Recent reviews by Wulf Strife

Edit: Beaten - tactic: put on really good distracting music > go get chomped on by leviathans on purpose while in vehicle and realize it isn't so bad > get in prawn suit > grapple onto backs of leviathans and drill them to death, or any creature that attacks really. With a prawn suit, grapple arm, and drill arm, you are the ultimate leviathan of the sea.

Why must a game so pretty be a horror game. It's all fun and games until it gets dark, or dive past 50M, or leave the general starting area. Does a good job at triggering all anxiety you could ever want. If you are afraid of the unknown, in a dark environment, with things making extremely loud noises, the biggest challenge can actually be hitting the play button.

Play with a friend is really the thing missing from being able to enjoy the full game. If I had someone to be bait, I mean take lead, it would make all the difference.
A watch would be a really useful addition to know in advance whether to go hide in a hole like in Minecraft and when it's safe to come out.

Love the visuals and concept, hate that I'll probably miss half the stuff out of fear/anxiety.

I am Among You, and you are among Me. Combined, that makes it Among We, or is it Among Us?

I am too busy being a detective and figuring out who you are, Imposter. Or perhaps I am just blending in and you haven't realized it.

Among Us, the social deduction game where telling a lie is actually okay and guilt free, and you can solve murders all day long. Sharpen your logic, analysis, and deduction skills, or have more holes in your logic than a strainer. The choice is up you to.

This is so much like Clue, but quicker, and tons of fun. The smarter you are when it comes to detective work and paying attention to all the little things, and the better you are at wordplay, the more fun it becomes. Even a anti-social person like me can enjoy this, so even if you don't like to socialize, it isn't hard to do in here. If you plan to not chat at all and just be that person that reports bodies, votes and never helps contribute to figuring out who it is, this game isn't for you then, because that is 85% of the game and fun.

Almost out a year and still no option for disabling team games. These ruin the entire game as there is no team chat, no coordination, anything that would be the definition of "team". It is irrelevant how good you are in these, you can't carry. The odds of winning and losing seem to be the same whether you play or just stand there. They are a waste of time and are like an unwanted hole in the road, just like those, it could be fixed, but devs are lazy and don't seem to care

This has been the main complaint since the game came out. They had a no team game mode on once, but only for a week, as if to troll their players. It isn't difficult to make it a permanent option.

The rest of the game is reasonable. The grabbing mini games absolutely don't work though, someone will eventually grab your tail from like 4 characters away. The potential has been there since day 1, but it is things like team games, or game modes that just don't work how they are intended, that ruin the entire game. It is only manageable in short bursts, like doing the daily, and only to clear out the season rewards. It's been at a point since the end of season 1 where the only reason to consider logging in is to do the season rewards. Basically, I feel compelled to play out of force of not missing out on rewards, rather than due to enjoyment.

The map is very bland, unfortunately. Aberration was awesome to explore visually, but Extinction is about 75% wasteland, which is dreary, repetitive, and dull to look at. The starting area is quite fascinating, like an old ancient, ruined tek city. Spawning in there, as it's recommended, gave the initial impression of the map being awesome. Once you get the freedom to explore into the more dangerous areas (or in my case, fly with an Argent), it becomes disappointing quickly, and just goes downhill.

Aside from that starter area, and wasteland, there are 2 small bubble biomes. One is the arctic, another is the desert. The desert has a reasonably nice canyon center, but other than that, is far more bland than scorched earth. The arctic is on par with the arctic from the Island, but as we have seen it before, is also very bland, and lacks any real sense of excitement.

There isn't much in the way of goodies to locate. The world is pretty flat, in the sense that it is like the island, you can see the world from flying over it, no vast labyrinthes underground or anything.

It feels like they had simply given up, slapped a map together, and called it a day. When you see this, a paid map, compared to a free map on another game (let's say Fortuna/Vallis from Warframe), the detail are like night and day, and said map from warframe would have been 100x more enjoyable to explore if it were given all the ARK elements.

