Recent reviews by crushed

Probably the best track selection and variety out of every Rally game so far, livery editor, driving feels easier and nicer than Dirt Rally 2; 2 game modes rally and regularity rally, Campaign mode with management of rally team: buying cars, staff, selecting which activity to take every week etc, its more of a career type progress than a story campaign or just list of stages to play..



On the bad side: Performance issues, weird graphics issues, some challenges (daily leaderboard challenges) and cosmetics are locked behind paywall, but otherwise all maps and cars are available in base game.

If you can work around performance issues, game is great, if not wait for updates and sale.

For clarification, I've played the 5 hour trial from EA Play.

Tactical?
- No. Its as casual as it gets, but leaves some space for teamplay with friends.
Like other Battlefield games?
- I wouldn't know, i tried other ones in multiplayer through last year and i didn't enjoy them as much as this one.
Fun?
- Very much so. However it might not be if you are coming as a Battlefield fan/veteran.

I've put around over 100-200 hours total in Battlefield franchise starting from Bad Company 2 and i tried out every release after it. However, most of my experience has been limited to campaigns at start, and a bit of BF3, which at the time i didnt enjoy in slightest with server issues. Year ago i went through all releases since BF3 again to try out the multiplayer.

BC2, BF3, BF4 were probably very fun games for its time, however now they are complete ghosttowns, and even what little playerbase is left is playing a broken variants of game modes on weird servers. Hardline is one everyone pretends as if it doesnt exist. BF1 and BFV have old theme, and vehicles and combat is much slower paced, and most of leftover players are veterans which are annoying to play against to get used to the game. I appreciate the aspects of BF1 and BFV, however the fact that there hasnt been a modern battlefield for almost 10 years now leaves us with only this as option.

One of the things that amazed me the most are the gun attachments. You can carry 3 attachments of each group (scope, barrel, magazine, and underrail). You are playing in close range but you see an enemy on long distance? Press T and switch to long range scope. You are playing a DMR with long range thermal scope but you see a group of players ambushing you? Press T and switch to close range scope. You were running a compensator or long barrel but you sneaked up on bunch of enemies? Press T and switch to silencer. It is such a simple idea, but i cant explain how much i love it as it lets me adapt to any situation with any weapon. And it takes a game like this with big scale to be able to use this system to its full potential. On a lot of maps scoping players 500 meters away is actually a viable option in here.

I don't know all the reasons why other players hate the game, but i know why i like it. Very fun gunplay, big open maps with 128 players, vehicles don't feel as nearly as much of an issue as in other Battlefield games, and environmental effects (weather, time, tornadoes, etc).

I will have to say that definitely feels that game is missing something, a "soul", something like BF1 does. Maybe its the optimisation and how well the artstyle and graphics were put together in BF1, maybe its the lack of campaign, maybe its the simplicity and lack of overload of electric devices on weapons and plastic electric cars at that time. Maybe its just the game design in last few years which overall feels very strange, cheap, plastic and alien.

And to make matters even worse, there is rarely anyone chatting at all, and i didnt see anyone use voice chat yet -- if it even exists within game. Players aren't too keen on helping you out if you request transport, ammo or revive either.

Why not to buy the game:
- You dislike EA and you want to boycott it (which is reasonable)
- You dislike this turn the franchise is taking
- Game was released in a really bad state initially (it has gotten better now)
- Skins culture from call of duty that is steeping in this game feels in bad taste
- Optimization could probably be much better
- Maps arent the best thematically and they kind of get boring fast
- Players rarely chat, if at all, so it kind of feels lonely for a multiplayer game
- No campaign

Why some may want, and some may not want to buy the game:
- Crossplay
- There is a lot more movement here (grappling hooks, respawn anywhere, helicopters, vehicles etc). Expect players to fall from sky on top of you, spawn 5 meters away from you from sniper beacon.
- Character system

Why to buy the game:
- Very satisfying gunplay with premium feel
- 128 player servers and big maps
- Changing attachments at any given time, without having to respawn or go to ammo crate/base.
- Vehicles don't feel as annoying as in other BF games
- Maps aren't perfect but there aren't any choking points or tight enclosed spaces like in BF games before
- Custom servers

Im gonna get grated for leaving a positive review, and i understand that im supporting wrong values, but i enjoyed playing that much that i will have to leave it as a guilty pleasure. Its the first "Battlefield" that to me feels reasonably big to be enjoyable for any kind of playstyle and where vehicles don't present themselves as a huge issue, and where the game is still relatively new for all kinds of players to join in and have fun.

