Recent reviews by Moonjava

So, Here's the deal:

Its a very good game, tons of things to do, difficult content, great bosses, amazing build potential that just gets better whit every new character release.

There's a reason why the game is so popular.

But I do want to highlight three major issues with the game:

1. Microtransactions are wildly overpriced. If you want to look good, you gotta pay some pretty big money, with basic full sets of gear being about 30 - 40 dollars, the nice premium sets around 80 dollars, and god forbid you buy the crazy 480 dollar supporter pack. Yes, I get that its all cosmetic, aside from the stash tabs, which, by the way, is really the only way you can make what's right and left in your minimal storage. If you're wondering what to do with the points that come with he game, its that.

2. The crashes and Freezes. I run DX 12, as vulkan insta crashes the game with my hardware. I get a hard lock/freeze every 30 minutes. I did cap my frames, I did try many settings, I even did one where i only ran a melee weapon with a basic attack. Its horrible right now, and needs to be fixed, the only thing that saved this review is that it resumes you where you leave off when you relog. The server lag spikes are horrendous as well, its gotten me killed a few times.

3. Speaking of getting killed. This game has a blatant disrespect for player time investment. it takes me around an hour to get a little over 10% of EXP bar progress in the late game. When you die, you lose that. If you're expected to always play the hardest content to progress, as it seems like its the case, but punish your players for doing the hardest content. You make some aspects of your game oxymoronic. The point of the game is to make awesome builds, that's your number one appeal to the game, but that systems alone screams "Play the meta builds so you can blow through the game, then have fun after." The entire atlas tree is about making the maps harder too.

And yes, I know there's some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ that is a consume-able that makes it so you have only 5% loss, but you know what? I work for a living, I cant no life grind this game for that item, and if I have to spend high end resources to get it, then I need to grind that resource, and then buy it, for it to be consumed because I stepped in a pit of fire hidden under the warzone of SFX obscuring the floor.

So if you have no clue what grass feels like, then yes, you will love this game. Every time I lose that 10%, I want to quit right then and there, take no risks in higher tier maps.

Yes, just yes.

Does the AI sometimes do weird things? yes, its the first iteration of the release, take a breath folks.

Is there weird typos? sometimes, yes.

Is this game awesome? Yes, its the best moba team manager i've seen to date. Randomized patches? more champions coming? Workshop support allowing players to make champions?

Is this game worth your (currently) 15 dollar? Yes, 1000 times yes. If you like team management sims, buy this game. If you want something on your other screen while you work? Buy this game.

You have to think when you draft, and place you champs in where they go, know the patch and what they're up against for the strategy. Your washed players play like crap and run it down like imaqtpie. This game runs on a toaster. Looking at my graphs as I manage money to recruit prospects and talent is pure, uncut crack.

My only two other hard critques? No super minion spawner, could be a map change patch or something as the game develops, in fact, you could have map changes as a patch, bushes moving, maybe the river, jungle changes, effects the serpent gives your team. How does the system work for modded champions with the patches? Will they be affected by patch changes? The ability to make your own logo in game would be massive, and add them to a league. More player customizations would be nice as well.

Either way, yes. I love that your players age out, and you have to rotate players. That you have to manage money, and its not just a static "You picked the Polar Pounders, and they get 5 million to do stuff, and that's all". The more you win, the more your players shine and merchandise, the better you do setting up the game, the more money you can make.

Fun game, there's a mech for everyone.

Played season 3, and now started in 4. The store changes are nice, as it deals a bit with the FOMO devs love to force onto player. The low player count is rough though. With the start of season 4, i'm starting to see players in casuals. It sucks to get onto the extraction style map and have 2 AI teammates. Its still fun to play casual with AI, as i'm happy to just play, and being the only player, there is still the potential to lose due to team comp.

If you're here for the solo tower mode thing, there isn't much to it. They made such nice maps and went with a wireframe tower.

I have a sincere concern that S4 will be the "Last ditch attempt" at the game with its player count. I got the season pass, and i'm happy to try and get the past supply boxes with the earned currency. but paying 40 dollars for the Ace mech I want feels like its just going to dissapear in a few months.

Runs great on my PC with no crashes.

Edit: Maybe just adding a toggle at the bottom "Don't fill AI" or something, with a warning that says players may need to wait long would go over well with the playerbase. It prioritizes players getting into a PVP match.

Fun game. You wont have fun if you didn't play majesty. I skipped the tutorial, and the for whole first floor, I wasn't given any other recruits, luckily my godbeast carried. But a lot of people complain they have no idea what going on.