It's a shame, this is their most bland and unexciting official map by far.

*Small update - flown the whole map now and have located 1 underground section in the northwest, it looks decent, but in the end, is just a flood of beavers (tons and tons), trees, and water, and offers nothing.

Needs an urgent patch to be playable, but unfortunately there hasn't been any acknowledgement of the crashing or other issues, aside from multiplayer disconnections being worked on.

Fine for the first 15ish hours, then suddenly becomes near unplayable. Each trip out, you play russian roulette on whether or not the game will close to desktop with no error code. The worry is less about losing your lives and more about "will it crash before finishing"?

Sometimes it'll be fine for 2-3 hours, but once it starts crashing, it tends to happen every 10 mins or so. There is no consistency for this, no relation in hardware for the large amount of users it's happening to, it can during fights, when sitting around doing very little on screen, or even worse, during the quest rewards screen. For some reason this doesn't happen until you reach the Coral Highlands, then going back to the prior worlds, those suddenly start crashing too. (Several people have went as far as completely reinstalling windows which hasn't helped). In around 34 hours, the last 14 hours have been filled with approx 25 crashes.

The work around would be to go in with a friend, and rejoin after crashing. Unfortunately, the online feature is one of the most poor and unreliable features I have seen in 10 years. Constant disconnects, and even when playing with friend, whenever I crash, it magically sets him to offline, as if Capcom purposely designed a game to screw with players and just steal their money.

You could singleplayer of course, but the only way around the crashing is to have someone else be in the mission so you can rejoin, otherwise, there goes 20-30 mins of work and drops.


This is the result of skipping testing and not utilizing a quality control team. Don't buy until you see a patch put up sometime after that addresses either or both of these issues. (Current date is August 19th)

A Gtx 1060 and Ryzen 7 have more enough power to run the game flawlessly, performance wise, except for those random crashes to desktop with 0 warning, trigger causes, or an error code.

You are paying to go sight-seeing more or less. Whether you like this AC will relate directly to how you feel about Egypt. If neither of these 2 sentences sound that appealing, you may want to rethink getting this game (at full price anyways), as those 2 points are the only reasons why I can recommend this. The world is massive though and for the most part, the views are really immersive and wonderful to look at (except Memphis). There is a Roman influence as well which was interesting, and kept the views from getting stale.


Gameplay
The gameplay itself really is more or less the same as every previous AC. Viewpoints, Forts, and stuff like treasures or other discovery points are scattered excessively all over the map. They add the majority of playtime, as the main story itself is almost over once you hit Chapter 3 since it becomes very linear. Exploring the tombs/pyramids is the most interesting part of the discovery points. My only complaint here is no mummies come out to attack you or any form of danger such as traps are to be found. It doesn't feel right being able to waltz through carefree, get a few items, and leave.

Combat/Controls
Combat is what really hurts, and this new style just doesn't fit for AC without some serious, further changes. It feels so loose and disjointed. You camera is looking one way, and swing a completely different way around 50% of the time. The lock-on system doesn't work properly and the camera doesn't actively follow your target. This makes some of the difficult fights on hard very hard to do. The hardest fights, the War Elephants, the lock-on doesn't even work. This is a serious problem as just dodging at slightly the wrong angle means the beast will take out a health bar. It is a bit more forgiving with other fights, and probably. Going the assassination route is really the only salvation here.

Levels
Levels don't sit well with AC either. It creates an artificial restriction to the game and prevents the freedom of doing stuff where you like. At the same time, once you hit 40, most things are incredibly boring. This is always the flaw when using a level system, and the old skill based system using counters and set stats at least kept the game balanced. The levels ruin the feeling of balance.

Animus/Abstergo
Shifting briefly out of Egypt into the body sitting in the Animus also feels really awkward. You spend all of 10 minutes outside and it may as well not have even been included. It feels more disruptive as it temporarily cuts out your gameplay for something that adds no value. Abstergo was absent except for like 3 minutes.

