Recent reviews by Volvo Driver

Version 28.04.17
Playtime ~14 hours
Size ~9.5GB

I played 3 characters: Archer & Warrior until lvl10 and Healer until 24. I started as an Undead Archer, thinking it will be something interesting and exciting. The only difference between that and living side was a bit less color. Drab. Then I tried Warrior, the mechanics proved to be quite dull and boring. Mash the number until you win. Finally I made a Healer, that proved a bit more fun as you get a decent mix of abilities and they have an alright feel to them. Nothing special but for a 5 year old hotdog known as ASTA it was working fine. 

I spawn in living human starting zone, greeted by a dude who gives me my medic gear and off I go into the world, saving lives by slaughtering every living creature I can see. In their eyes you are some sort of god, taking absolutely no damage from their puny blows while dishing out so much damage they die twice. As you move in this strange world, the inhabitants give you more genocidal missions. Kill this, kill that, at this point I felt more like a bringer of death rather than someone who is supposed to save lives. In the process I am showered with copper coins, my sack so big I have to drag it like Randy from SP. 

After a while of slaughter I visit my first dungeon with 4 other sods I have never met before. Little did I know 3 of us were healers. That did not prove to be an issue as we mowed down the dungeon, clearing it of all life until we met the owner, a huge what I can only assume to be asian man. He whips out his huge weapons and starts swinging it around, slapping all of us in the face, showing us where we belong. We did not complete that dungeon...

Soon after a man named Kody invites me to a guild called Chaotic. Seems appropriate after all the killings I did. They seemed like alright peeps. The same can't be said about global chat ones. Since there is only 1 server, everyone is there. Brazilians, Germans, Zimbabwians and all sorts of other people. Half the time you can't even understand what they're saying.

At level 24 I stopped playing as I was simply spent. There was not a single original bone in this game. Every mechanic had been done to death and the mechanics it did have were not particularly great either. I think this is what happens when you don't have a gameplay designer.

Most of my playthrough was done in a rented 3 day maid costume.

+ Funny VO
Voice acting in this game is simply hilarious. A scary undead ghost cries like a silly person upon death. Or a gigantic boss talking in a generic english voice just had me floored. It's so bad it's good.

+ Mostly no genderlock
Two races are male only but besides that any gender can be any class which is nice to see.

- Bad quests & grind
By far the biggest offender. You grind, you grind a lot. At some point you might feel like a poor taiwanese miner, doing same thing every day while slowly dying inside. All sidequests are essentially pick 8 this or kill 10 that. To make it worse the amount of things you need to kill seems to scale as you progress further. First you need to kill 8 wolves, then 9 zombies, then 10 pirates, then 11 crabs and so on. I wonder how far this goes. I stopped after reaching kill 13 undead pirates.

While the leveling seemed fair so far, the actual experience was monotone and just as uninspired as all the other things in this game.

- Shabby performance
Despite looking like a dried out french fry, it also runs just as well. I thought maybe their eye shattering "High" was too good for my GPU so I turned the settings down but that didn't do anything, it still ran at questionable framerates, jumping around more than a kid on sugar rush. It's just embarrassing to both look and run so slow. At least pick one or the other.

- Shabby visuals & art style
The game visually looks old, very old. It runs CryEngine but looks Gamebryo at best. The same applies to actual art style. It is your generic eastern asia setting except props are oversized and out of scale. Some location assets are stupidly enormous and so are a lot of levels with nothing in between all that space, just a poorly painted dirt road.

The world is also static and boring. Nothing happens except the same location event cycling over and over. It's just dead despite all the players running around. Even deserts get more action than that.

If you wish to see what uninspired art style looks like, this is a perfect example. It was most likely outsourced to some poor sods living in a shared basement, eating only raw ramen with no water.

- No dance emote
If there is one, I couldn't find it. No MMO is complete without a dance emote.

- Enemy tagging
Whoever hits a monster first gets the loot. Awful system that needs to go, but here it is, still overstaying it's welcome. Shoo shoo

- Gold spam
Not really game's fault(or so I thought until I saw the message) but gold seller spam is extreme. I am not sure why they couldn't just add MMOTANK to a blacklist or chat filter. This might seem like a spam ad but these guys sell 10 ingame gold for 3 real dollars. That is absolute ripoff. If you want to buy gold from chinese gold farmers, that's your thing, but if you do, at least don't pay such a crazy and overpriced fee for it. You can get 10G in almost no time in this game. Paying 3$ for that is outrageous. To make it worse some spam 20G for 7$, that's an even bigger ripoff. Rather than discounting for volume you actually pay more for it. Such nonsense. And what does the game tell you? "You can block spam, just right click..." really? Instead of taking care of it, you want your players to bother with this? Lazy.

