on so it stays fresh for a time. The game world is beautiful, and the music and sound design is some of the best I've ever heard. The game seems a bit torn between sandbox, themepark, and PvP/territory control modes of play, though, as implied by its development history. New World tries to offer the best of all worlds but often misses the mark when scrutinized. While Amazon Game Studios intelligently have a lot of content in the pipeline, I think it's unlikely most gamers would want to hang around longer than a few months at the moment. But a couple years down the road, this is going to be a very deep and celebrated game if AGS can get their act together and receives the support they need.

Social involvement in a guild (i.e. company) isn't mandatory, but it's highly, highly encouraged. You really need to be coordinated on Discord to be able to experience everything the game has to offer. (Especially since in-game voice is one of the things that frequently doesn't work right.) Unfortunately New World attracts an element of "bro" culture and related semi-toxicity, at least on my server. But that's probably universal in social gaming. Finding a diverse, friendly guild alleviates this to an extent, but the tone in public encounters and chat channels can still feel oppressive.

Should you play this now? If you love MMOGs and want something new, absolutely. You'll certainly get your money's worth. But you'll be frequently frustrated and disappointed the longer you play. How well you'll tolerate that depends on you. I've put up with worse in my gaming history to enjoy an otherwise captivating experience, but not by much.

02/06/22: About a month/200 hours after posting this review, I quit and have had no real urge to return outside of missing my guildmates. I don't think any of my opinions changed; I foresaw hitting the MMORPG wall soon. But I will say that with due respect to the many people who have and continue to work to make this game a reality, the development team is on some level incompetent, and it's so frustrating. Known major bugs continue to exist months after launch. New and ongoing design updates focus on the wrong issues and vex the playerbase. So I revise my conclusion: the game isn't worth your time. Rather, you may have a lot of fun with it, but frustration will always win out. Hopefully, AGS (or the meddling management team?) gets it together and this game can have a renaissance in a year or two.

Inspired me to come up with all kinds of creative new curse phrases.