The art is really good, the bugs are really bad. Game CTD on boss spawn for the second tile set, which is very frustrating when a map takes upwards of 30 minutes.

Could use some more recruits.

From art and sound, its really cool. but the designs of the characters are very disjointed, there's not much cohesion between the different adventurers other than they're anime.

Its a good start.

Here's the hard reality summary. It was supposed to be an MMO, and it shows. Naval combat doesn't have meaningful wind changes or physics, and the combat feels like a health bar crusher rather than an immersive experience. The difference between passing a certain point in the game is a matter of if your gear/ship is high enough level, forcing you to grind resources. Mobs don't feel dynamic, and you can de-agro them, or cheese them at the edges of their zones.

I agree with the multi enemies at once in ground combat issues, its a death sentence. You can navigate around it, but it forces a poke and punish fight rather than a souls like combat.

When they say there is 70 hours of content, they mean 60 of them grinding resources for upgrades, running into similar dungeons/POI's until you get what you want.

That being said, sailing around and smashing enemies is the best part by far, and nobody else is putting in a good effort for a pirate themed survival game. It needs work, but its totally workable.

Building is good, but not really my flavor.

Transferring characters between saves/worlds is very nice.

Game runs great, some work on the skybox during weather events would be nice.,

All in all, if you really want it, get it. The ship is fun enough to hold you over with the badass shanties. If you're on the fence, maybe wait, there is only 3 ships in the game (Plus the little rowboat). If you're here for boats and shanties, give them some time to cook.

Well, Ill give it a thumbs up, because it is a neat concept.

I like the gameplay loop, its decent. I'm on age 9.

Pros:
Squishing tons of enemies is fun.
The randomized map objectives is neat, but there is a noticeable pattern, and you're inclined to reroll to get the good ones, the elemental dungeon for instance is bonkers.
Characters vary enough I suppose, but would like to see more honestly, i'm surprised that they don't have the elemental coloring based on whatever your first essence chosen is.
I like the cataclysm events, and how the world changes.
The evolution system.

What I don't like:
Play archer guy... that's how you win. Ranged character is just super powerful.
Lack of other ranged characters. (characters in general, i'm not sure what's coming in post game but.)
Maps pallete, including the second boss area doesn't change. I expected like if the vampire guy was there, it would be more vampire back there.
Second area is just always worms, and by the time you get to them, you're already more than strong enough to deal with them, and they're always worms. The first half of the round is fun, but the second half is just.. waiting for enough gold to upgrade your troops to take the boss.
There's only 3 different bosses for the end.
No lightning essence? (More essences would be nice.)
I'm personally only finding charisma and alchemy to be the strongest essences. The passive from alchemy is really strong, and the empowered dudes are good early, but they get one shot later on.
Random, severe lag spikes, even in single player.

I think a lot hinges on post content for if this game is a smash or a pass. For the long term replay ability of the game they want to go for here, There's gotta be a few more bosses, and something needs to be done with the second area.

Alrighty boyz' we got us a game here.

Listen here, if you played BDO, this is going to feel very similar, a lot of the good and the shortcomings are the same things you get from BDO. (Ignore what people say when they're like "Its not the same game", it is very similar)

The good:

Combat feels more "Expressive" rather than "Mechanical". You can win the game by mashing light attack if you want to, but it feels more rewarding to use all the tools they have available.
The game world is gargantuan, and it feels alive. Tons of npc's doing their thing.
Lots of cool things to collect, the crafting system is good too. (Though I would like a speedup option.)
Graphics are pretty nice. If you look close enough though... you'll see it isn't the "Most beautiful game ever made" like glazers claim they are, but still high marks.
Progression feels meaningful for the most part.
Fishing is awesome, every good game has good fishing.
The trash mobs are a lot of fun to fight.
Lots of fun side things to do.

The Bad:
Pearl abyss doesn't have a history of making boss battles, and that is brutally apparent here. There is a lot of times where the bosses just spam the crap out of you. The reality is, just bring a metric ton of food and you can win every fight. There's no real skill ceiling here. Wait for them to stop attacking, then attack on their long animation downtime attack, the risk of failing a parry is too high to attempt.
Once you see the NPC patterns, and how they did it, you realize its pretty much their BDO model for NPC behavior.
Controls are weird, and target locking is rough. (They say they're working on it.)
The story feels like BDO's storytelling... I'm not attached to any characters.
A lot of quests just feel like filler, like.... MMO filler quests.
You can skip like all of the fighting in quests by running to the objective and just doing it...