Performance
Oddly enough, this has to be the smoothest running AC. It has a few issues like every other AC, but 98% of the time it runs smoothly. The requirements seem high, but a GTX 960 can run high+ just fine surprisingly. I found the performance to be better using high+ rather than medium settings. There are definitely some bugs or little annoyances that could be fixed, but games this large will never be 100% perfection.

Ending
Now.. the ending (Ch3+). This was quite disappointing. Without giving anything away, you spend a lot of play time if you do a fair amount of the side activities. It more or less feels like all your effort and time was pointless. I can't give a better description than that without spoiling something. The whole piece also felt completely uneventful and not epic at all. Ch 1 & 2 felt far better. It seems like all effort was put into those chapters, then the rest quickly rushed out. The whole thing is reversed more or less. It starts off epic and just dwindles, with the most unexciting final event piece possible (your last target). Considering stuff like War Elephants or Trial of the Gods Anubis, this was just incredibly underwhelming.

Trial of the Gods
The trial of gods event is worth touching on briefly. Fighting Anubis was super cool. The fights feel epic and it would have been great to see many more of these throughout the game as regular encounters. The problem though is they come once a month only, and for a week. No way to repeat them for enjoyment purposes, and to achieve all Club Ubi challenges unlocks, you have to keep the game installed for months to complete the last challenges. If you are in a country with monthly bandwidth limits and have low HDD space, it is a bit of a nuisance.

Conclusion and Thoughts
Overall, I loved Egypt. The sight seeing was wonderful. I wish I could say the same about the combat though. Having play every AC except Syndicate, and a multitude of other action/combat based games, the combat here was just terrible. I have had more fun with combat in MMO's. If you play the assassination route, you won't notice it, but you are forced into it eventually, be it Gladiator Arena, or forced encounters. There was something off about the audio for wind, like it cuts in and out rapidly which ruined immersion. The lack of a looped Egyptian soundtrack made for dull moments at times, especially when grinding out all those discovery points. The discovery points make up the majority of playtime and determines whether you will play 20 hours, or 80 hours.


Scoring
Personal experience score: 6.2/10

Story: 6/10 - It starts off all fine, but chapter 3 > finish is just terrible. If you spent 60+ hours doing the side stuff, you will be disappointed how the last fights are played out. It also feels really rushed and uneventful in Ch3+. Going through those last chapters was very linear and didn't feel epic.

Sound: 6/10 - Would have liked more looped Egyptian music. Lack of constant looped music is a widespread issue though and the silence dulls enjoyment. Also, the wind sound appears to be broken. If you are somewhere where you can only hear the wind blowing, it sounds like it is rapidly cutting in and out, rather than being a smooth, consistent sound. It breaks the immersion.

Graphics: 9/10 - Excellent. Everything looks good on high+ with a GTX 960. Cutscenes are often choppy though as they start up.

Controls: 3/10 - This is the worst part of the game, and really hurting it. I opted for keyboard + mouse which worked fine. However, the combat controls and camera are abysmal. You spend half your time swinging at the air because you look one way, and swing a different way. The lock-on system doesn't work properly either. The camera refuses to stay solidly locked onto the target, or even untargeting on its own. For fighting the War Elephants, the targeting refuses to work even which is where it's needed the most. The new combat style would greatly benefit from a camera that is locked and follows your view of the target at all times.

Game Length: 7/10 - Around 90 hours completing 100% on hard. It draws out too long though to doing all the markers once you're level 40 as the rewards are pointless.

So nice to see this game back 20 years later. Having played the original for SNES with the black cartridge when I was very young, it was very addictive then. 20 Years later, the game is revived for PC with a modern overhaul, and this couldn't be more exciting. For the price, it is totally worth it for anyone that likes KI (was an even better deal on its release promo). The soundtrack is very worth it too. If you are a Mortal Kombat fan, and can give up the gore, this is a better fighter IMO. Actually, I would say this is the best fighter.

