This is more of a cautious recommendation. As a game, it's fun yet frustrating. Most of my issues with the game stem from the AI being an AI, I don't blame the dev for the majority of the stuff. For context, I had the 15$ optional subscription while playing the game. It makes the AI think faster but I didn't notice a huge quality increase in the story compared to the non-subscriber experience. While I bring up a lot more negatives than positives, I'd still recommend the game for people who like messing with AI stuff. It was worth the money for me. THE GOOD ------------ 1. Freedom You can be pretty much anything you want and create a world fit for your characters. Some of the characters I've been include a fallen god, a wuxia healer, a regular highschooler and an incubus. The world and NPC characters inhabiting it will react appropriately to your backstory and the powers you wield, making for a fun roleplaying experience. 2. Crafting In the game, you can find a variety of randomly generated items by searching an area, harvesting gathering points, opening containers or as rewards from NPCs or trading with them. Any item can be combined with anything, and the results will vary depending on the ingredients. Using three items of the same quality will guarantee that the result is one tier higher. You can also specify what you wish to create, though the result will depend on the crafting station you're using and your ingredients. It's very fun, and when you're kitted out in full legendary gear you'll feel like a god. ------------ THE BAD ------------ 1. The Companions While an interesting idea, your companion's main purpose seems to be to constantly berate you. When you inevitably fail roll after roll, they'll call you an idiot, a fool, or a variety of other insults. I'm not joking, this is what they'll spend 90% of their time doing. Also, the affection system seems to have absolutely no impact on the companions or NPCs. They'll still turn heel and attack you at the drop of a hat, even at max relationship levels. Their one positive feature is that they will SOMETIMES help you in combat, but more often than not even if you're playing a backline squishy character you'll be the one to take all of the damage. My only actually good companion has been my fallen god's sentient sword. He didn't complain or berate me at all turns, he actually encouraged me and helped me out in combat numerous times. (I believe part of the reason is that my fallen god character is incredibly OP and he can't fail many rolls, so it doesn't cause reasons for my sword to complain.) 2. The combat There are two levels of power for your character. Either you're beyond weak, or you're godlike who can't die to anything(not really, but we'll get to that). Starting out, it'll be very hard to best anything in combat and you'll be relying in your one single skill you start out with to deal damage or charm the enemy. Unless you get a lucky crit and instakill your enemy, the damage you take builds up and eventually leads to your death, or knock you out if you aren't playing with permadeath on. 3. Healing As I mentioned, you'll be getting damaged in and out of combat very frequently. This is where healing would come in handy. Problem is, it's incredibly inconsistent. Any food items or bandages and such that should heal you might damage you instead if you fail the roll. If you have a healing skill(I heavily recommend this), you'll fare better. Another huge issue is that sometimes, even if you beat the roll, you just won't get ANY health back. The story output states that you succeeded and healed yourself, but your actual health bar won't move up at all. 4. Death loops When you get knocked out, you'll usually wake up in a completely different location. Your enemies might have captured you or a passing stranger decided to help you out. No matter what the case is, sometimes you'll take damage again from some random idiocy right after waking up. Every turn, something completely random will make you lose health. Fail a roll to ask for help? The guy you asked got mad and shoved you, bruising your shoulder. And now you're dead again. You wake up in ANOTHER completely random place and get to repeat the process all over again. It's possible to escape this damage loop but the fact that it happens is still incredibly annoying. 5. The constant action The AI has one concept: to drive the story forward no matter what and constantly bring action to the player. No matter where you go or what you do, inevitably some creature will stalk you and emerge from the shadows. You'll constantly be getting chased by enemies, and the AI loves to invent absolutely bullshit reasons for people to want to hunt you in the first place. Oh, you picked up a broken piece of glass from the floor? That was actually the shard of an incredibly important artifact and now you've got an entire faction after you. The peak example of this is when I cleared out an outpost and took it over for myself. I was intending on rebuilding the place and make it my base, but the AI does not like that. Wave after wave of convoys of enemies began arriving on the scene. No matter how many I put down, my companion would inevitably say "Oh no, I can hear the roar of engines approach!" These enemies are skyrim bandit tier dumbasses. Oh, that guy that single handedly just massacred a few armies by himself? Let's assault his camp! Peak idiocy. Even when the setting of my story was a completely average high school, the AI just cannot take a story at a casual, normal pace. It didn't take long until I was forced to unearth some corruption scandal involving the principal and some of the students. It's tiring, you can't have a moment of peace in this game. 6. Instant deaths Remember how I mentioned your character is godlike and can't die? Well, you actually can. In fact, the AI can decide to kill you instantly with no way to save yourself. It's as if your DM from dungeons and dragons decided "oops rocks fall and everyone dies." And it can do so at any time with no warnings. Luckily, this didn't happen too often to me, and I didn't play with permadeath on so it didn't end my run. 7. Inconsistency The largest problem with the game, and it stems from the fact that you're not actually playing a game and just talking with an AI. Details will constantly be forgotten, and using the same skill twice will never guarantee the same result. Trying to use your healing skill again because the first time didn't restore any health? The AI blocks your action and says it's impossible because "you already healed yourself". Want to leave an area? Nope, you're busy with (bullshit quest you already completed 30 turns ago). Another example is when I was playing as a gunslinger, I had an ability called "Fan Hammer" which empties three bullets in quick succession to an enemy. Guess what attributes this ability uses to check if I succeeded? That's right, strength and mechanical repair. Makes total sense. I assume the AI didn't check anything else except the name and thought "Hmm, hammer? Clearly using a hammer on something!" The weird thing is that in the story, my character doesn't hammer anything and actually shoots his revolver.. 8. Status bars They suck. That's it. They don't enhance your experience in any way and they're a constant annoyance you have no way of dealing with. Even at their optimal values, they don't do anything to aid you, only hinder you if they're at minimal values(and they'll usually be locked at minimal values because ways of increasing them are almost nonexistent). The only saving grace is that you can disable status bars on world creation. 9. Names A very minor gripe but an annoying thing nonetheless. If you've played this game, the names 'Hollow', 'Maw' and 'Iron' should be pretty familiar by now. In every game you play, no matter what scenario, factions and locations will use these same naming patterns.. Over, and over, and over, and over again.
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