Reign of Darkness
Disclaimer: I have over 255+ hours into this game and truly enjoyed this passion project. I have been power leveled, done countless dungeon grinds, tanked, dps, healed in groups. This is a critical review from an experienced player who has taken a 5+ month break and come back with a fresh character. I have also supported the developer by purchasing in game items.
As of 10/16/2020 I could not recommend this game to any new player. Between the not so friendly leveling experience to low player base. This group centric game just misses out on the party experience. There are not many active players to support leveling from 1 to 100,to even consider leveling with others, via a dungeon. Plus there is not even enough quests/mobs in the world (Outside dungeons) to get you to 100, if you went solo.
– Real player with 346.3 hrs in game
Read More: Best MMORPG Adventure Games.
AS OF 12/14/2020
As Ive played this over the year I had grown blind to what this game offers and ignored red flags with the games developments over the span of my playtime. Currently the devs are working hard on the game to push out lots of content rather than balancing and bug fixing. As more Content is released the less polished the game looks from when I first started playing with fresh Awe-struck eyes.
The quests are dull, unoriginal, and lazy, with the dialogue for them being the most bland and uninteresting I’ve ever come across in an mmo. The newest quest additions become a game of “Where’s Waldo”, looking for a hidden object in the open world. These quests tell no story and seem to be there just to be there so they can advertise “Many quests” When in reality there are no more than 35ish lackluster/ boring quests in general. Lore and story are no where in sight and tells no actual story as of right now.
– Real player with 256.0 hrs in game
Swords of Legends Online
This game is worth playing if you want to get into it seriously. Contrary to popular belief if one wishes to play this game on a casual level and not pursue mastery I’d avoid playing so this review will not focus on that audience.
Cons:
Engine - This game uses the Havoc engine, which is terrible. You can be using the best hardware on the market and your game play experience won’t be entirely smooth. There are ways around this to have a smooth performance in PvE Raid & instanced PvP environments. The game will be updating to Unreal Engine 4 in a few years.
– Real player with 856.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best MMORPG Fantasy Games.
I am the guild leader of one of the last standing OCE/SEA guilds in this game and also one of the highest DPS/Healing Bards.
Publishers (GameForge) of this game are a let down, there is a disconnect of understanding between them and the players and also they do not appear to have an understanding of how to keep their own game alive and what is best for the game.
BAD TRANSLATION - They did a poor job in translating the game, including skills and stats which leaves players confused on how to maximise/optimise each class, this is quite important due to end game raid content being extremely difficult (DPS checks, mechanic checks, enrage timers, etc). There is literally no guide or tutorial for so many things in this game that people have had to go and translate Chinese content (e.g. the card game, skill rotations, stat guides) and GAMEFORGE have not fixed or addressed any of it to this date.
– Real player with 841.5 hrs in game
Shadowbane
First of all, this game is absolutely worth playing if you are into oldschool PvP MMOs. No other game allows such in-depth character customization. Sandbox elements are present but are not annoying to the end of being “chop trees to gather lumber”. “Sandbox” here is actually building cities and demolishing your enemies' cities in sieges, hiring AI mercenaries to craft items which is another good part of this game, crafting isn’t about gathering 10 dragon scales and 1 mummy dust by repetitively killing monsters, it’s more about having mercenaries of right races placed in your forges and having resources from right zones in general, even city building (if you happen to own / manage one) is as simple as placing the building on the city grid and waiting several hours for it to go up in one click.
– Real player with 1573.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best MMORPG Wargame Games.
Overall an exceptionally poor experience.
So why do I have so many hours you ask? 1) nostalgia and 2) I played with friends, but neither of those points are positives to the game in particular. And also do not be mistaken, for an RPG 80% of this playtime was sitting afk while leeching experience from macro-bots which is what everyone uses.
So this game is mislabeled as a PVP title. It isn’t. It’s actually a zerg v zerg title and those battles are decided by sheer numbers. If it was a pvp game, you’d have skills which synergize with each other to allow for good and creative builds. Builds which later you can learn to play and get better as you get more accustomed to playing your toon. Not the case here. At first glance you have SO many races, professions and disciplines to combine that the options eem endless…until you realize that every profession has no more than 2 ways to build it if you want to be in any way viable. Yes, you CAN be a minotaur that uses unarmed fighting, except due to weapon skill restrictions (built into the races) and stat caps you’ll never be more than 20% of the strength of a proper polearm minotaur.
– Real player with 1121.8 hrs in game
Albion Online
You will notice a large amount of people posting negative reviews are the ones who complain the game is too unforgiving. They’ll say it’s unpleasant dying to groups larger than them, and how if they can’t play solo, the game therefore sucks.