Greedfall is in a weird way a breath of fresh air in RPG genre. For me it checked a lot of boxes for things i like about RPG games in general, however that probably won't be the case for everyone. I would also call it very "optimized" RPG, since it cuts down a lot of annoying and unnecessary things in RPGs for me personally, but some of those things are interesting for other players.

It reminds me a bit of Dragon's Dogma, Vampyr, Dark Souls, Witcher, Mass Effect and Telltale games:
- Dragon's Dogma for focus on playing and gearing up with allies, they will be with you at all times
- Combat only in terms of movement and hitreg feels like Vampyr
- Dark Souls for having some really annoying enemies that knock you down or pretty much instakill, but it gets much easier
- Witcher for fighting against both wild animals and humans, investigations, crafting and preparations (ammo, traps, potions, poisons, etc), stealth and being able to try to fight kill even if undergeared
- Mass Effect for its focus on companions which are actually part of the story, not just used for combat

So without using other games to compare it, what is Greedfall like?

Its a low fantasy RPG game about diplomacy and politics, long conversations with different options and outcomes, a lot quests based on exploring different factions and the divide between and inside the factions. You are De Sardet, a child of noble, barely experienced in combat set on a quest to find a cure for uncurable disease on a newly discovered miraculous island Teer Fradee which is months of sailing away from mainland.

You are no one special, not a destined child, not a clairvoyant, nor a gifted magician with special abilities. Your only special power is diplomacy, you are a "Legate of Merchant Congregation", which grants you neutrality and diplomatic defense. This setting alone is enough for it to be a fresh breath of air in RPG scene, there is no grand war, there is no great Dragon or Demon which threatens humanity or existence, there isn't some great nemesis to get revenge against, there is no mysterious murder to solve as the game's main goal. Your enemy in this game is a deadly disease which threatens to eventually succumb everyone, and to find a cure for it you have to investigate all the rumors about it, find different scientists and healers, and you will come to many different challenges to overcome and factions to please to find out the cure. Every faction is unique in its own right, and you will have a companion from every different faction as well.

Firstly there are island natives which are living life in balance with nature, having many different rituals and many different tribes. There are different villages and chiefs who have different political views, traditions and power on the Island. You arrived on the island with help of Natus, a special faction of tattooed sailors or "sea-borns" which have very special ways of recruiting their members. When it comes to sea travel, they are the experts with hidden techniques and without them the Island would be completely cut off from outside world. Third and Fourth faction are Theleme and Bridge Alliance which have their 2 cities on opposite ends of Island and are waging wars on mainland. They are taking inspiration from Spanish Inquisition and Ottoman empire respectively. Theleme is a religious nation which arrived on Island following the teachings and lost notes of creator and saints of their religion hoping for cure in meantime. They are also capable of using magic. Bridge Alliance is a faction which looks at things scientifically and hopes to expand their influence on Island and also find the cure through conducting various experiments and expeditions. Inbetween is your faction Congregation of Merchants, which is neutral but has enough money to colonize the island and also seek the cure, and their governer on the island is your cousin. Lastly, there is Coin Guard, a faction of mercenaries and soldiers, which acts as paid town guard and mercenary for all factions, having their base in every city.

Along with you there will always be 2 companions from 5 in total (1 from every nation) which are class locked, but you can change their equipment. Companions are core element of the game since they provide a talent bonus and different choices during conversations which can lead to different outcomes. They also have their side quests.

Game uses reputation system for factions and your companions. Help them out and they will reward, remember and help you, refuse to help them and they will abandon and betray you. Every conversation can lead to reputation gain or loss, so you have to be careful balancing the reputations, since most of the time, you are the one who decides what is right and what is wrong.

One more thing i will mention before moving onto combat is that it is game about politics and conversations, you will be spending a lot of time listening to conversations, and yes i do mean listening, because everything is voice acted, including your own character. And personally i was satisfied with voice acting in this game, especially for characters like Petrus who sounds really good.