What separates this from MK, aside from the no gore (so it is more friendly in all countries / younger players), is that the gameplay is not overly hard with having to press 8 buttons for a skill, and comboing is very smooth. There is also a combo assistance program for those learning, but I recommend turning it off ASAP in order to properly enjoy the game and raise your skill. It can also get quite difficult on the higher difficulties that will test the elite. There are several elements that add a lot of depth, but never feel overwhelming. Of course you need to practice each character, as there are several "role" styles, such as rusher, tank, etc.


What is Killer Instinct Gold that you purchase for real money and is it necessary?

This is 100% optional, and used to unlock shadow or mimic skins currently. It can also be used in Shadow Lords mode to buy packs, but this only effects your gameplay (unless you do multiplayer shadow lords, but MP shadowlords is designated as a wacky experience, not serious, not to mention it would be a huge waste of cash for people that use these power ups)

In short, it is purely to buy cosmetics or speed through the long-term story mode. You can unlock all this through natural pay too, that is all there is to it, no advantages.

Also, by doing your dailies, you will gradually get small amounts here and here.

Some key changes or notes of info:
-No more humilition finishers or any gorey finishers. Not every character has an ultimate (Orchid really needs one :<), but those as as close to gore as it will get. The sinister nature is implied (setting up daggers beneath the neck, then an offscreen sound effect that implies the head was pushed through them)

-Lots of characters compared to way back - 29 in total.

-Many characters moves are altered, namely in terms of projectiles. I miss Orchid's projectile, and every character used to have one, but now it is select characters only

-Obvious graphics overhaul. They look great really, without being GPU/CPU intensive (Note: for online ranked, your PC MUST pass a inspection and score 1000 - I scored 1006 with a GTX 960 2GB & I5 3570k. Not sure how high the score scales, but I assume the numbers don't go far above 1000)

-Combo Breakers are unlimited now, but you only have 1 chance per combo set to get it right

Single Player:

There is a lot going on for single player in relation to a fighting game. Unless you buy your way through, or absolutely dislike Shadow Lords mode, this will keep you busy for a quite some time.

-Regular story mode: Fight through a roster and perform specific accomplishments to unlock canvas pieces. This is a long term goal where you complete 10 characters worth about, x2 seasons

-Survival mode: Survive with one character through as many fights as possible
--Shadow Survival mode: Same as survival, but with shadow players (harder clones of real people in a sense)

-Dojo: This is where you practice and learn all the elements of the game.

-Shadow Lords Mode: This is the main story/SP element. You fight, make story choices, gain items/power-ups, with the ultimate goal being to take down the shadow lord. This will require a lot of time investment, but your items and stuff carry over to the next playthrough. This makes it a nice progression system without losing your time invested

-Dailys: Several dailys, resetting each day, that give you rewards for Shadow Lord mode & general player exp

Multiplayer:

I have not really touched this mode, as the SP modes are super fun. I tried fighting a friend though, and even while downloading near my bandwidth limit, the fight worked flawlessly. Usually when I download like this, there is noticeable lag, so that in itself speaks something

-You got ranked / standard playmodes

-There is also a Shadow Lords multiplayer, but it is a non serious mode as people can use their power ups, making for a one sided match. There are dailies tied to this though (the biggest being play 5 matches, win or lose) so you got nothing to lose


Characters:

For the most part, each character feels unique, but they do fit into one of several roles, which determines their playstyle. Rushers for example are fast and combo focused fighters, but they deal less damage in exchange. Tanks take blows like champs, but are slower of course and hit harder. There are more categories, and some are unique such as using their own health to fight, but having the ability to siphon it back. In total you have 29 characters, and it comes down to finding what fits you, then having fun practicing the rest and trying to get good as them as well.

Several characters use or share button skillsets, so it isn't overly complex. Each has their own set, but many use a Down - Bottom Right - Right - Attack - as a single for example.


Fighting:

The fighting is satisfying. It is not difficult, the combo system is smooth, but there is enough depth and complexity to go at it from many ways. There is a slight limitation in how it is set up. You want to perform combo openers > auto > linkers > auto > linkers > ender, or something like that. Doing this is what lets you effectively chunk the most health for your efforts. Other methods work too, but for less damage.