=

ASTA Online is a very generic MMO that offers nothing new. A game few years too late. You might enjoy this if you like monotone MMOs but there is no long term future for this soulless game. It suffers from grind and lack of imagination. It suffers from that cheap feeling...

I wanted to give this game a thumbs up at first but as I played it more it became exponentially worse.

2/6

ASTA Online la vista baby

Version 17.02.17
Playtime ~21 hours
Size ~2.6GB

I could write an entire book on the topic of why this game is a horrendous piece of grubby rubbish. You enter the game, they drip feed you some currencies and items and then you're on your own in this developer forsaken virtual world. I'm glad I'm finally done with this toxic foul smelling carcass of Unreal Engine afterbirth. 

=

+ Decent weapon customization
It's not COD level but it works. Pimping your handgun with a silencer twice the size is a fun thing to do. The only fun thing you can really do in this game. 

- Unbalanced maps
All the maps I played on were so unbalanced it makes me wonder, did they get interns to make them? Nah, unlikely. They would at least have some effort put into them if that was the case. Most of them make no sense and look unfinished. I could not tell if I accidentally stumbled into an early access title or not. 

If only their miserable look was the biggest issue though. In team modes these maps are so unbalanced it makes you wonder if the developers playtested that wretched trash. The spawns are revealed, fully accessible to enemies. Often you get killed by someone camping your spawn. Nothing is more fun than getting killed by some shmuck camping in a corner behind your back. Imagine if you were born and the very moment someone backstabbed you before you even got a chance to see them. That's how it feels to spawn in this game. Constant fear of death and unruly anger looms over every respawn.

And if that was not enough, enemies can throw grenades into your spawn. I thought people learned a thing or two from how COD suffered from grenade spam. Well this game revels in it, proud of all the explosions. With certain perks you can even get 2 grenades, only further increasing the never ending artillery barrage of explosive ♥♥♥♥. I came here to play, not be reminded of my after-taco nights.

I've never seen official maps this unbalanced in my life, it's amazing how they got approved(if they did at all, I bet the only approval process there is that the map has geometry, that's good enough, commit the update). 

- TTK very low
Time to kill is awfully low here. Again if you thought COD had low TTK, this game excels at being bad. This isn't about skill any more, it's personal. Snipers are especially unbalanced on ranged maps. Unlike in other games where short range people can go a certain path, here if you're on sniper map with a rifle or such, in most cases you will be shot so hard you'll be reborn in 1000BC.

Headshots not only kill super fast, the hitboxes are either huge or lag compensation is wank making headshots super easy. I'm not a good FPS player and have trouble getting head, but here I was going "BOOM HEADSHOT" so much my neighbors called the police on me twice. All these poor sods who spawn and instantly die to one shot, never given a chance to retaliate. 

- Everything is rent or expensive
If you wish to own something you need to either grind or pay up. You get M4 at the start for some time, 12 days or so, which tbh is more than enough since you won't be playing this game for long enough for your default weapon to expire. Skins are premium currency only, which makes the game rather dull if you do not wish to pay. And if you wish to pay you need to consult with your medical expert, something surely isn't right for you to do that willingly.

To rub it in they sell a premium pack for over 60 euros. I can buy an actually good game for that, does anyone realize this?

- Spawn invulnerability
When you spawn, you get invincibility for a short time. That is fine if you're the one who gets it, it is not if you accidentally stumble into enemy spawn since the maps are so bad you can do that without knowing it. Rather than making inaccessible spawns or not spawning enemies next to each other, they spawn right on top of you and then use their long barrels to fill your holes. Make sure to clean your gun before you come or it will hurt.
Even in TDM spawns are always pre-defined. I suppose they were too busy being rich from all the fools and could not devise a decent mathematical formula to not spawn you right in your enemy's face. Thank god for that invincibility at least I won't be the one raging... this time

- Bright enemy outlines
Enemies are outlined with a bright red silhouette. In my days we used skinhacks, now you don't need that since no matter the lighting or map or mode, enemies have a bright outline so you can see exactly where to shoot them. Stealth is out of the question when you stand out like a neon sign in the middle of a corn field at night. Why even bother with the whole steps make no sound when walking mechanic if anyone can just turn and see you light up the night?

- Bad visuals and clunky animations
They're quite bad, but that wouldn't be a problem if that was the only problem this miserable piece of digital data had.

- Leveling slow even with XP boosts
Gaining levels is tedious, boring and so slow even your grandma can walk faster. During my play they had constant XP boosts active due to them breaking the servers and apologizing by providing boosts that do less than a cube of ice on a hot day in Australia. Oh yeah and if you pay up you can get the gear even if you are normally not high enough level to acquire it with ingame currency. 