When it comes to combat it is action combat based on dodging, parrying and learning enemy attack patterns - you will get used to it relatively quick if you played Dark Souls. However there are no shields or stamina system in here, but there are meele weapons, guns and spells. Your enemies will consist of wild animals, some armored and poisonous and humans which use meele, guns and spells. Armor is biggest issue on mobs, and you have to take it down with blunt weapons, or deal magic damage which ignores it. Meele weapons are used for breaking armor and regular damage, Guns are strong but use ammo, and Spellrings which dont do actual spells, but just fire unlimited ranged missiles. There are few actual spells which use mana such as Stasis - which is extremely OP and time-freezes enemy, and even works on bosses, Heal, Armor heal, and others. You can also craft poisons which do stasis or poison/elemental damage; potions for health, armor, stealth,traps or attachments for weapons and armor, which boost their stats.

There are 3 types of statpoints. First one is skilltree which unlocks all kinds of things, 2 handed weapons and rifles, spells and fury abilities. Second is attributes used for equipping higher level items, Strength for blunt meele weapons. Agility for daggers and swords, Accuracy for firearms, Endurance for heavier armors, Mental Power for spellrings and Willpower for necklaces. Lastly, talents - charm and intuition for conversations, prices, craftmanship and science for crafting, vigor for hp and bag size, and lockpicking for locks. Talents have many uses, you can also get points for them via equipment.

Map design is instanced small maps, with a lot of fast travel camps on each map. You will backtrack a lot in this game, however it will be fast and without many enemies in the way. There is also no jumping mechanic in the game and for climbing on certain spots you will need talent stat. Maps are really compact without unused space. Although the quests will move you all around map, conversations and story makes them interesting.

Now for the downsides. Besides a lot of backtracking, maps use similar layouts for buildings, and it gets really tiring after a while. Combat might not have enough variety to satisfy all kinds of RPGs fans, but it was fine for me. I personally didn't like how the story progressed towards the ending. It could perhaps use a minimap. Stealth system isnt the best, especially since mobs bug out of their positions.

Most important thing to keep in mind is that this isn't a diverse RPG in terms of gameplay mechanics or combat, but in dialogue. You will spend hours, at least one third of the game listening to dialogue, and if that isn't your thing, then this game most likely isn't for you.


I had to cut this review very short because of Steam limit.

If you have a membrane keyboard, just dont bother buying this, it wont work, combos require too many inputs

A love child of Ragnarok / Tree of Savior, League of Legends and Battlerite battle royale, with extra sprinkles of resource management. However the most interesting thing is that it actually manages to take the best ideas from all of them and blends it all in very well in a single game, but fails to deliver on very trivial things and errors which can be fixed rather easily.

At first look, graphics dont exactly look that mesmerizing, even though the artstyle is very nice, but that is until you realize this game features crossplay with smartphones which is a very important thing when it comes to population nowadays and is very important to mention. However, despite it being a mobile game as well, controls feel responsive, you wont see any big buttons that clutter your view and port was done fairly well. There are still few issues like having to click on chat box to type (despite pressing enter beforehand), but beyond that it works pretty alright.

Being a person who only spent few hours trying out League / Tree of Savior / Ragnarok and Battlerite BR which didnt manage to lure me in, Royal Crown managed to do it very fast, even to the point where i went to explore map deeply to memorize all the best locations and start researching builds and counters. It even inspired me to write a guide/database with all items from game, but you can read up more about it in guides section of RC.


So after some time i realized what it is.. This game is a perfect gateway for people who wanted to play MOBAs, but never managed to get into them. For example, It feels pointless for me to start playing League now, there are players who have been playing for decade and it is literally impossible to catch up to them. Even if i try playing casually, there will be at least one or two people in match who are smurfs and are probably very experienced when it comes to gear, counters, and overall gameplay and having so much information coming at you all at once gets very overwhelming.

We know that so many MOBAs tried taking their piece of pie, but none of them have been successful and couldn't even stand next to League/Dota, even Battlerite which had very radical changes couldn't do much and failed. We wont see new MOBAs on PC for long time, but RC manages to provide not just an alternative, but a different game from traditional MOBAs.

