Thoughts after 160+ Hours of Playing

[Accused Of Everything]

So yeah, before the update drops I want to share my thoughts on Kritika: Reboot regarding its current state, things that I liked, disliked and where the game would go from here. Think of this as a pseudo-review so people thinking about playing the game could have a good idea of how it is.

- Is the game pay-to-win?

This is one of the most common complaint or issue that many try to assert with the game and personally, I don't get it. I am completely free to play and I have managed to reach 650k CP (and to be honest, this would have been much higher if I didn't spend too much on gambling on boxes and just used it to upgrade my gear but anyway). I personally define p2w if the game DEMANDS that you shill up money just to get to a certain level or even run end game dungeons, Dragon Nest comes to mind, I can run any dungeon now, and probably even do it at lower CP, and all I spent was time and effort. Premium is easily purchaseable (currently at 15m average, which is decently farmable for something that lasts 30) and it's not necessary, you can live without it. As for the grind, it's... boring, I'll get to this point later, but it's rare to find MMOs that don't ask you to run the same dungeon or raid again and again (probably ArcheAge since you can do something else but that's a whole different thing). Interestingly, the influx of paying players also means an increase of resources like coloured stones and enhancement stones, which, unless you are the ones selling them, is a pretty good thing since it's now much cheaper (comparing prices from this week and the last, it's almost halved). All in all, while you can pay to speed up your progress, you don't have to.

- About the "lack of challenge" and dull end-game

Another point that is brought up often is that levelling is too easy. In this instance, this is true. Trying to get to max level is extremely easy since the dungeons leading to there is barely difficult. Now there is a reason to this, the devs clearly want everyone to be able to get to end game as quickly as possible, since end game is generally where the meat of most MMOs are. This unfortunately has a side effect of making areas boring and at lot of pre-endgame content useless. Now they can "fix" this. Playing through the areas again on my alts makes it obvious that the health of the enemies is rather low, which tells me that the multiplier is lowered for these areas (the damage seems to be consistent, getting hit will hurt, but you can't get hit if they're already dead so that becomes pointless). Beefing the HP up could make it a bit more challenging, even if you just want it on bosses, since they still have interesting mechanics which is squandered if you just speed through them.

So alright, the game puts you on a slick trail to end game, now what? Well... get more CP, do your dailies and beat your head against New Conquest dungeons to get that Daybreak and ask people if Daybreaks even drop. It's dull, boring and tedious (yes all of them mean the same thing, but it needs reinforcement). I have no problem with grinding in games, that's usually how things work but there's not a lot of content, or even fun content to do it on. Yes, I know that there's a raid coming but as of right now, it's pretty eh. Also, maybe make Daybreaks craftable? Eh, one can only hope.

- The Translation

Yeah, it's bad. Not "I don't understand what it's saying bad", but more of "not 100% reliable" bad. It seems to be machine translated, I'm not sure, but it definitely could use some work. Oddly enough, even the developer representative in Steam and the announcements are using spotty English. I really hope they could find a better translator since communication is really important. They are aware of this however, and I do hope they could do a good job fixing it.

- Game Balance

Now I haven't played with a lot of characters but there really is a lot of disparity with skills, perhaps other players can bring up examples, but Steamwalker is notorious for having a high damage multiplier for seemingly no reason. His Ultimate goes up to 150k%, other classes could only dream breaking the 100k%. This also extend a little bit on PVP, which I'll go over next, but there really is fine tuning that needs to be done.

- Stunlocking and How it Works

Stunlocking is a major aspect of the game, and I'm fine with that. Being able to learn your combos to keep your enemy down is a fun mechanic. This lets you tackle areas which are of much higher level. However, this doesn't translate as greatly in PVP. Classes aren't made equal, I've stated that, but it really rears its head again when you realise that almost all hits in PVP can cause stagger, and some classes have more hits than others. So you get classes like Eclair and others which can combo you from 100% - to like 30%. Your only saving grace is a "burst" skill which breaks that combo and knocks them backward, but it has a long cooldown. I'm actually fine with that. What I want to go over are Super Armour skills, or specifically, how you can't cast them even if you take the weakest of hits. I mentioned I played Dragon Nest before and it had the same mechanics as this one and I loved PVP in that game, but Super Armour skills there are a lot more valuable since you can cast them as long as you are standing up, this in turn makes Armour Break skills better since you actually have to use them to keep your combo going. Perhaps my idea isn't the best, but I just know that something has to be done with it.

Also, a weird bug that I found that I think is also caused by this and is both present in PVE and PVP. If you knock people up enough, they'll remain stuck in place for a long time, meaning they straight up can't move and have to take more punishment. I don't have to explain how this is terrible for PVP, but in PVE, it creates a scenario where the last monster is suspended in the air and you have to run back to whack it again, as monsters don't despawn if they aren't on the ground, and you can't proceed if there are still monsters.

- Final Thoughts (TL;DR, Too Long Didn't Read)

Despite the negatives and problems, I love the game. It's quite fun to play, alone or with friends. The game is still trying to grow, perhaps trying to get its footing, but I do appreciate a team that is trying to live in a market where every other game is lead by a predatory publisher. The game is trying to be better, trying to be good, and I'm optimistic that it might be and I want to contribute to that growth.

So yeah, those were my thoughts on the game as of right now. Thanks for reading!

[76561199004395538]

+1. let's hope the devs will read this. probably not

[Void]

Agree with what you said, devs won't read this though

[momomo]

Im at 94 hours atm. I have 3 chars close to 200k cp (one slightly above, two slightly below) and i have 6 level 70s and two at the midway point around lvl 40-50.

Overall i really enjoy the game, but my main gripe is the endgame. I dont mind farming for stuff, I played Diablo 2&3, Path of Exile, Tree of Savior, MapleStory, Ragnarok Online etc. But the main problem this game has is HOW the endgame looks like. You rake up CP, you go in a stage, you clear the trash in room one in one attac in 5s, transition to the boss room, and one shot it with a skill or maybe use two skills on it. Clear time 10s. You repeat that for hours.

Its just not fun. I loved the dungeon gameplay, loved to plan my positions and skills to efficiently clear waves. The level design wasnt great, but it wasnt bad either. I leveled so many chars BECAUSE it was fun. But killing the same boss over and over in a single skill and call it endgme? Where is the difference between that and a treadmill? You cant call it proper endgame if its not fun. Gice us real endgame dungeons with mini bosses and an endgame boss thats actaully hard mechanically wise. Theres no point to go beyond the difficulty at which you one shot bosses, because you get more loot killing 20 bosses in 4 minute than 1 harder boss in 4 minutes. at least scale the loot correctly so harder bosses are worth it.

[Null_User]

The current stuff can be made hard and challenging if they buffed HP and added some super armor here and there. But the biggest problem this game has always had is the amount of power a player can get. Yes, power creep happens in most, if not all MMOs and games like this one, but the level here is just way too off charts. It's one thing to have enough DPS to skip some mechanics, but to outright one shot bosses?

[Grid]

+1 ,219 hrs here

[Arrow]

No I don't want them to buff up hp, I want to just go through it easy and not waste time get rewarded for the cp I earned. Disagreed completely.