-Shadow skills are a nice touch, as they are simply a stronger, more lethal version of your key combo skills.

-Winning the fight and performing that Ultra finisher is really fun and never gets old. Alternatively you can convert it into a stage ultra if possible, or an ultimate finisher if the character has one.

-Combo breakers: A fighting chance to break out of a combo, if you can read the enemy hit set right (High, Medium, Low). This is a fun system, and unlike past KI's, it is unlimited, but you only have 1 chance to break out per combo set the enemy performs.

Unlockables:

Mimic & Shadow Skins, + a stage or two. You can earn all this through regular play or buy it with KI gold. There is also all the achievement, progression, and performance side stuff like lore, alternate costume colors, and so on. Most of this is tied to simply playing the game and leveling up the characters.


Scoring:

Personal experience score: 10/10

Story: -/10 - Hard to rate this, but Shadow Lords offers a form of story, along with lore for each character, and some general story to them. It is a fighter so it isn't the main focus, but there is a bunch of it.

Sound: 10/10 - KI has always had one of the best soundtracks out there since its SNES edition, Seasons 1-3 just made it even better.

Graphics: 10/10 - Excellent. Runs perfect on GTX 960 and it looks perfect, without sacrificing any performance

Controls: 9/10 - Easy to use on my 360 controller. I find using a control stick a bit harder and the Dpads on these aren't so great, so if you can use something with a pad or joystick (like SNES controller or an arcade controller), that is your best bet. The controls are easy regardless though, you just have to learn the few pattern styles consisting of 2-4 buttons, and many characters use similar combinations.

Game Length: 10/10 - The play is infinite, ultimately. The longevity of the game will be user based. If you are looking to play an hour or 2 here or there, willing to learn and get good at playing characters outside your comfort zone, if you are going to multiplayer, etc.

*No spoilers or detailed discussion on chapters, except where blacked out by the spoiler tag*

Very enjoyable, but when comparing it to the 1st/2nd games, and the price tags, I was expecting a bit more for sure. The last class trial I was expecting to be far longer, and in comparison to the last ones from the first 2 games, didn't feel quite as epic in terms of actually playing. It was a bit dragged on with the amount of surprise being on the lower end. Playing on Mean difficulty, I thought this would have been much harder. It felt like the easiest of the 3 games, but I am pretty good at mystery solving as is, so it might not be entirely fair.

Brief Outline/Thoughts on Chapters:

Chapter 6 Trial - A bit disappointing. Too easy and direct to the point, there wasn't a huge back and forth or mystery to it. When you think on the purpose of this trial carefully, the answer becomes obvious incredibly quick, and reveals the truth/lies too fast. If you were expecting a lengthy and complex back and forth like the other 2 games had, this one missed the mark. The twist is very different though and if you think about it a bit, makes a lot of sense. The power of perspective is used, so you have to be able to open your mind to the perspective of the characters.
Mystery level difficulty 2/5

Chap 5 - Well done and very perplexing. This is the confusion level and back and forth I was expecting from the other chapters. The choices and reasoning is quite interesting and unexpected. This one will keep you guessing till near the end of the trial as it pulls you between the choices.
Mystery level difficulty 5/5

Chap 4,3,2 - Quite interesting. The deaths of each case are interesting, but somehow didn't feel overly confusing. If you pay attention to each character's action, role, and reasoning through the investigation, as well as read the evidence notes again, you can narrow the suspect list down very quick. They felt easier than in the 2nd game. The problem here is the variables are too narrowed down to begin with, as well as which character insisted on doing what during the course of the murder. Chapter 3 specifically is incredibly obvious if you know your retro games, sadly.
Mystery difficulty level 3/5

Chap 1 - This will throw most off. There is quite a surprise waiting. The hints and evidence make it near impossible to figure out until the surprise is dropped on you. There is a major, suspicious piece of potential evidence that you will see that you can't interact with. Those who notice it The odd, metal closet in the bathroom will more than likely have an issue with this, given its significance and impact.
Mystery difficulty level 4/5

Class Trial Games / Casino Games:

Nonstop Debate - Truth/Lie: You know these, with the exception that you can lie through certain statements and take an alternate route in a discussion, but end up at the same spot.