So despite being a very nice game on its own, its a perfect answer for post-MOBA, MOBA-like games. Everyone is new so you can catch up to everyone else very fast game knowledge wise and you have much higher chance to win based on experience. Also f*** towers and bases, you only have to worry about your own life here.


------------------
Very long introduction aside, let me talk about the game itself.

Royal Crown is a Battle Royale game with MOBA style gameplay mechanics. It also includes crafting as its core mechanic. Matches are played either in Solo or 3 player squads with 60 players per match (although it will always be at least 50% of bots in the player count).

You start off by picking one out of 15 different characters, 3 of which are available as base characters + 2 characters which are on daily free rotation. Game starts off by usual jumping out of aircraft equivalent which for this game is a flying ship, after that you proceed to drop towards the ground and open the parachute at set height.

Now here comes to interesting part, the game always pits you to choose what to do first. There are many options - hot dropping into best towns to fight early on for gear and try to gank people with your teammates; go farming for materials which are spread far apart, or perhaps hunting monsters for exp and gear. Whatever you choose to do, if you want to win, you will have to keep doing one of those to stay strong enough to deal with enemies.

Match is, as per usual, won by staying the last person/group alive and it features knockdown/bleedout - your teammates can heal you when you are knocked down unless you bleed out or get finished off by enemy. However, you still arent dead, your teammates can pick up your grave and revive you at Goddess statues which are located in towns, or if very lucky via portable Goddess statue item.


When it comes to equipment, it is separated by 5 different equipment slots for weapons and armor, one accessory slot and 3 attribute card slots. Additionally by equipping armor or weapon you also unlock a rune slot for each item equipped making it 5 rune slots total. You cannot gather all of these in one place, you have to visit different places to find each. Armor and weapons are found in chests in towns and they also drop from PvE mobs, accessories are crafted from wood which is found in bright, grassy areas; attribute cards are crafted from papyrus which is found next to water and runes are crafted from magic stones which are found in dark and rocky areas. By the time you gather decent equip, you will already be in late mid - late game and hopefully ready to fight others for the victory.

There are also consumables in this game, which are extremely important and can be complete game changers. If you are very skilled player you can literally knock the enemy out of the small end game zone and get a default victory by them dying to zone damage. There are also stun consumables extremely useful for running away, hp shield, debuff removal, speed increase and even teleporting through walls, which can be a difference between victory and defeat. Besides combat ones, there are hp / mana potions which heal you quickly, and there is also food which is slow healing but completely heals you once you finish eating it. There is no passive hp regen, so you should always have some food.

Moving on to the characters and their skills. Characters are very diverse, spanning from Magic and Physical damage type assassins, tanks, marksmen, and even healers; and a lot of skills are copied from League of Legends, but characters usually have only or two of them copied. Despite their damage type, all characters can still equip every single item in game. Each character has 1 passive, 3 skills and 1 ultimate skill. Everyone starts off as Level 1 and has choice to upgrade one of 3 skill each level up. Each skill has 5 different stages - max level is 15. Passive skills and ultimate cannot be upgraded, and ultimate is charged by dealing damage - it doesnt have a cooldown and it doesnt fill automatically, so if you want to use your ultimate, you must do enough damage to charge it up.

Monetization consists out of 3 currencies, Gold - earned by playing, Crowns - used for cosmetics and Gems - paid. There are no pay to win items, you can only purchase characters, cosmetics and battle pass. The game is generous with cosmetic items as well. However the big problem are character prices, it takes about 30 hours of playtime to unlock one (18k gold), and after that its almost impossible to unlock another one since you only gain gold from achievements which have limited amount. This is a huge issue, making the game p2w since you essentially can unlock only one character for free.

But issues dont end here, this game is suffering from very weird bad launch bugs, server issues, and worst thing - silent developers. Purchasing items with real money is bugged for a lot of people, they spent money but didnt receive the items, which is extremely hurtful for reputation of game, especially this early on, and leaves very bad first impressions. Map could also use rework, characters need better balance, and overall much better support and communication from devs.