Daily challenges are as unimaginative as it gets, xp and currency gain during normal games is so low even african minimum wage is higher, and that says something. There's a lot of grind so you better love the half-finished mechanics and maps that can make even players embarrassed cause you're gonna be stuck there for a long long time. And for what? Just so you can unlock Deagle. Thanks Obama! 

- Lame superpowers
The game has abilities, that at first I thought would be fresh and make the game cool. The only time I've been more wrong was when I  thought I could pull out and not become a father. Your superpowers include short range teleport, speed and shooting either fire or ice and some other boring pish posh. To make it all worse, unless you have a specific perk, using those abilities takes away your health. Who thought "Oh hey we got all these abilities why not punish players for using them haha suckers" and went through with it? 

- Long matchmaking/no players
The game (quite appropriately) has very little players, which means matchmaking takes a long time. Thankfully it has a server browser so you can actually see that their online population rivals only that of Antarctica. 

- Host Lag
The game does not use dedicated servers, instead one person is the host. Not rarely the host will be some Russian or Brazilian playing in EU server, making everyone but him have 300+ ping. The game can't tell that is bad and remake a different host, instead it just goes as normal except you can't hit anything and people are walking around as if they got osteoporosis. 

=

This is the first game I rated negatively, and hopefully the last. Even for the price it is, it is still not worth it. I spent over 20 hours of my time that I will never get back hoping at some point it would get good. It only got worse. It's like a disease that slowly eats you up. And I'm not talking about LoL.

Even if I mashed my face against the keyboard in Visual Studio, the errors I'd get when trying to compile would still be more fun than this.

1/10
It's bad and developers should feel bad for being so shamelessly gr€€d¥

Devs pls gib gems and items

Version 04.01.17
Playtime ~2.8h (rest was idling)
Size ~640MB

I originally downloaded this for my youngest son as he likes these silly games, but before I could let him play it I had to check it to see if it's safe for kids. Little did I know I was in for an adventure of a life(day)time. 

Note that this game is based on true events and is a true story. It even says so in the title if you were skeptical about that statement. And if you're still not sure, the game itself will remind you of that.

I begin the game and first thing I  know the King himself wants to me to go motherf***** Kisilova somewhere in Serbia to investigate vampire culture. I was not aware that's where goth style started but now I know better thanks to Vampire Legends. And that is as far as I can go without spoilers.

You grab your contract and head for a horse carriage with your trusty companion _name omitted_. You arrive to outskirts of Kislov and you need to cross a river with a ferry but the ferryman is butthurt and won't let you through until you give him a hefty bag of coins, probably your entire life savings. 

You ferry over but a vampire attacks the rope and you have to perform some river drifting action. Thankfully you ford it safely. After that you meet with local townsfolk who are all rather creepy except the one sexy girl that always runs away from you... this game is too real. 

You learn that vampires have been sucking off civilians one by one and no one likes that. All is fine and dandy until some woman dies and then town mayor kills himself or gets killed or something. Who cares about that right? So you ransack his office and find out he was working with the vampire but wasn't getting his cut so he threatened the vampire and vampire wasn't happy.
Your carriage driver gets stolen and you're sad for 5 minutes. He had no character so even your character can't feel much sadness over that.

At one point you find a gun but rather than using it to shoot enemies you use it to compete at a shooting range. Makes sense. There's vampires everywhere so lets waste bullets on target practice.
Later you finally get into the castle and find your carriage driver very dead. Rather than paying respect you loot his body for your own profits. 

Uninvited you invade THE castle, rummaging through every room like a dirty thief you are. No wonder King sent you away, he was worried you'd steal his crown or something.
After some blood sacrifice puzzles you get through and finally confront the suckers.

If you wish to read about the endings read the ending section below...

=

+ Fun voice acting
The voice acting is one of the best things in this game. I could not wait for next dialog sequence. The way everyone talks feels like they're suspicious of being in a game but are unable to admit it due to fear of their lives being limited to mercy of some random person launching these digital bits. The VO cast is varied though which is impressive considering this game was made by 3 people and a sentient dishwasher.

+ Set in Siberia
Siberia needs more love. This game provides plenty by portraying modern Siberia perfectly. Ancient doors, old carts, horse carriages, all perfect representations of a wonderful and culturally rich country. The people are nice and friendly, the weather sunny and warm. 

+ Relaxing themes
The music and game is very nice for relaxing as there are no time sensitive things. Lay back and enjoy the thrilling vampire mystery. Who was the vampire? Count vampire? NO WAY!?!?

+ Casual puzzles
Might be bad for some but it was good for me since I enjoy the adventure and while puzzle solving is fun, nothing breaks the immersion more than my inability to stick keys in the right holes. You can either get hints or skip puzzles altogether. All of those are optional and if you're a hardcore puzzler, there are 3 difficulty settings offered by this game. This was especially good for my son since he is mentally slow. No offense to my son.