Rebuttal Showdown - You know this too, the standard slash through opponents words game.

Mass Panic - Basically it is nonstop debate, but 3 people talking at once.

Split Decision - Loved this one, it puts 2 teams against eachother when their decisions are opposite. Command your team to counter the correct words in a group effort, with a button mashing clash at the end

*Psyche Taxi (Also a Casino game) - This is like the snowboard minigame from #2. It was too easy and I preferred the snowboarding minigame by far.

*Mind Mine (Also a Casino game) - A bit of a minesweeper game, break like-color block groups, and it changes the neighbouring blocks it touches to the next one in the color sequence. Your goal is to excavate the answer. Too easy though and impossible to fail.

Hangman's Gambit - You know this one well, the twist is that the letters are dark and you use a flashlight to momentarily see the letters

Arguement Armament Battle - A rhthym based game, a bit like DDR, but with ABXY. The game gradually speeds up as the game goes on. Loved this one too though. At the end you form the correct combination of 4 choices to spell the final word.

*Slot Machines - Casino Only - Casino has a slot machine to play on

*Fish catching - Casino Only - Scoop the correct colored fish, like Hangman's Gambit, you use a flashlight to see the colors

Closing Arguement: Summarize the evidence in the comic book like always.

Executions:

For having been banned in Korea, I was thinking these would be more brutal. I do watch everything horror though, so it might be harder for me to see something as brutal. The executions were decent, I would say 7/10 level, but I think that the previous games had some that were far more harsh. Chap 6/5 were way too weak IMO.

Extra Modes after clearing sthe game:

I have not played these, but there are several.

A dating game, much like the ones in the others, except without collecting resources/chores.

Some sort of boardgame / dungeon crawler / card game - It is some form of an RPG mix in where you level your characters up, take up to 4 into the dungeon, and beat your way through the floors in 2D fashion like those older games. Cards are tossed in somewhere, but will edit in down the road when trying and knowing the exact details.

There is also another ??? I haven't unlocked, it might be related to the wierd RPG game above.

Gallery/Achievements:

A truck load of unlocks to do, you will need well over 1,000 coins to get everything. Probably around 2-3k.

There is also a super expensive casino item, for those perfecting achievements, this will take a little bit.

Closing Thoughts & Issues:

The Fullscreen option could use some serious work. You have to open the game via config launcher, then launch with fullscreen. You may not alt-tab, or you will be set into windowed mode and have to launch the game again. This is a rather silly oversight given that this is 2017.

I also encountered a single crash randomly, while loading a certain game in Chap4. It only happened once though. There may be a few more cases where a crash could occur though, so best to save every 30-60 mins.

Overall, I love Danganronpa and hope for lots more games. This was a good game, although a bit easy. There may be some key pieces of info that you could think about before even starting the story mode that may prove to be a clue that is relevant to the story (there was one thing that did catch my eye right off the bat and was odd). You won't find it though. But just how that kind of detail ties into the story is pretty neat.

For the price, I would have expected a bit more. Given that previous entries were a little less than 1/3 the price of this one, the game length was only double of those. The last trial is where more effort should have went into. I am fine with the story choice, but it just felt like the mystery solving aspect was over almost instantly, and then it was just a drawn out and repetitive battle.

The twists were interesting. Chap 1 & 6 will be the key points for this. As has been shown in some reviews, some are completely unhappy with either, or both of these chapters. At the same time though, it is something new and unexpected. IF you think deeply, and put your perspective into the character, rather than the player/viewer, it makes complete sense.

Scoring

Personal experience score: 8/10

Story: 8/10 - There are several surprises, but some predicability. Chapter 1 & the final chapter are quite different from anything done so far though.