Pros:
- Great middle ground of MOBA and BR games
- Beautiful artstyle
- Large amount of gear makes matches always active, intense and innovative
- Very fun combat
- Interesting characters
- Free cosmetics
- No pay to win items*
- Good PC port
- Crossplay

Cons:
- You can earn enough gold to purchase only ONE character
- Expensive characters (p2w)
- Silent devs
- Some characters need balancing
- Cheaters
- Bugs

Im not a big fan of Visual Novels since they require hefty time investment... or well, i kind of am, but i dont really go around seeking for them that actively and i will barely download them when i see them. However, this one caught my eye because of its setting, user interface design and artstyle, and im glad for it.

Story itself is set in a jazz club, with Roman - old-fashioned main character which is trying to escape from complicated programming job by becoming a waiter. The story sparks up when his old coworker Eris joins the jazz club as a singer for no apparent reason.

What probably drew me mostly to like this game is that it was the only offline game i had installed during internet outage, i decided to give it a shot, and i really liked it. I wasn't distracted by anything and i had 2 hours to enjoy some jazz music and troubles of main character in the story. I'd advise you to try the same if you are going for it, perhaps disable your internet even, or just silence everything you can, to get the better immersion.

I really like how the game gives off the jazz club worker vibe, it felt like jazz club was center of the universe and that everything was relaxing, slow, jazzy and calm all the time. It made me jealous for a moment, wishing to live or work in this place filled with relaxing colors, smoke, and calming music, without knowing or worrying what time of day it is or what is happening outside. All of the scenes were happening around the backdoors, or the back alley where characters would go on break and small talk. Main character is a bit nostalgic in a way and likes to enjoy old things, like real cigarettes instead of electric ones, drink old whiskey instead of cocktails that club serves, and generally not give much attention to technology and refrain from using it, and his dream is to earn enough money eventually and move to countryside. And best thing is, the art is very moderate, it doesnt feel extremely futuristic, doesnt have cyborgs or anything like that, but still, it feels different from our world, a bit more advanced, but much more beautiful.

Story tells a bit about of waiter's life, and makes it more enticing when the manager gives a challenge for employee of the month. Roman starts getting into conflicts and competitions against Eris, which as the story progresses shows clearer feelings towards Roman, but not her actual goals. I kind of liked the ending, and if you asked me how i wanted it to end, i wouldnt even know how i would like the story to finish.

While i did enjoy the game quite a bit, there is still room for improvement, there could've been more characters perhaps, more backstory about company, or perhaps clearer goals from Eris, a bit more than just implications.. But then again, just like of a short story, perhaps the randomness and vague nature of it are the things that truly make this game beautiful and memorable.

I wouldnt mind playing a sequel or another game with similar artstyle or artists, you did a good job here and i hope to see more stuff from you!

I can connect to a lot of feelings main character has, especially on the start, since im a lazy, lonely student with aspiring parents, and while i even had chances to join any new uni i wanted recently..i still decided to keep my old one whose lectures i dislike and that teaches completely different things compared to what i wanted to learn and become in future...

A lot of things here are true as well, especially mentions about everyone being somewhat excited about new lectures and studying at start, feeling like a stranger, questioning the meaning of life, looking at everyone's age around and on the street and questioning their thoughts and motivation at that point of life, feeling how the life is passing away.. but still having a lot of time to question and grief about it. Life feels like a inevitable trainwreck that is only about to onfold, and only thing you can do is wait for it to happen. In a sense, college days are definitely unique point of life, and can be like in this story for a lot of people, it is like a second puberty, where you have much more freedom, but that freedom in a way is just making you clueless and lost, because you dont know what to choose and where to continue, exams keep getting harder and harder, and there is less motivation to complete them, so the end of college looks further and further away... You feel like you are a little bit smarter than your peers, a bit more enlightened, as if you found the meaning of life in questioning it. You keep overthinking, but those thoughts dont really ever bring any good, just justify your bad state and keep telling you to stay down and undecided on everything.

What more adds up to this overall feel are the autumn/winter months of winter semester, seasonal depression added on top of regular one.. everything looks grey, devoid of life and cold, just like the character says, cold but not not feeling truly cold because of his devoid of senses. It is like an incubator for depression, only helping you feel more down..and all the coats and excessive clothing make you feel even more isolated..

Although, i didnt experience much of party life and drinking, i guess the exact story here would describe a troubled and unlucky person i used to know, which i hope is doing better now..