Let me be crystal clear in case the store page isn’t clear enough: IT’S A FULL-LOOT PVP MMO.
Full loot: When you die, everything you’re wearing and anything in your inventory is dropped or trashed. It’s written on the doorway outside, if you don’t like it don’t play it. If I’m allergic to fish, I’m not gonna go to a seafood restaurant and order trout, then post a bad google review saying it almost killed me.
– Real player with 2973.7 hrs in game
THIS GAME IS GOING FREE TO PLAY IN APRIL! Just so if you’re interested in the game, but not willing to shell out $20 / $30 (off-sale) I don’t understand why people are hating that this will be f2p, if youwait you’ll miss out on the rewards.
($20 is a really good price imo. You’ll get a mount (Specteral Wolf), some gold, and another thing (forgot) when this becomes free 2 play.
[Long review because I see many negative reviews that baffle me, will put 3 sections for this game. Informative, Good, and Bad.]
– Real player with 2702.7 hrs in game
Black Desert
Bdo is probably one of the best if not the best mmo I have seen and its a one time pay game, no monthly subscription required. There is pay for convenience, however its not required and very much a choice. You don’t have to pay to enjoy the game and since your often getting it for free or only paying 1$ for the game since its constantly on sale. So paying slightly extra for something is not all that big a deal if your used to other mmo.
Financial stuff out of the way I have probably never play a game with a more enjoyable combat system aside from Monster Hunter World. Which you can’t really pvp in. Like any game there is some amount of toxic pvp, but ftm part its not that big an issue. Guilds and parties make the game fun to play with friends or just go adventuring in parties, doing quests/dungeons. Its has world bosses, a rewarding lvl system and you can get burned out if you go too hard trying to progress in the game. I personally switch to life skilling when I want to relax an not put in any effor which allows you to still progress in the game.
– Real player with 17075.8 hrs in game
Overall rating - [4/10] - The game has massive potential but currently its just not there yet, get it on a free-to-keep special event or on a 5$ sale and sit on the game for a bit.
Pros_
-You can cop it for like 5$ on sales
-6 year old game with better graphics than current year mmo’s
-Best combat system out of any mmo hands down
-Open world with great scenery
-There’s forced PvP (you can flag up and attack anyone above lvl 56 outside of safe zone)
– Real player with 8033.9 hrs in game
New World
The leveling experience in this game is amazing and very grinding. The problems starts the very moment you hit level 60. There is no end game content and what is available is absolutely broken. Bots, hackers , gold sellers and dupers have taken over this game several times and forced a very inexperienced Amazon staff to shut down trading and coin transfer several times for days on end. The economy is broken beyond repair and servers have died. The game started with close to 1 million players and now has about a quarter of that remaining.On a good day this game should be ftp at best. Don’t waste your money on this game just yet until amazon can prove to be good developers.
– Real player with 1227.8 hrs in game
Do you really expect us to grind elite chest 500x harder now to acheive a higher gs when other acheived it 500x faster/easier? 25 days in and it’s hard to play any more.
– Real player with 1154.5 hrs in game
stein.world
Played enough to write an honest unbiased review. The game is p2w and heavily pay for convenience. Let me tell you why. Current max level in this game is 30, you get 3 bag SLOTS upon finishing all 3 quests, 1 per quest. If you take up crafting which is a must for endgame because you have to craft your gear to progress to the hardest dungeons - there goes damn near all your space right there from crafting materials. They force all these “extra” things that take up space down your throat in an attempt to force you to buy space. You may say, “well, what’s the harm in that? they have to make money somehow!?”
– Real player with 167.1 hrs in game
This is a pixel survival crafting RPG. It has quests, weapons, armour crafting, boss fights and zones with leveling segments.
I’ve played this game for just about two weeks now and I found the game to be endlessly frustrating. This game is quite boring. It has a never ending loop of the same music that plays on and on forever, only ever changing for boss fights and caves.
Most of the people in the game are quite friendly but unless you are max level, nobody will want to group up with you to do any of the mid-tier boss fights and dungeons. I found this to be quite annoying because certain quests cannot be turned in without completing them at least once.
– Real player with 50.5 hrs in game
The Elder Scrolls® Online
Really love the game. Now playing it over 1 year and still having fun with all the content. Zenimax is bringing every year new content and there are a lot events within the game you can join. Its great to play alone or with friends or also with strangers you can meet in the game. :)
1 or 2 times per year its possible to play the game free and if you like it I recomment to buy the base game with the DLC together. Take a good look at the description at the different versions on Steam, but it says clearly what in which version is included and what not.