Sound: 8/10 - The songs you know and some new ones. Pretty good, some room for improvement though.

Graphics: 9/10 - Great for the artstyle used. The unique art the Danganronpa universe has, has always been intriguing and sets it apart.

Controls: 9/10 - Exactly as it should using my standard 360 controller.

Game Length: 7/10 - About 42 hours, really exploring and whatnot. Given the price comparison of 1/2 vs 3, I was expecting longer.

Warning: Game is falsely advertised. See end of post for actual images of building pieces & graphics on high settings.

The pictures are not what you get. Any player made housing you see, such as the imagine with the wooden shack and barrier pen, the textures do not look like this. The company has recently decided to re-do their building textures and make it the most UGLY building textures you have seen in any game (speaking from having played ARK/Subnautica/Conan). The thatch tier in this game looks like 95% wood, and stone looks like an eyesore. All building textures outline every square you place up with a border around it (as shown in the images below), making it impossible to make a singular, unified looking house.

A large portion of players have spoken up about how ugly the textures are, and the company refuses to revert the change, claiming it increases performance a lot (this is a lie, loading times and FPS are EXACTLY the same before & after the texture change). As a result, the playerbase has dropped massively (frpm 20 on our server on average down to 4)

Images of the game do not accurately reflect it either. Playing on HIGH settings, my game looks about 1/10th as good as the images above. Those images were done with Nvidia Ansel, or heavily edited, and should be labeled as such.

The combat and rolling you see in the video, no, your character rubber bands around when rolling, and melee simply doesn't work properly to be viable. Either use magic, or get stuck inside enemy hitboxes and have your melee hits not register 50% or more of the time.

If you think you are getting a beautiful game, with beautiful building pieces, you will be disappointed. The company has falsely advertised its initial building textures (they even held a building content to further promote their building stuff), then right after it they downgraded the textures about 100x.

Stone tier looks like this:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/866235281707730134/F91E0BDCC94E34CA16528AE16DCA7A782BE010E4/

Wood tier looks like this:
https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/866235281707801739/F25ADB151D0DE3B06F47E56FA1E16F1AC0D9DA69/


I will edit in more info on the rest of the game down the road, but until this primary issue is addressed, the game gets a hard no. Everything else is irrelevant, as building is 90% of your long-term gameplay in sandbox games, and it is impossible to enjoy when it looks THIS BAD.

Updated Nov 16/17 - Incredibly slow new content updates, and new updates took only 5 hours to clear. There is still no "end game content" that is enjoyable to keep you around, and still just the same old, spam 5 dungeons to incredibly slowly upgrade gear (especially at orange+, talking about hours & hours for a single level up on one item, out of 18ish). I stopped bothering by now as there is nothing in game to gear up for to begin with. The Tokyo update further proved that the game has been reduced to the most simple game ever, so much that a 5 year old could play this.

I used to love this game and it is about the only MMO I recommended. Seeing the re-release of the game, I advertised and recommended it to others, that is something I deeply regret now. This company must have hired their staff from some "Clown College", because these guys have turned the game into a joke, and are a joke (and it sadly isn't funny, so they may want a refund on that). Their name may be "Funcom", but they have no idea what "fun" means, and have rightfully earned the name "Failcom". The combat is so slow, how they could make it worse is amazing. They took a great game, and turned it into complete crap.


Quests / Insanely Long Cooldowns / Acitivities:
Do you enjoy having to wait 3 days (2 Days 20 Hours) to do quests again? Someone over there thought it would be a great idea to limit how much time you spend in their game by ensuring you only have 4 hours of activity time every 3 days once you have finished the story. Only Scorched Desert is worth farming for efficiency. Anything in Solomon island barely gives anything, everyone hates the layout/flow of Sun god map, and Transylvania is lengthy and has poor flow from quest to quest.

