Recent reviews by CodeBlink

I really want to love this game, but two issues keep killing my motivation to play.

#1 ISSUE: Stream sniping
Nothing drains my desire to queue more than watching my favorite streamers get constantly sniped and seeing the soul slowly leak out of them. This is a huge problem for the game’s health. It directly affects retention, and new players will think twice about buying or loading into ARC when they see how easy it is to abuse streamers.

Embark shouldn’t write off streamers as “just 0.1% of the player base.” Streamers are force multipliers. When they get frustrated and leave, they take entire communities with them.

#2 ISSUE: Cheating and collision exploits
Cheating and collision exploits are still far too common. They undermine every good moment the game delivers. Until these are addressed more aggressively, every match feels like a gamble on whether the systems will work as intended.

VERDICT
Right now, I can’t recommend the game. It needs time to grow up.

The map and sound design are genuinely stunning, and the core gameplay has potential, but it needs several rounds of iteration and balance. The developer has been slow to push out critical fixes and hasn’t established a reliable cadence for addressing major issues.

A proper PvE mode feels totally possible with this foundation, but I doubt we’ll see it until player numbers fall off from cheating and frustration, and there’s pressure to pivot with more spawn points and alternative modes.

If you’re on the fence, I’d wait and see how the devs handle cheating, exploits, and streamer protection over the next few months.

One of the best MMOs in a long time. I'm looking forward to the evolution of it!

Remove shield operator from the game.
Matchmaking is ultra bad once you get a few hours into the game.
Lots of cheaters.
Lots of sweats.

16 hr review:

I'm maybe halfway (?) through Act 2.

So far I'm having a very good time with my sorceress.

PROS:
- Level design
- Art design
- Sound design
- Improved passive tree
- Can refund passive skills

PRO/CON?
- Refunding passive skills in early game is not adviseable - it's very expensive in gold to do and you are not swimming in gold at 16 hours and trust me, I visit town every 2 minutes to sell and disenchant everything that drops. For example, at level 25, I had saved up 12k in gold and it would cost me 465 gold just to refund a single node. This makes me unhappy because I feel that I want to better optimise my passive build but I would rather invest in gear then refund passive. At the same time, I'm not having issues progressing through content, so it's not a deal breaker that I can't refund skills, yet. I can definitely see that by 40th or 80th hour I will need to start saving a lot of gold (the cost scales with level) just to do a massive rejig of my passives. Overall I'm happy I have the option to refund which wasn't in PoE1.

CONS:
- Blood pools and poison clouds last too long.
- I'm glad portal scrolls are gone. How about getting rid of identify scrolls :)
- I'd rather get more thorns on my sorceress than have Light Radius. I'd like to see that stat dissappear.

OPINIONS:
- Difficulty is very good. There are some bosses I spend an hour on, and some bosses I can clear on the first try. When I'm dying, it's not because of the PoE1 cheese 1 shots because there's so much crap happening - it's because I need to either level more, or start using my currency to craft/upgrade.
- I find the currency very balanced. I never used the currency in PoE1 because loot would drop that didn't make me reach for currency to upgrade. I'm using my currency in PoE2 and saving currency for a good craft is rewarding.
- Leveling feels great. Not too fast, not too slow. I'm never more than 1 or 2 levels higher than the zone.
- I'm good with the size of the maps and I like exploring them. I don't need a mount of way to quick travel between checkpoints. Hard core people who want to zoom has spoiled my enjoyment of exploring in many games - I don't want it in this game.

CAN BE IMPROVED:
- The story in the game is better than PoE1, but it still lacks a level of storytelling and engagement that would really send this game into another tier of success. The way Diablo 4 integrated your character into the story with in-game cutscene (at least at the beginning of the game) is something I think PoE could get inspiration from. I don't feel connected to any of the NPCs in the story. The only time I started getting invested in caring was with the little chemistry happening between Una and Finn. But then Act 2 happens and you never think about them again. Perhaps this evolves more later in the game.

Love this game! Has elements from so many games I love. I hope I'll be playing this for a long time.

I don't know why this game ins't more popular, but damn this game is hitting my survival roleplaying itch really well! 80 hrs in and I still feel like I'm not out of the early game (probably approaching the start of mid game content). If you enjoyed Palworld but weren't really thrilled about the cartoonish aesthetic and are more interested in medieval aesthetic like Manor Lords or Kingdom Come, this is a game you're going to love.

Ya it has its small glitches, but it's still very polished and the systems are very well designed. You won't have AI pathing issues with your minions like in Palworld and you'll have more granular control over how they work and how storage is managed.

I feel like this game is Manor Lords but form a 3rd person perspective. I have Manor Lords and I don't even want to play it anymore because of THIS game.

What I'm looking forward to the most is playing this on hosted servers and that's the only con to the game I can think of.

Arrowhead continues to walk some kind of line of balance they've created in their minds about weapons and stratagems e.g. you can only slot 1 mech stratagem and only call it twice, or not only do you have recoil but some kind of lag with lining up a shot.

This game is Early Access, but so far I don't see anything really innovative that gets me excited. It has a lot of the same lame systems every other survival games has had.

As an experienced survival player, when you start, it's fun because you're not sure what to expect. By hour 2 you feel like you've seen it all but keep pushing because maybe you got a cool gold drop (but that drop ALWAYS drops at that spot on the map - instantly killing replay value). Hour 4 and you keep going because the level design is really good and you're not seeing any lego brick tiles or copy-paste structures. The mobs are already super boring because there's no diversity or density. Hour 10 and you're just building the same old dumb items and upgrades like you've done a million times before in other survival games and you feel like you're punishing yourself for no good reason. There is nothing remotely special about the crafting, combat, or quest design. No random players running around. 2 or 3 NPCs that you've "rescued". Just, bad.

Other things I noted:
- Ground slopes are too slidey
- Get rid of stamina or make it less punishing
- Dying on the red lava glitches dropped loot too often
- Add server settings: no stamina, no hunger, Shroud time increase, more altars, no drop loot on death, reduce crafting time, no durability
- (early game) world needs more wildlife and enemies to encounter. Feels abundant with interesting terrain and buildings
- monsters stuck in ground
- when hosting privately, going to game menu (escape) should pause the game
- no keybindings for keyboard
- what's the point of the shroud?
- what's the point of the story? the story must be part of the adventure, not some mechanic to point you to the next waypoint
- another big open world (with some actual good environment design) with a shallow amount of content and even more shallow replayability.
- Roadmap put me to sleep

Something a 40 year old Dad can enjoy with his kids :)

Loving this game. Even though it has one stage! I'm very much looking forward to future updates.