+ Hilarious ending(s)
Don't read if you don't wanna know!
In main story you reach the vampire's castle and this random guy runs in and sets the whole castle on fire. Vampires don't burn so you stab Count Vampire in the heart with your hard wood and he goes like "Aaaah! *incoherent noises*" and then your mission is done and you leave. But the twist is there was another vampire all along and village isn't safe.

In the unlocked sequel story you play as a woman in the village and all the villagers are dead. You find out that the remaining vampire woman is locked in a crypt and instead of leaving it alone you do all these puzzles to find keys and once you unlock the crypt the woman jumps out and is like "Hsssss! Do you want to be vampire or do you not?" and if you say sure I assume you become vampire but I picked "noty" option and stabbed her with my hard wood again, a bit strange since this time player character is a woman(I think) but it's 2017 so that's okay too.

At the very end credit sequence tells you that despite your best efforts vampires now rule all of Europe and russians are the only people immune to this, thus becoming last hope for our planet Earth.

+ Cheesy animations
The animations are so cheesy I could lay them out on a pizza and no one could tell the difference. It's like I am in year 2000 and flash is life. This adds a lot of charm and unintentional laughs to the game. When people speak they sorta wobble around like jello people. I hope they are not actual jello, that would be rather creepy and I do not wish to live in that universe. 

+ Additional story
When you complete the main story you unlock an additional expansion-style story to play through sequel style story as a different character. That's a nice touch. I wouldn't want to pay money for a sequel, I got mouths to feed (mostly mine). 

+ Pleasant art
The art looks like something a child prodigy would draw. It is quite nice to look at but in some sections it can also look weird or disproportional. Overall the colors make even LGBT logo shy away. Some scenes can feel like a light psychedelic trip which is what I want at this point in my life. That child support drains all my hobby money, it's not like I can afford any hits anymore. 

- Some puzzles are weird
Why do I need a rat to get a key out of a mouse hole that is literally 10 cm from the entrance? Or why do I need to attach a magnet to a fishing pole to fish a key out of a puddle when it can be easily reached with a hook that I already have in my inventory? Or using a mouse so it eats some of the apple that you then take for no good reason. Why do I need a half eaten apple? Some of them are not intuitive and methods of solving them are questionable, some might even be illegal. At one point I had to launch binary debugger and change game instructions to solve a puzzle (if 'this game requires steam to launch' is a puzzle).

- Puzzles are not colorblind friendly
Some puzzles are based on different color objects or beams which can be troublesome for people suffering from color blindness. My son spent 3 hours on this one puzzle and even looked it up on youtube which made him really confused so I had to break it to him. Now I have to potentially bring him to therapy to avoid kid existential crisis. Thanks Vampire Legends, what's next, you're gonna tell him Santa isn't real?

=

Final rating 7/2
I don't know how I own this game but it's entertaining and solid for what it is.

Top quality RPG. Only made better by the 2 expansions.

Version 30.11.2016
Playtime ~17 hours
Size ~10GB

I did not expect much when I first launched the game, and I was not disappointed. Due to very revealing clothing of female characters, I could not allow my son to play this. It was a big boy game I told him. He cried as most kids do, but later he forgot about his sorrows and resumed playing with his magnifying glass in the sunlight. I selected a server and created a berserk class character. I met many people in my adventures until I reached level 16 and got bored. Berserk simply wasn't quite cutting it despite having a blade the size of a small skyscraper. Instead I made a priest. This time things were different. I felt like my life actually had a purpose now. From the very 1st level I was overwhelmed with my self-importance. I grabbed my scepter and rushed into the world.

I tamed my first mount - a unicorn-like horse. Probably imported from China. It was all fun and games until I was sent to a temple infested with spiders. What do I have to do? Clean it out. This is not the job I applied for. Spiders are nasty, I don't see why I have to touch them with my pure god magic. Why not let some dirty berserk take care of them instead? After that I travel on, slaying innocent fairies and stealing their water for some nefarious reasons.

I reach the capital city and king himself wants me to visit him. We chill, he tells me about his issues in bed with the queen, you see, she isn't happy. Not even best healing magic can help him. Being unable to help him, I head out for more outskirts action.

The pinnacle of my adventure was when I reached a village populated by werewolves. Werewolf! Werewolf? There. What? There, wolf. Afterwards I move further into the world, killing all. At one point I reach a Villa full of posh vampires. The very moment I entered the gate I saw green gardens full of nobility vampires enjoying their tea and discussing latest court gossip. Too bad for them, I had to slay them nonstop until they stopped moving.

