IMPORTANT FOREWORD: With respect, I genuinely don't understand how people who complain about the game's difficulty are able to write reviews saying as much, because there is absolutely no way that those people can read. Not only does the game prompt you to customize your difficulty when starting out, but it asks you if you want to change how hard it is EVERY TIME YOU LOAD INTO IT. Don't like decay? Okay... then don't play with it. Do you like decay but worried it might turn into a "second job"? Then tell your AI tribe members to take care of it. Game is great so far, and it almost feels suspiciously cheap for the amount of content that is already in the game. Making your own custom mask, covering yourself in tattoos, and running through the bush to hunt down a target feels pretty good. I don't write many reviews but I'll try to list the general pros and cons. So far I have played on standard difficulty without changing anything, on a private session. TLDR: game almost too good for the price point, especially with release discount. PROS: - Gaining XP to progress is not tied to any one thing specifically, so you aren't ham-fisted into doing any one thing in particular for general progression. Want to be a civilization builder that has an expansive farmland and automated workers to facilitate that? Cool, every single action you take levels you up the same way as running around and constantly killing things. - Combat in the game starts out slow and simple, but it ramps up with the different build customizations. There are I think 8 weapons in current early access, and each has their own quirks and skills. The animations can be a bit stiff and jank sometimes, but visceral. Try countering with the one-handed blade and doing a punisher, it feels wonderful. - As a second but separate point to the combat, it feels like you are fighting for your life against just the AI tribe members, but in the best way possible. The AI post guards around their camps, and if one of them hears something they will investigate and alert others to the noise. When they find you, they have access to the same skills and weapons the player does (minus any mask related abilities). I had a fight outside of an AI tribal village with two guys pinning me down with arrow fire behind a rock, and a third flanking the rock with dual swords to push me in the open. I don't know if any of that is intended in the game, but when I finally won the fight I felt like a god. - There is quite a bit of customization this early in the EA phase. You can add ornaments and feathers to your mask, get new hairstyles and paint for your body, add modifiers and buffs to your armor and weapon sets, etc. The skill trees are expansive enough that you can set yourself apart from players easily, and your weapon/equipment loadouts appear on your character themselves. - The building is not as in-depth as Valheim (no structural integrity), but it has some similarities. There are a lot of little decorations and items to help make your little tribal hut look cool, and after a long expedition to investigate some ruins it feels pretty good to go home to your little tribe members running around and maintaining your base. - Once you figure out the AI work system for your tribe, it's nice to watch them run around and do a lot of the annoying collecting for you. You can set work zones for tribe members, and what each tribe member can do in those zones. Need a lot of wood for your bonfire so it doesn't decay? Tell your tribe member to go get it, they will collect it while you are offline and keep the fire going. CONS: - The animations are a bit jank and stiff. Sometimes it looks like the characters teleport between certain stances and actions. If these were smoothed out it would do wonders for immersion. - There are a LOT of recipes in the game. Your AI tribe members can do most (if not all) of them for you, but it may be a bit confusing at first to even figure out where to begin a recipe chain. The lack of an early mount system when you need clay or any other location specific resource means a long walk in multiple directions for either you or the AI tribe. - No crashes so far, but some minor bugs may be annoying. Want to loot the chest when there aren't any enemies around, but you get a warning saying there are enemies? One of the enemies might have spawned under the map, so you have to poke them with a stick through the floor until they die. Want to move a workbench that has an AI tribe member assigned to it? They may get confused and stand in a corner where the bench was, so you have to toggle their job assignments for them to regain sentience. CON THAT I WANT FIXED IMMEDIATELY: - If a worker breaks their tool, they will sit around the bonfire and cry about it. Let us create a work condition to let the AI workers repair their own stuff if under X% condition. The only time I feel any genuine annoyance is when I have to manually take someone's axe out of their inventory, duct tape it up right in front of them, and then hand it back to them. As of my current time in the game I have not seen anything to remedy this, and it puts a slightly annoying break in the otherwise nice automation chain. Side note: try equipping the dual blades and running back and forth between the trees as you sprint through the jungle. The camera is slightly slower than your character and it feels pretty cinematic, especially if you disable the UI. It's hard to describe what I mean, but the camera motion feels very good and that specific combination highlights it well.
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