Currency Farming:
Do you enjoy repetitively spamming PvP as the only viable way for "Anima Shards" (Used to upgrade gear / repair / museum)? You can bet 85% of your playtime will consist of sitting in Q for 30 sec, waiting 1 min for the game to start, then the match lasting 30 seconds in order to have enough shards for feeding 1-2 items to your item (Note, it takes like 600,000 shards to upgrade purple > orange, the equivalent of 500 pvp matches roughly, and that is per item. Multiply this by 9 gear pieces and 9 glyphs. Forget even upgrading orange / red quality levels. Expect 1 piece of gear to take 1000 hours to maximize, now do that 17 more times for one gear set.
-The amount of repetitive grinding you will do is insane and completely unfun. Your day will consist or mostly sitting in pvp spam mode simply for the currency.
-To efficiently level gear in time:cost ratio, you will spam dungeons for "distillates"
Basically, you are spamming PvP for shards, or spamming dungeons for Distillates, no variety.

Dungeons & Queues:
If you are a DPS, you will sit in Q for 20+ minutes on average. If you are switching zones when your Q pops, you are removed from the Q and have to start all over. If their community server disconnects briefly (which happens a lot) you start over. Once you finally get in, you better pray there is a tank/healer, because these guys can't even program a simple dungeon finder and you often end up with 5 DPS, meaning you have to leave and sit in Q again. Even worse, DPS can Q as all classes but not actually have the gear, effectively wasting others time. They have no problem wasting our time, and don't care. There are about 8 dungeons which you will cycle through and get boring fast.
-Also, you only get 10 keys a day, not even enough for 2 dungeons. After that, you pay 500 marks favor per chest.

PvP:
Non-existant, as mentioned under currency farming, people PvP solely for the Anima Shards, and there is only 1 map.

Combat:
Do you enjoy having 15 resource bits, with skills consuming 5/15 typically, meaning you sit there spamming default attack a lot? This was advertised as action based combat, but I get more action watching the microwave. Don't stand in stuff, and you are golden for the entire game as this has to be the "Fisher-Price" of my first MMO.
--Edits:
-Actions have a 1 sec global CD (makes the game feel really unresponsive and lacks "action)
-Spam clickers are punished by having their rotations ruined, as clicking a skill 2-3x Q's it up (option to disable this does not work) and therefore, wasting huge resource counts and ruining the entire rotation flow

Inventory:
You may not purchase additional bank tabs without Aurum (real cash currency, or bought from market using your precious marks favor). Inventory only reaches 45 slots too. Having more than 1 gear set + some stuff laying around is impossible.

Pay 2 win?:
Yes and no. Paying though can get you major bonuses, like weapons that sell for 600,000k marks of favor (equivalent of doing 60 days of dailys). You can get distillates that give you 75,000 item exp (equivalent of a week of farming at least for an average player. This is all luck based of course. Subscribers also get 8 hour cooldown on quests vs 3 days, which is ridiculous and essentially the only way to have fun doing content, as well as progress at reasonable rates.


Maintenances:
These aren't as bad as they used to be. There were still maintenances for 1-2 minor fixes that could wait for the regularly scheduled maintenance. They also still occur in mid day, rather than during nights like every other game.

Edited in piece - Bugs:
Forgot this important piece. In dungeons during cutscenes the client may crash. If this happens you will end up booted (45 sec offline grace period only approx.) and receive a 30 minute debuff, preventing ANY Q's due to THEIR neglect to learn to program/fix things. No, there isn't an option to turn off cutscenes even, which mind you, get incredibly tiring when you have done the dungeon 50x.
You will also get random crashes occuring during PvP or just playing, although these are solved with a simple login and no penalty.

Conclusion:
This company would like to go bankrupt clearly, they don't listen to their players or even play their own game. There is no possible way they can find doing this extremely limited content fun (but of course they gave themself free subscriptions, because they would quit in 1 week playing as non-subs). Help them achieve of their dream of bankruptcy by not supporting them until they listen to the players, and understand what made the Old Secret World, fun. This game should be re-named to Secret World Restricted, because of all the silly restrictions.