Finally I go to a volcanic area. At this moment I knew I was gonna get my first dragon. There was only 1 issue. I could not until I was level 20. Allegedly if I was under 20, it did not prove my loyalty to the kingdom, making me unworthy of taming a dragon. I was stuck for 30 minutes doing same quest of killing turtles and harvesting their soul for the devil him self until I finally got enough turtle slaying experience to reach 20. The quester tells me "go into this fiery hole and catch that dragon". And so I do. I enter the tunnel and reach the dragon and mount it with ease.

I ended my adventure by using the megaphone to shout to the world, only to receive tons of harassing whispers in return. Did not expect to be bullied like that.

In later levels you start to feel weak as a priest, but that is not a bad thing as it adds additional challenge and requires you to think strategically to defeat your foes. It is not often you have to do that in the world segments of many MMOs. 

=

+ Powered by CRYENGINE
Does it look like cryengine? Nah. Do I still like the fact that it is cryengine? Absolutely! First time I was introduced to cryengine was during Crysis 1 and its map editor. Dynamic shadows? Oh yeah so good! Drop in edit/play modes? Mmmm! Spawn anything you want, be a god you won't ever be. Does this game use it to its full potential? Not even close. But I appreciate the gesture. 

+ Steamworks auth
At least I don't need to make a separate nexon account. Just use steam auth and jump right into the game to be greeted by a region and server pick screen. I love it when I can return home after a long day of screenings, sit back, crack open a beer, get a footrub and jump into a game without any logging in hassles. This game does most of that quite well.

+ No gender lock
So many of these games have class gender locking, this one does not. The game does not care if I identify as M or F, I can be any class I want. A female berserk? Sure thing. A male priest? Possible, just don't touch the boys! Very progressive, I like that. I do not wish to be stuck in a particular gender role. I wish to free my identity and become a male witch without judgement from a medieval society. 

+ Revealing female armor
The game follows the typical "male full armor female skin only" formula when it comes to armor design. Some say it's a downside, but I say it's a win for everyone. If you play a female, you get lighter armor and thus won't get so hot during battles, avoiding a heat stroke. Maybe even save materials during crafting? Though I suppose shopkeepers could rip you off since it takes less material to craft female armor but the price is same as male variant. Kinda sucks considering female characters only receive 0.7 silver coins for every 1 coin a male gets in drops. 

+ Extensive customization
The customization is on richer side of things. You get plenty of presets as well as the ability to tweak a lot of sliders to create your own perfect monstrosity. Picked male but wanted to be female? Just choose a feminine face and long hair and no one will be able to tell the difference. Customization also includes exotic and bright hair colors, allowing you to relive your ｓｕｇｏｉｉ～ dreams in MMO form.  Just max out that eye size slider and pick bright pink hair color for maximum `main character` experience. It even includes chin size slider.

+ Smooth instance transitions
Transitioning from world to single player instances is a fairly smooth and painless process unlike in some other games. Simply go through a portal and an instance will be prepared according to your tastes with no loading screens. If an army of mobs is chasing your ｋａｎａｒｉ avatar, just slip into an instance and your pursuers will be left in awe as you disappear right in front of them. In this world Houdini is not the only magician (there are actual wizards in the game).

- Nexon
What is there to be said here? They ruin everything they touch. For them nothing is impossible to break. Turn diamonds into chicken turds. Turn MMOs into whale farms. The games they have either die or live long enough to die later.

- Low bagspace
Inventory space is very limited and even with the bags they give you it is still not enough. It never is. They ask for more and more but you're very tired as you already gave all you got, but they never stop, only keep asking for more until your very soul shatters into a thousand tiny pieces of razor sharp glass that you then have to walk over every single day, suffering for all the poor life choices that you thought would not matter in the long run.

- Constant cash shop popups
Every. SINGLE. TIME. You log in? "buy our stuff pls" You level up? "buy stuff k?" What's next? "Buy this new shiny thing" after I wipe my ass? It is so annoying. They don't even show anything interesting, just a generic picture. That won't make me want to press on it or buy stuff in the cash shop.

- That f2p feel
You know, that feel you get when playing f2p games. The feel where you know that everything you do as a free player has diminishing returns. This feel was confirmed after I received a 10 day premium status. The grind is lessened, you get decent health potions, your pets don't run out of energy since you get potions to restore it.

- Pet energy
Pet energy is such a ripoff system. If you do not have pet energy potions, your pets will be running out of energy, essentially making them unusable until it regenerates, which takes more time than it should. This means that you cannot ride or fight with your favorite pet all the time and instead have to swap to your less favored prisoners.

=

Overall it is a fairly standard korean style mmo with a gimmick that is like your 2nd child, soon enough you lose your excitement about it

Final rating 6/5
It's okay for the price I paid

Version 8.2.2
Playtime ~5 hours
Size ~360MB

I was born as a poor swordsman given nothing but a sword and a stick and some peasant clothes to start out. As I made my way through the tutorial area, speaking to all sorts of weird creatures, I was gifted the juicer. At that moment I knew my life will never be the same for I had discovered the wonders of self juicing.

