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Initial feel is that the game is really interesting and fun, felt like a more action packed valheim which is a win in my book. We got to the end game, ended getting all the gear , finishing all the quests and visiting every POI. I played with a group of 4 friends, Ranger/Tank/Mage/Warrior.
Here are a few things I noticed during my gameplay.
Combat: I love the combat, especially the movement you can pull and stamina not being a huge issue compared to valheim where you swing two times and you're out.
The issue I had with it was the impact of fighting, I felt no impact when hitting targets like there was no weight behind attacks, it felt like when I attacked the numbers came out and that's about it, Parry is not rewarding at all, often times it feels that just blocking and hitting target will get you there much faster.
From a ranger stand point, apart from opening shot aiming to get a headshot was kind of an issue in a group since the teammates would move around and enemy erratic movement would make it very hard to get another unless it's a boss. So maybe some magnetism or aim assist would help with that and reduce just flat no aim spamming into body. Also arrow usage/farming needs to be addressed as it's very frustrating spending 45 minutes to have a few hours of gameplay with friends. Having either better drop rate for feathers and twigs or just having a chance to craft a magic quiver with infinite ammo would be a decent solution and leaving special arrows (explosive/stun/etc.) as it is.
World: World is great and for Early access game I'm very surprised at the detail, it only feels a bit empty in desert area, but that's understandable atm.
Building: I feel like building is probably the best part of the game , even though I don't enjoy building in games and always leave it to other people. It's fluid, there are a lot of options, it's not demanding with resources too much. In valheim building is much harder as there's a strain system where you have to be mindful of structural integrity and thus making crazy things there is a bigger challenge and feels more satisfying. On the other hand in valheim you cannot make a cave base or literally make a city in the sky.
Progress: It starts decent and then it feels like you can skip a bunch of stuff, last tier armor that you can make which is daunting to craft as it requires a lot of materials, I wore for exactly 2 hours before I got enough parts of level 25 armor and it felt like I could have just skipped it. I had 3 sets total in the entire game and that kinda felt little. Hopefully there's gonna be more rewarding and meaningful progress.
Balancing: Since it's EA this is probably the last thing on their mind, but it felt like the entire playthrough would be more fun if the balancing was better. As I said we were 4 and pretty much covered over all traditional roles, the game when tank and warrior and ranger played felt challenging and fun , we had to cover each other's asses. Tank was getting agro, warrior was dealing damage and collecting stragglers if we pulled something , ranger was shooting and doing damage, we even wiped a couple of times making mistakes... Then my friend mage came and all the roles just fell apart, he was healing the entire group with just being present so much that we didn't have to worry about dying at all , all that while literally one shotting bosses and entire groups of enemies while never running out of mana. I'm not gonna lie Mage literally ruined the experience for me. Can't blame my friend though since he's always a mage and just enjoys is more then anything.
On another note, the game felt like it needed some scaling for group play. Because once we had gear we would just wipe every area without much effort.
End game: I know people say you have to create end game yourself, but for me it just felt empty. In valheim you had a challenge or the area mechanics in it self to conquer using different pots or foods or gear, finding the boss and preparing to fight it. Killing the boss felt like I conquered that biome and can finally move on to the next one.
In this game so far the only boss in the game I can acknowledge was the wyrm, since it had a build up to it and special area and wasn't repeated through the game. even then there was no special preparations for it apart from just having gear and showing up. When I watched a game trailer I felt like by the looks it would do a bunch of frost damage and you're gonna have to have some protection in that regard.
As for farming the gear, since we were aiming for level 25 gear we were confined to a small area and 2 dungeons with 2 roots after that we would have to restart the server to continue farming for it, I feel like respawn timers would be in order for both enemies and loot chests.
Builds: This is very nice addition to the game and I have to say I enjoyed it very much, I hope they expand on it but as it is now I liked it very much.
Farming: This felt ok and satisfying, water is a bit annoying to get but you can get around it. Trees falling through the ground felt unsatisfying, mining and digging in general felt great.
Overall I had a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to how this game changes and spending more time just enjoying it. Even with it's flaws the core of the game is there and I feel like these devs aren't gonna disappoint so if you're thinking of buying this game I feel like in the long run you will not be disappointed.
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