Player: ONOMI-1 (NA Server; Level 5000+) TDLR: Amazing "F2P Action Strategy with MMORPG Elements" game with nothing really like it that has lasted this long. Feels like Mount and Blade PVP. Level up your stats and units. Find and wear new and better equipment, unlock units, use artilery. Battlepass, which is great but not needed, is ~$3 a month. ---------------------------------------- I think I have over 10k+ hours from the game (they changed Developer Owners so they migrated the Application source which had logged those hours in). Before I get into it, this game is awesome. If you like Mount and Blade mixed with PVP, than this is it. I've tried a few of other games that tried to be like this in the last few years, but this is as polished of this genre as you can get (and it's not as much as it could have been, to be fair). 1. Mount and Blade Reference: You move your character and troops similarly but with even more control. You micro your hero and macro your units, but there won't be as many units to control at once as Bannerlord/Mount & Blade. You equip your hero (and units) with individual Skins pieces. You do have access to special skills per class, but the skills have more practical themes than magical themes. 2. Lore/Story: there isn't really any. Don't play this game like a story RPG. This is okay for me though. From how this game is designed, trying to force a main character and story wouldn't ruin it. They do keep well with the themes each season, which are referenced to real life war historic entities. Some units don't really work like that in real life but it doesn't really break immersion. 3. Casual Friendly vs TIME for Build to Come online: Yes. You can play 1-3 matches a day to get your dailies in, that help build your grind to unlock everything at a constant pace. It could take you 2 years to unlock everything this way. If you're into the game a lot but don't want to spend money, you don't need to for the most part. The majority of MTX is for skins. The P2W people claim is mostly the smaller boosts to your grind, which you also get free as well (and plenty of it). (explained more in point #5) 3. Late Game Not Controlled by Whales at all: If you hear people say there are Level 7k Whales, I'll tell you most "high level veterans" are not whales, and like me, only buy the battle pass (mainly for unique skins), which is $3 a month. That's great IMO. The whales in this game usually get destroyed utterly by Veterans since they don't know how to play, and when they do learn how to play, the non-Whale beats them evenly just the same. 4. The Slight Part about P2W: The only gripe I have is one smaller aspect of possible P2W, is the ability to buy chance rolls for The Stronger Deployable Artillery in Ranked/TW Matches. Mind you, you can still win free Arti, but could be possible that someone spends 1000$ to get a few extra to help win a few matches. Those same people could also use that Arti completely badly, and have us break their 50$ spent in 2 seconds each time but it can be an annoyance. The parts about boosting doesn't really affect the game much IMO. I think I spent over 700$ on this game for 4.5 years, and the majority of that was on Battle passes, some on skipping some terrible quests for unit unlocks (sometimes very worth it), and the rest on skins I don't even wear lol. To me that's not bad. 5. Gameplay and Timing: -Casuals: 2-5 games a day (1-2h, with "regular sieges" (public match) being 10-15m long a game) -Sweaty: every day for 3h (doing all dailys/weeklies/quests and using advice from guides/vets to unlock things efficiently) + TW: 2-5h a week; This is the guild vs guild weekly battle events, with the goal to be ruler of the kingdom(s). + Ranked: 3-10h; Very competitive mode with chosen groups of 3. Can play for exclusive rewards and competitive nature. Extremely sweaty version of regular sieges. The Top 25 get a visual Flag on their mounts that makes them visually distinct for 1 season afterwards. 6. Hero Characters Many different weapon classes and skills. Each class feels unique in both playstyle and interaction with your units: Hero Killer, CC Hero, Ranged DPS, etc. Has many different style of units and their uses. Some are completely obsolete, and some have returned to META due to game updates: Infantry, Ranged, Cav, Special units. There's something about having the enemy winning the push, only to panic when they get real-time flanked, and even though the enemy would have won, lost, due to the panic and confusion. Ending Comments: Community and Roleplay can be huge in this game. Wish they did way more marketing to get our player count high again. If you try this game out, give it a shot until you play maybe 20 games with real players after the training bots. That's when you make the decision to want to get better at the game or just drop it cause it's too much of a learning curve/time sink like any other game really. Also, <3 RIP NA House GAIA. I'll miss you guys. You made Covid times an easier time to push through.
Read more