After passing through a shady looking portal hole I spawned in some sort of market square. Though no one was surprised by this, unlike in Terminator, this occurance was normal for the local folk.
I talked to a man who claimed to be the mayor though I had my doubts as he stood outside and from what I saw didn't even have a house of his own. Town crazy maybe? I never found out. He told me to go talk to some other villagers. Not my first time taking directions from strangers.

And so I went onto my quest for glory as I visit the local grave digger. He tells me he has beef with red ghosts. Red ones, remember that. Not white ones, but only the red kind. My first impression of this man was not very positive. Color discrimination is not a game.

Oh well as long as I get paid right? So I go and kill red ghosts for him. I am in no way a ghostbuster but a blade cuts all the same.

After that done I visit a man who tells me to kill cows and skin them for their leather. Finally I visit a blacksmith and a mine operator. Nothing fancy. The mayor now tells me to visit more people.
One of them is a peculiar old farmer. I complete one of his mundane requests and what does he give me? His ♥♥♥♥! For free! I was overjoyed. He had many ♥♥♥♥♥ so I suppose giving one for a stranger was not an issue. I take my ♥♥♥♥ for a walk and feed it some white dust.

All is well so far. I find some armor and weapons on the floor inside bank building and do not hesitate to take it for the owner obviously did not want it. I instead accept it as one of my own and wear it with pride. At this point I am all pimped out and ready to head out into the wilderness.

Off I go out the city gates and into the forests. A goblin is there. I dash forward, slamming his ugly mug with a katana I found earlier. It snags off about 1/4th of his health bar. As I wait for my next swing, the goblin retaliates. His swing is so hard it bends my skull, I drop dead right before his feet.

Being dead is not fun. I have to return back to the city, but I cannot see for ghosts have no eyes. I blunder the dark forest, finally reaching a resurrection point. My spirit inhabits flesh body once more. Though I am now naked for all my armor was left in that body that I left behind. Deep sorrow fills me as I have left my armor there to rot. It was like my own son. But I had forsaken it.

And so I spent the rest of my days juicing grapes.

===

- Furry race
It is obvious where the developers stand when they include a furry race that is literally animal head with human body.
This is not what I expected. Now I can't let my kids play this any more lest they discover furdoms or other weird things.
The demon race could double as a scalie one too. This game should be 18+ as it contains too much suggestive material.

- Map is split into regions
The game map is split into tiny regions that have pre-defined entrances. This makes the game feel very claustrophobic and tiny. This doesn't help at all when half the roaming region is taken up by a house claim of some rich nobleman who thinks he's better than everyone else. This is not what Lord British would've wanted.

- Regions are not clearly defined
The minimap does not show entrances/exists of each region and you can often find yourself stuck in a corner while some enemy player whips out his long ass sword and proceeds to poke your lower parts with it. Not only is this system bad, it is made worse by not clearly defining borders. 

- Near dead population
Similar to Age of Conan, barely anyone plays this. They'd need to do some radical changes to attract more players. As it currently stands it looks like it's on dying legs.

- No Steam overlay
Steam ingame overlay is nowhere to be found which means no screenshots. I get that you're not the prettiest game on the block but that is no reason to shy away from some pictures. Yes, they might get leaked on the internet, but no one will care enough to look at them so do not worry.

- Server saving
I get that you're trying to be like UO but server saving was NOT a good feature. Essentially every few minutes the server will freeze for a world save. This is lame. I wonder if their backend uses RunUO server at this point.

- Can't see anything when dead
When you die you turn into a ghost and have to run to a resurrection point but the issue is that the screen goes very dark and blue and navigating forests become impossible. You gotta go blindly and pray you can find region exit. Why not just turn the screen black and white? Noo we have to impair player's vision completely. I understand that being dead hurts but this is just stupid. 

- Clunky UI
The UI is bad. Not only is it not very pretty, it controls worse than lada. Map will turn on and off constantly and never remember its place and spawn anywhere it wants. The object dragging hand misleads you and causes you to place items at the wrong place. Text is hard to read and quests sometimes don't get accepted. Even UO had better and prettier UI.

+ Ultima Online ripoff
Any game that tries to be UO gets a bonus point from me. As a hardcore UO player back in the day I wish to see it reborn in a 2016/2017 worthy form.
Sadly this game falls flat on that but at least it tries and that is admirable.

+ Calm and relaxing soundtrack
All two tracks that are in the game are very relaxing and well done. Wish they had enough of them for a proper album.

+ Supports DirectX 8 and 9
A nice feature to have since that means you can run it on mostly any windows pc. Wanna play it on your dad's pentium 3? No problem pal.
DX12 support would be neat but can't have everything.