– Real player with 2476.6 hrs in game
Good points :
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Beautiful for a MMORPG
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More The Elder Scrolls lore
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Bosses are god tier
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You can meet Sheogorath
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Only TESO have the most charismatic Khajiit ever : Razum-Dar
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The main quests on each different places are great ( better than the main in my opinion )
Bad points :
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Updates = 75% of my 700 hours
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Can lag easily if there are to much persons in the same place ( like in events )
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Bosses are god tier
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The EUW server is often down
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You can’t marry Razum-Dar
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All the players looks the same, character customisation is a meh/20
– Real player with 701.2 hrs in game
ELYON
EDIT: Only a bit more than a week after i posted this review and i can tell you to STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM THIS GAME.
It’s clear now that the ones running the game are the same old korean Kakao that don’t give two fucks about the games longevity, just this week we’ve had a feature that was highly requested, a second mana tree page added in to the game, but guess what? It’s paywalled on the ruby shop! A second mana tree gives a big advantage for people who have both a mana tree for PvE and PvP, but that’s not all!
– Real player with 778.2 hrs in game
Despite having over 350 hours on the game and having even spent a bit of money on the game, I still have to say this game is terrible for players that are trying to progress but cannot due to “RNG” literally gating players from getting any farther than those who are just lucky to “one tap” everything and progress in a couple of hours. There are two types of gear you can equip which are normal and Breakthrough. Normal gear on failure depending on stone can either downgrade 1 or 2 enhancements or just stay the same as before the enhancement but consuming an enhancement slot. Meanwhile Breakthrough gear upon failure is just bye bye to the piece you’re enhancing. I have definitely tried to enhance about 30+ break through gear pieces in the time span I have been playing and I want to try to love this game as it does have some nice things about it, but this one thing is literally preventing me from doing so. It doesn’t help that a break through off hand piece is required to have an extra skill slot which gives those who have it an advantage over those who don’t ( like me). There isn’t even a pity system for a guaranteed like +8 after like 50 failures or anything so you’re literally just screwed or have to go about living without breakthrough gear which is stupid. This game will continue to lose their player-base and die as time goes by unless this gets addressed, but it won’t knowing how the company works. But let’s be real, no one here wants to spend a month or more of their time to only be gated by “RNG” and never progress compared to those who can spend like 10 hours, do the same enhancing as you and literally surpass you in gear. After about almost a month, I am only 495 Item level meanwhile I know a friend of mine and other randoms who will one tap two or three pieces and are all around 520-550+ item level in way less time (about 1-2 weeks and less for the randoms). This is the only thing I will say that truly ruins this game that could be an amazing piece out there despite being a game that runs on UE3 and looks older or whatever. It has variety of things to do but if you can’t even progress past the early end game point cause of “RNG” then why even bother playing this game. In it’s current state I cannot recommend it to anyone at all unless you’re prepared to face disappointment with countless hours being poured into the game and only to realize your efforts were in vain as you watch it all disappear upon failures. Also doesn’t help that you don’t have many options to get purple breakthrough pieces so makes it even worse.
– Real player with 682.1 hrs in game
Gloria Victis: Medieval MMORPG
IMPORTANT FOR POTENTIAL BUYERS :
Don’t let yourself be fooled by “the average steam review” rating, a lot of positive reviews come from players with 60 hours or even less (surely not enough to really see all the mechanics of the game, let alone fully understand them and see all the flaws), I’ve also seen a lot of negative reviews “mysteriously disappear”.
I’m fairly convinced that the right “average steam review” rating for this game should be “Mixed” or even lower.
PROS :
-It has (HAD imho) a huge potential, could have been a gaming milestone in the hands of a better development team
– Real player with 2981.0 hrs in game
Basic Review
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The devs seem competent, as proven by the fact that they made a game in Unity that could have smooth large battles of ~200 players at the same battle site, even if the battle site is a castle!
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The devs either lack experience at managing an MMO or they want to manage their MMO the way they do. Specifically; a) the game is borderline pay2win and may become more so in the future, b) when a studio is making money from a cash shop and not the content of the game, we end up with an MMO that lacks content. Unless future expansions are also buy2play (GW2 model), then Gloria Victis will end up like SWTOR. That said, the game for the time period I played it (December 18 - August 19) received multiple content additions, c) some items at the cash shop (specifically the nation transfers) create problems for the community and balancing between nations.
– Real player with 1905.1 hrs in game