Recent reviews by Ricc

Not much to do once it's finished, but it has told it story from beginning to end.

Also: cat.

10/10

Note: I played this game with the standalone launcher, hence why the hours played when writing this review is low.

Started to play this game all the way back in 2012. With on and off times of periods where I really invested time into this game and then long periods where I didn't play at all.
There is one aspect of this game that blew me away, something I don't think I ever experienced at any other game and that is the community. There are loads of people out there on this server that are willingly to go out of their way, stop doing what they were doing in order to help you. As some quests require companions to complete, this really is a beautiful thing to experience and for this alone I would recommend this game to anyone.

Other positives are:
- Good respect towards the lore of LOTR. You can experience and play through the lore as you go on in this game.
- Play according to your tempo. If you wanna rush to the level cap, you can do so. If you wanna experience every quest, you can do so.
- Interesting microtransactions setup. The game works in three ways: Free, Premium and VIP. When you are VIP, all the quest expansions (apart from a few DLC's but I'm not even sure about this one) are free for you to play as long as you are VIP along with more bonuses. Swift travel for example are even unlocked for just becoming VIP and will remain available even when your membership runs out. As it is a membership, it is a monthly or periodic fee. Premium allows you to buy quest expansions for your account that you unlock permanently. This is done using LOTRO points you can pay for or earn by playing the game. These points are also the credit in store for various items and services. So as you can see, how you want to play the game and how you want the game to open up for you is weighted to each individual. If you are a fervent player and wishes to play every day, VIP is good for you. If you like to take it slowly and play more spread out, the game can still offer more for you using the expansion packs.
- Worthless economy. This might sound controversial, but there is no hard pressure on the capitalistic part of the game. Gold is very easily attained by playing the game. Uncommon/rare drops will eventually allow you to earn a lot more gold along the line. Even then, you don't need a lot of gold to get going. For good gear and weapons etc you can also play skirmishes or instances as these currencies will give you good gear for your level. You will not get stuck in the game as maybe other MMORPGs because you don't have the money to progress.

Negative point:
- Staying a F2P player will quickly become tedious as only four area's are unlocked.
- Servers are hard cut. Your character is bound to a single server so you cannot hop between servers.
- Bots.. Maybe... Gold farming is still a thing even in this game (darn chinese) but as said before, gold isn't a huge deal.
- Toxic people, inevitable
- "long and boring" game. From my experience, the endless quests to do in order to progress and even extra side tasks such as deeds might make this game feel like a chore which is why I frequently quit.

In conclusion, I really recommend this game for many LOTR fans as it truly shows that the game devs really cares about this game, doesn't exploit it for capital gain and wants you to play the game the way you want instead of how it is designed.

This game is dead. 11K players in playlist I search for, yet for two days i basically play in a pool of about 100 players. Every game is the same tryhard and pretentious esport games where the ball must be touched every 50 milliseconds. You would then say "then dont play competitive", but unfortunately this is exactly the place where this all happens. Apparently just picking up a few games in casual with nothing to lose or win, yet everyone tryhards as it is his game to grand champion or whatever.
Also no profanity filter, apparently, but if you tell a ♥♥♥♥ what kind of degenerate waste of space he is you get muted within 48h's. So if you want a game where you aren't treated as a kid, don't pick this.
Physics of this game are just unrealistic. Basic concept of gravitational acceleration doesn't exist. Corners of the map aren't even smooth, ball reacts unpredictable around these.

So I guess the only things that really matters in this game are items. Considering there are now over 20 crates, 20 DLC's, season passes and ♥♥♥♥ me what more, I guess we really know what this game is all about for Psyonix.

I expect nothing less from an american capitalistic company.

Don't bother with this game.
When you're survivor -> Be greeted with killers who grinded out this game for 800h that know every move and strengths and weaknesses about their loadout, map and game -> Die within 5 minutes.
When you're killer -> be greeted with survivors who grinded out this game for 800h that know every move and strengths and weaknesses about their loadout, map and game -> Be constantly taunted while hugging pallets and there is nothing you can do about it.

Would be nicer if the devs actually had a basic brain about action/counter-action but it seems that you just need to sink your life into the void like this game in order to be actually good at it.

So QED, spend your time on something more useful with people less autistic.