+ Steamworks login
No need to register a separate account, just launch the game and mash that login through steam button. Bam you're done.
More games need to take this example and allow you to just launch the game and play without having to make three different accounts.

+ Friendly and generous people
People who grind crafting skills will often drop their resulting items which you can swoop like a dirty hobo and put them in your bank for fermentation. I asked a person for a pickaxe and instead of giving me one he just told me to see the blacksmith who wanted to charge money.
If you're new and need stuff, either go to the mines or bank, it usually has free stuff lying around on the floor.

+ Juicing
Using a juicer you can juice fruit for their sweet juice. No more needs to be said.

+ Weight paradox
When juicing grapes the resulting juice weights MORE than the source grapes, thus turning grapes into juice increases inventory weight.

+ Free ♥♥♥♥
After completing a quest for an old man, he gives one of his ♥♥♥♥♥ for free. Game has an extensive ♥♥♥♥ fighting mechanic where you can do lots with your ♥♥♥♥ as long as you train and feed it well. For 100 gold you can even have your ♥♥♥♥ examined by a professional. I personally did not try ♥♥♥♥ fighting as I don't swing that way but for others, you might consider it.

===

Overall the game has a nice foundation but right now it has no direction as it can't decide if it's UO clone or an original thing.

Final rating 8/8
It's like food with no salt, it's ok but something is missing, salt mostly

Version 5.1
Playtime ~6 hours
Size ~25GB

In Age of Conan you play a barbarian or a wizard of your picking, you start off as a slave(totally not a Morrowind ripoff) on a ship that crashes and then ghosts whisper sweet nothings to you as you are washed on the shore where a friendly local old man tells you to head for Tortilla in order to gain freedom.
As you move through jungle, slaying pirates, natives and gorillas alike, you finally reach gates of Tortilla. There the guard tells you that your shackle fashion is not okay in the city and you are forced to conform to the local acceptable dressing code instead.

After that you're free to do nothing as there is a severe lack of low level quests, which changes at around level 9-10 where you get far too many quests, even though they're all the same under the hood. You spend most of the game at the local inn getting wasted and talking to the local cat.

Leveling is slow and there is no one around to help you since the game seems to be on its last legs as there is barely anyone else to be found. Your days are spent creeping around static NPCs whose only purpose in life is to do barely anything.

Sometimes you use a boat to teleport to another location full of natives and crocodiles but nothing much changes. You slay them or they slay you sometimes, repeat repeat. 

Combat was fun until I realized that essentially you get 3 of the same basic attack and to use a special attack you have to press two buttons in a sequence instead of one like in most games. All this does is reduce your keyboard lifespan. It does not add to the gameplay much besides having to remember which direction an ability needs.

Playing alone is really tough since world NPCs respawn really fast and when you're done with one group, it will start respawning, locking you into an infinite wave survival.  This game could work a lot better if you dealt a bit more damage and enemies did not respawn as fast. 

I wanted to invite my son to play with me but the game mechanics were a bit too complex for a 9 year old. Though it is for the best since I would not want to damage his mind with how poor the game plays.

I played until level 15 and could not do any more as it felt more tedious than a manual labor job. All you do is run from one bland place to another doing bland quests killing mostly bland enemies. There is no strategy, just monotone grind. Maybe it gets better in higher levels but if after 6 hours it is all the same, that is more than enough to say no. I originally intended to play until when you leave Tortilla but I changed my mind after all the mind numbing experience.

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- Additional Downloads
After runnig the game from Steam, the launcher has to download more content. This puts up false expectations of being able to play as it is done downloading. Sorta like when gifting your nephew a Wii U but then having it to update for 3 hours straight.

- Separate account registration
The game does not use steamworks and forces you to register a separate account with their system. That's more nonsense to go through before you can jump into the world of Conan the Barbosa.

- Slow launcher launch
Every time you open the game, launcher needs to rescan everything which takes longer than it should. Every. SINGLE. TIME.

- Bad latency
I don't know which server I was assigned to, but the game would constantly average at 140ms which is ridiculous considering there's total of three other people playing. Though this is most likely due to them being unable to afford more servers since no one is playing.

- Quest limit of 30
You cannot have more than 30 active quests at a time. If you want new quests, you need to delete old ones. I get that this is an old game, but come on, update it once in a while to allow more than that.

- Quest tracking limit
You can only have 3 quests being tracked at one time and you cannot have 0 tracked quests as at least one needs to be tracked at all time. The UI to track/untrack quests is also painfully clunky.  

- One character slot limit
Seriously!? Can't even try out other classes unless you either delete your existing character or create 10 new accounts. I suppose you need more registered accounts to show some activity to your bosses.