The Ugly:
I'm on act 7 in the story, it took me till about act 5 to feel like i'm not in the tutorial.
There is zero reason to invest in the other two characters until you compete the story. Everything is Cliff's story. In fact, I haven't even had access to one of the characters in 3 acts now between the story.
I still haven't unlocked customizing my character, almost 30 hours in.
The game explains nothing to you, I needed to find a guide to learn how to move 3 sacks of grain 10 feet to the right
I would really like to play as the other characters, but since the story is so focused on cliff, and side content is locked behind getting powers, there's no reason to until you finish the main story


Id give it a 7/10.. and will probably give it an 8 when they fix controls. Just play with a controller.

Hilarious. If you liked the humor of the binding of issac, you will like this.

The class system is fun, the cats are funny. The combat as a tactical rogue-lite are good, maybe a few numerical tweaks would go well.

My only real suggestion is that there are hotkey bindings for the abilities and movement for smoother gameplay in combat. Make em' assignable for people with MMO mice.

I hope this game continues to do well, and gets DLC. Something that would be cool is a raid of some kind later. 8 cats fighting a big boss, much bigger map and more enemies for grand tactics.

My only dislike is the retired cat, I will miss my favorites. :(

Feels a lot like majesty 2, very good start.

Fun game, but voice acting is something to be desired, original VA for narrator is awesome, but other aspects sound rough. I often cant wait for them to stop talking to get back to building my economy.

I got the day 1 DLC, I do think survival should be included in base... But that ogre is op. While you cant direct control creatures, he hits hard, has a ton of mobility, and just cant die at castle level 2.

Second you get a singular pre-generated map for survival where the campaign has a bunch of nice other biomes, where majesty had procedural on their biomes.

That being said, Id love to see more characters, I noticed in the trailer it showed some kind of vampire looking dude, and a necromancer, the main screen has a fire mage? I haven't seen any of them yet.

Some clean up on VFX would be nice too, thieves daggers and rangers particles do a strange line that goes toward them before they fire them, but these are probably release bugs.

I don't think the houses are as horrible as some are saying, but the limited space does hurt, especially when you cant remove the broken carts in your zone.

My largest gripe by far is that the skills don't level with the character, Preistesses of Krypta in Majesty 2 would get a Lich summon at 15 or 20, and you still had to buy skills in their respective barracks, it makes level up feel incredibly dull.

Also, its 2025, please don't make me stuck being the blue team...

You guys have a really good start, you really do.

More heroes like the ogre as DLC is a path you can go.

You'll lose a lot of replay ability without doing something with the survival, making it procedural or something, and adding biomes with monsters in the story you aren't using in survival will go a long way with players.

Alright, lets do a updated review on the game...

First, preformance is slightly impoved, but I still noticed some studdering especially during fallow on the plains. I have a rocket ship PC with Nvidia/intel hardware, so its a bit suprising to see still.

I still hold my sentiment towards Omega, now that i know its an instanced boss and doesn't naturally spawn, that's fine. Honestly however? I would much rather see origninal monsters over weird, out of place collabs. I want to roam the biomes and just hunt things in an immersive experience, things spawning naturally, the more monsters that fill that, or add to the enviorments, the better.

Armor set bonus' like... over 2/3 of the sets are uninteresting to use. You just collect them for layered options. Now with artian weapons, the other weapons are near useless. Everyone runs guts, gore magala, leviathans, or arkveld. Maybe a couple on shia. Even then, when you look at velkana's passive from worlds, it drastically changes how you play the game, we need more of that kind of thing.q

Other collabs are fine, the ramen one for instance is cool, im fine with more free meals. Im fine with outfits, even weapons I suppose.

The micro DLC nonsense is out of control. I payed premium price on release for this game, now theres over 100 dollars of junk in the dlc section? Costumes, sickeret stuff, weapon skins, camp junk, win screens, and poses. Its way too much man..

The end of support for windows 10 is horrible. So many people are leaving windows 11 and buying 10 keys because of how much it bloats a gaming PC, not to mention the kernal level AI integration. That was a very poor decision.

At the end of it all, What i really have to say is the major expansion better be something worth talking about, new mechanics, tons of good, original monster hunter monsters. Interesting armors with meaningful passives.

Since you guys did the Safi route with Gog, you're going to need to content with the power creep, as they're easily the most powerful weapons in the game by a lot. Whenever you do that system for master rank, the gear is going to have to be insane, with things like the special passives (EX. Mitzu, Shia... ) because with how strong they are, there is no reason to use the Mitzu set since you cant have the weapon skill on the weapon.