In the end, the story and events of this game didnt really matter to me, i actually didnt even bother to read most of them, but how the character portrayed some of them and his overall lookout on life did - if you ask me, this story is already over, but i might try it out once more to really find out what happens in the end and if he finds a way to escape. I can assure that it can be an interesting experience to read through this if you have time and effort to try to understand the world this character is in, especially if you havent been to college or you are about to become a college student. This stage of life is really indescribable, you really have to go through it yourself, but this story does decently to give you a bit of feel for it.

However, DON'T let this story justify your feelings, make them as an example to realize that someone else feels and is going or has gone through them, and that it is just another part of life. While the feeling of cold and depression can be soothing sometimes, dont linger in it for too long, because you may truly lose yourself. Also, dont overthink and let yourself be bored, because it only leads to more overthinking. I know that it is really hard for a lot of people and a lot of them dont have much chance to choose, but whoever you are, do the best you can, and try to live your best life. I might not have chance for it (or maybe i do, who knows), and it might be a bit too late for me, but you must keep fighting and hoping for the best.

Currently, this game is filled with game breaking bugs and it isnt even possible to play it properly. i've managed to somehow reach level 10 when i was playing around a week or two ago, but now NPCs and items on map are missing. Specifically the place where the missions are selected, it doesnt appear or work at all. Game GPS thingy instructs me to walk into the entrance, but it the enterance isnt there at all. A lot of NPCs which are crucial for progression are missing as well.

I tried to make a new character in different faction in hopes of fixing this issue, but now i cant even play the first mission properly, so im stuck in first NPC area without any NPCs there. Even after i managed to enter the first dungeon/mission with my new character, mobs didnt take any damage, and there was no cooldown on my skills - game was basically broken. I tried to restart game few times but only message i had now was - "Access to mission prohibited (ERROR_NPC)", when trying to enter the dungeon. I tried doing bunch of things like moving around to different area, restarting the game, abandoning quests and taking them again, but none of those worked at all. Someone said that all of this is caused because "NPC server" is offline, so i'll take that as an explanation for now, since i cant understand why it would be broken otherwise out of nowhere.

IDC needs to step in and fix this, otherwise dont even bother downloading this, since you wont be able to play it.

Funcom is a studio which actually does things differently, for the better or the worst. Anarchy Online was a very radical game for its time and its developers werent afraid to experiment with it. It is one of the first games to be Digitally Distributed, and It is one of the first free to play MMORPGs, originally ran as a subscription based game. At its start it was considered a failure, but it managed to climb its way out of it, and remain online, even today.

So much is different about this game compared to standard MMOs today, so i'll start off from a random point:

Anarchy doesnt have quest giver markers. To get quests, you have to read, pay attention and explore, talking to every NPC along the way, and using the correct lines to reach the line that starts the quest. Story is quite good and quests are much more than simple fetch or kill quests. Game never holds your hand and expects you to learn almost everything for yourself. Funnily enough, game tried so hard to remind and teach me how to do the most basic stuff (like how to open the inventory, or how to loot the enemy), instead of things which i actually wanted to know (how equipment and skills work, which was really complicated for me). However, it is somewhat understandable, since looting and inventory were kind of new mechanics for 2001 game as well.

There are 14 classes (2 of which are DLC locked), 4 races and 3 factions (one of which is neutral). Classes arent gender locked. Getting to understand how the skills for this game work was a pain to me, and i still only partially comprehend it. Actually, the term "skill" in this game is actually referring to what we know in modern MMOs as "attributes". Things like Strength, Agility, Intelligence.. in Anarchy there are around 100 of these different attributes to manage. Besides having the adequate character level, a lot of equipment requires certain amount of points in a certain attribute in order to be equipped.

Actual skills in this game are called specials and nanos. Specials are attacks which are dependent on the weapon you use. As far as i know, weapons have either one or two specials, in addition to normal attack. They are kind of expensive having to use actual ammo, or they have a longer cooldown (30 seconds on Burst for example). Nanos (Nanoprograms) however are similar skills in modern MMORPGs and they are learned by consuming a Nano crystal for given Nanoprogram. Each class has different set of Nanoprograms to learn. Nanoprograms can be skill of any type, ranging from healing and buffs, to damage and damage shields. Interesting thing about Nanoprograms is that they use thing called Nano Controlling Units, which limits the usage of your Nanoprograms at same time. For example if your Nano Controlling Units limit is 10, and your buff costs 5 Units to use, you will take 5/10 NCU limit, which means that you wont be able to cast a Nanoprogram which takes up 6 Units, even if it is a basic damage skill. There is a special window where you can see your NCU consumption, and easily deactivate buffs with a single click.