- No population
It feels like a ghost town. During all of my playthrough I saw 5 other players, one of whom invited me to a Russian clan where admin proceeded to purge all inactive accounts, dropping clan member count from 80-something to 7 including me.

- Generic quests
Typical mmo quests of going here killing X of that. Very monotone and it gets annoying to walk back and forth.

+ Fun clothing and armor
Armor, weapons and clothes are rather enjoyable to look at with the realistic barbarian style. It is always fun to just take an ax that does not have any glowing elvish inscriptions and smack some pirates with it.

+ Executions
Not many MMOs have fancy executions. This is not one of them, but the executions Conan does have are fairly decent. Sometimes they go all wonky and animations don't exactly match but hacking someone's head off or taunting your target while your ax is embedded in their chest is rather fun as far as this sort of stuff goes.

+ Low level enemies don't attack
Enemies with much lower level than you will stop being hostile and will allow you safe passage. Saves some time when you have to go to same place a hundred times for all the different quests that unlock one after another rather all at once.

Conclusion
It is a dying game standing on its last legs. Wish it went open source so that others could turn it into an actually epic adventure rather than having this mess of a tryhard mmo.

Final rating 3/9
Not worth the weight

Version 01.12.2017
Playtime ~14 hours
Size ~36GB

My name is Roth Wood and I will be writing this review in behalf of the Maker.
Back in the day I was a professional e-athlete, cruising in my top tier Corsair and Geforces. You know the good stuff. Why is that important? well one of my e-games was Killing Floor. I won many championships including LCS and MLG and Gatoraid too. You could say I was born to kill zad.

So of course I was intrigued by KF2 and what has been changed or improved. Naturally I boot up the game··· but wait it is taking ages to actually boot. I was not in the mood because two days ago I was viciously mauled by a snake but that did not stop me from waiting a bit longer. Finally I got to the menu to be greeted by blood red graphics of horror. This got me interested and mildly sick all in one.

There was a single problem though: being the fool I was I alt tabbed to read tweets of my favorite person but when I tried the game froze. Dead on. It froze and was laid over the system. I could open c-a-d menu but neither task manager nor sleep mode gave me solace. I simply could not minimize it. All that was left was to press that dreaded R button on my PC box.

Sure enough I changed settings from fullscreen to borderless window and it's been smooth playing from there on. I begin searching for a match and am instantly thrown into a farm. Despite spawning with a shovel as my weapon I could neither farm nor dig. A bit disappointing but I can live with that. Was never for manual labor anyway. Everything goes fine, you kill zeds, get dosh, buy money, kill boss, win.

But all that changed when I chose VS survival. You see Ivan, in this mode YOU are the zeds. And unlike in L4D where you play as bosses, here you play as normal scrubs who die in 2-3 shots. You gotta be smart, gotta outsmart the players, survive, adapt is the game. Rushing head on as a clot means instant brain splatter. No you have to circle the map, sneak around, seek invisible walls where humans can't go. Unless you're playing as boss, then just rush their face···

There are actually no floor killings involved disappointingly, just like in KF1. Disappointing.
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+ Guns
Gunplay is very fun. The animations are wonderful and make your brain eject that pleasure chemical almost as much as eating pizza during saturday evenings does.

+ Customization
Although limited but still a welcome addition. You can now customize your characters with different gear including hats, skins and all sorts of trinkets. You can even equip a balaclava on top of a gasmask, that gets bonus points in my book.

+ VS mode
The ability to play as both humans and zeds is amazing. If stupid AI is a problem for you then this mode solves that and makes even the most generic zeds fun to fight against.

+ Gore
Gore has been upped a notch this time and it shows. Not dynamic but does the job well. Wish there was an option to change blood color. My son is sensitive to blood and so I can't play this game with him.

+++ Demon Hunter
The best ingame music is from Demon Hunter, literally the best band to step on this mortal earth. If you disagree you're wrong You should buy all their albums right NOW! Other ingame music is done by some synthetic guy and some other peeps, they're okay.

- Nobody wants to weld
Sure I get it welding isn't as lucrative as it was back in the day but come on these doors are meant to be welded shut so none of the bad zeds get in. Instead all that happens is that some other doof will come over and undo your hard work. No wonder no one wants to weld, someone just has to ruin it for you!

- No posh atmosphere
In KF1 you played as a team of posh britishmen, in KF2 you play as... some asian, some father and some lady. Lack of London and british people really brings down the feel of the game. The trader is also not as comical this time. No more liking the big ones.

- Less imaginative maps
The maps feel kinda all over the place. Invisible walls, little interaction, blandish lighting.

- Dosh is no longer measured by the pound
Seriously! Who's idea was it to rename dosh from £ to D or whatever that god unseen abomination they call money is. Really sad for them to do this. Globalization ruins another game.

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Final verdict: it's fun but not British at all
Score: 7/4