Recent reviews by Merle

Will update if my mind changes after finishing the story, but so far the story is interesting and playing in VR makes the game much more immersive than 2D. The puzzles are fun too and feel designed for VR. This is my first VR visual novel and I am impressed ^^

I put hundreds of hours into this game pre-steam and it is one of the best free-to-play games I've played.

The monetization isn't as scummy as it could be. There are no paid time skips, no paid materials, only cosmetics. I am very critical of free to play models and microtransactions in games but I truly feel this game is fair about it.

The housing is wonderful and the characters and world-design are great. If you like Stardew Valley you would probably enjoy this game even if you don't socialize with other players. The movement system is fun and the graphics are nice to look at.

I don't understand the negative reviews on this game so I felt I had to speak up. This is a very enjoyable game if you are a fan of cozy games.

Negatives:
- Predatory monetization. They make the game worse inventory-wise to force you to buy the subscription. Time is money, and they know this fact. It is possible to play without a subscription, you just have to waste hours every week managing your inventory, or you can pay up and have the problem they put into the game go away. Bethesda did the same with fallout 76.
- There are almost no earnable in-game rewards and they put anything that looks nice into lootboxes (crown crates). This is a huge reason I will quit playing because there really is nothing worthwhile to earn by playing the game. Final fantasy 14 for example had over 40 earnable in-game mounts for the most recent expansion alone. That's 40 mounts you can earn in only a couple years. ESO purposely limits the content you can earn in-game to sell lootboxes.
- I was frequently annoyed by the community and I would see someone scamming in zone chat almost every day. This is partially because there is no auction house or market board just a bunch of individual guild traders and community-run sites to make them even usable and turn them into sort of a marketboard. However, the site is not always up to date and you can spend 5 minutes traveling to a guild trader only for the item you want to be sold out. This time adds up a lot.
- The game encourages selfish behavior and there aren't many things to do together with friends. It feels like almost everyone in the game is just worried about themselves and completing their personal collections. The nature of the game makes it feel like less of an MMORPG and just a single player RPG with other players walking around.
- Dungeons feel like a free to play game and the game is incredibly unbalanced, but this is somewhat a pro because you can become very powerful, but a con because levels 1-159 you feel worthless. One of the main daily things to do is a random dungeon with other players, and this is basically you and 3 other people sprinting full speed through a dungeon while one of them carries you until you are the person carrying other people. This is not really enjoyable for anyone involved, they are only doing it cause it's one of the better ways to level characters.
-PVP has been abandoned according to the community

Positives:
- Housing system is the only reason I will play the game. It is wonderful to be able to own dozens of houses and there are thousands of decor items.
- Sandbox design is refreshing compared to most mmorpgs being theme park mmos
- The environments and zone designs are well-done and it's nice to be able to fully explore Tamriel as someone who played the series a long time
- The card game is genuinely good and balanced
- Public dungeons are probably the most fun you can have in the game with other people in my opinion

Overall I cannot see a reason to keep playing a mmorpg where the devs purposely make the game worse to manipulate their fanbase into spending more money. If you want to play this as a single player game, you might have more enjoyment than I did, but even playing the game as a housing sim I could not get past all the issues listed above. I won't be buying the next expansion and I'll be getting the last enjoyment I can from housing before I quit completely like I did with Fallout 76 for similar reasons

I didn't play this game

Other games that try manipulate me out of money get nothing. Deep rock can have my money :)

If you like horror movies and choosing your own adventure you'll probably like this :) It feels like a lot of work was put into this game

I was excited to play this in the humble choice because it looked like fallout shelter but it is nothing like fallout shelter. I almost quit playing after the first few difficult hours of the game, but the game was charming so I kept playing. If you play this game expect a lot of buying/selling and time management. Before giving up, I recommend going to the guides section on steam and reading the beginner guide there, it helped me a lot :) Also turn on the option to always run in the menu.

Couldn't put it down and finished it in a single sitting :)

Feels like old battlefield in a good way :)

Wonderful characters & compelling story ♥