On the beginning, map and world design itself doesnt look too detailed for today's standards, at least not on all locations, but world seems to be vast and there are a lot of things to explore. In the first town, a lot of buildings are containers with 3 pieces of furniture and one person inside of them, but on later stages it looks better, even the mob design gets a lot of variety and there are very interesting hidden away small details around, especially ones that are quest related. A lot of quests on start required me to do a bit of ground work, walking here and there, however you can unlock a car early on (on a hidden quest) and there are even flying vehicles to unlock. Imagine, in 2001, Anarchy had cars, which were not only able to drive on ground and hover over water, but fly as well!

Im not sure if all the open dungeons are complicated like this, but first dungeon - Subway, was so extremely convoluted i literally couldnt find a way out of it, and i walked around there for 10 minutes or so. In the end i resorted to aggroing bunch of different mobs and letting them kill me, so i could respawn back in town. Another interesting detail which is somewhat unique to this game is that the game locks you out of areas which you outleveled. For example, Subway is available only to level 5-25 players, and after you reach level 26, you wont be able to enter it...ever again with same character. The game does let you stay in dungeon if you reach that level while inside of it, but once you exit you wont be able to enter it ever again. For this reason a special option was developed. You can manually lock your exp gain so you literally gain 0 exp no matter what you do, which lets you play those dungeons as long as you want. These dungeon and unique equipment mechanics have made twinking extremely popular in this game. People would also go as far as making characters which would only farm specific dungeons. To cram it in here, equipment system in this game is also extremely convoluted, having almost 60, and no im not joking, freaking 60 different equipment slots. Take a second and let it sink in how much equipment that is to manage.


This game does sound quite unique and interesting and it even has unforgettable and irreplaceable Sci-Fi feeling, however if looked from today's standards and perspective - it requires a niche player which likes this genre. It can also be very interesting if you want to try something truly unique, but be prepared to face issues and dont expect to like it. The population seems to be quite high considering the age of this game, i've found at least 10 different people in starting zone when leveling, at 10 or so around the first city.

Anarchy requires huge time investment and patience to learn. Even the most basic systems of game are so extremely convoluted, that they will require you to read up on them outside of game or listen to the NPCs trying to explain it in a immersive sounding manner. You will need to gear up to beat mobs, since most of fighting is actually running dosens of buffs and using normal attack. A lot of quests require you to obtain rare items (crafting quests for example) or to do bunch of unnecessary stuff (setup a cage on ground and catch a parrot in it, after you do that interact with cage by dragging it on parrot, now you have a parrot and cage in your inventory, so you need to combine those 2 in crafting window to make a parrot in a cage item, and hand it over to NPC along your ID card...etc) which can be interesting and extremely immersive if done well, but also very exhausting and annoying at times.

All these things aside, a lot of people are using bots to level/farm and some of content is locked behind DLCs which you can access by subscribing. From what i can tell based on other reviews, game suffers from cheaters (which makes people practically immortal in PvP), and most importantly, Funcom has stopped support on this game. There will be no further content updates, besides occasional fixes. This game was supposed to receive the engine upgrade which would change its appearance drastically, there are even videos of it...but sadly it never arrived. One more thing that came to my mind is that it desperately needs search function for shops. NPC Implant shops have hundreds of different implants and its literally impossible to tell which is which, so you need to read them one by one.


To sum it up: Anarchy online is truly a unique game, extremely convoluted with very unique Sci-Fi atmosphere and game mechanics, requiring player's extreme forgiveness, extreme dedication, patience and will to learn. In my opinion it hasnt aged well, a lot of controls and mechanics are very complicated. But if it clicks for you, it will really click.

Due to its extreme complexity, cheaters, failures to upgrade, ceased updates and DLC locked content i cannot recommend it to everyone.