Recent reviews by Ackerlight

This game has a lot of potential, unfortunately it is just not there yet. When you start the game it seems like a beautiful and well put together game. Then you hit the end of day 1's content. Then you start to see what the problem with this game is. It's content restrictions and time gates.

The way the game works is it limits what you are allowed to do on day XX of a server launch. So you can only do so much content the first day. You cannot repeat quests and new quests do not unlock until day 2, etc... So its impossible to get enough XP to unlock your storyline progression 'Path' until the quests unlock for that day. Content simply is not there to progress.

To make matters worse, you cannot level up characters or anything because those are behind click unlocks (you only generate so much stamina/bread loafs per day) and you need XX many stamina to level up characters or grind elemental crystals to unlock their level cap. Leading to so much useless and unusable time per day as a player as there is literally nothing you can do. You literally cannot do anything and are forced to log out as there is nothing you can even do other than wait until stamina regens or the time gates unlock for the next days content for your server.

You see a lot of Youtubers generating content for the game, but if you look closely they are almost all exclusively playing 'beta' and 'closed test' accounts that none of us will ever be able to reach. Those already have ungodly levels of Dev given stamina points, gems and characters already unlocked that normal people will never be able to ever access. They start with something like 5000/150 stamina or something and all characters already unlocked and level 100. It is not a true representation of the game at all from an actual players standpoint.

You can't even really call this game pay-to-win because even if you were to pay and buy crystals or something the entire game is still crippled behind the time gates and click gates. What is the point of even being able to roll for possible new heroes if you have zero possibility of ever leveling them up? It's like it wants to be pay-to-win but the company has no idea how to do pay-to-win.

I don't know. Maybe the game will be better in a few years after the Devs figure out how to make usable game mechanics and generate more content? For now though, the game is pretty disappointing from the standpoint of a regular player.

So far my initial impressions - it seems like it is more arcade game and less simulator. Some things are driving me nuts. Like scopes for example. Scopes are fixed power and not variable power. So no adjustable zoom. Also if you have multiple weapons, you can only assign a scope once per inventory. So if you have a .223 for small game and a .30-06 for larger game, you can assign your highest power scope to only one weapon. The other weapon will have to use a lower power scope. You cannot buy multiples of the same scope, so you are stuck. Hopefully they fix this sometime, because right now it is just annoying. Not sure what to say about the animal AI just yet other than it's pretty robotic. Animals parading back and forth along a fairly straight set path over and over seems -- odd? This is really noticeable in the open grasslands. Also after shooting they again seem to more or less run in a straight line? So not sure what the point of the dog is unless it is for higher brush and wooded areas. I will update this after I get to play the game more, but so far - initial impressions are not leaving me impressed. I am pretty mixed on this one. Right now, I can't say I am feeling I got my money's worth just yet.

This game is really like an open canvas for old Battletech Table-top players. On that level, it is really starting to shine.

Initially I had massive problems with stability at launch. The game would frequently crash after missions (1 in 3 for me would crash to desktop). I stuck with it though and the Beta 1.01 patch resolved the crashing. There was an issue with gameplay and switching to some static image resources and video that would cause a crash to desktop. The good thing is HBS is actively tracking issues and fixing the bugs.

The issues I had with the game play and rules have already been or are being addressed by the Modding community. Almost every aspect of the game rules and features are editable via text files, so industrious people have already or are in the process of correcting any table-top rules discrepancies and tuning of the game. You can also tune the rules yourself if you later find something that doesn't fit your game play or match how you think it would function. Adding things like custom mech mount points, speed adjustments, weapons load outs, pilots, map locations, etc are all moddable via text files. From that standpoint, it is amazing how open the system is once you begin to look into it. Almost every game aspect can be easily changed. Only hard assets like graphics files and meshes for custom mechs and animations need to be worked on. The modding community is pretty active though, so I expect even those to be improved and added in soon.

Also I think it was announced that HBS and PGI won their lawsuit with Harmony Gold over the Battletech/Robotech intellectual property and likenesses. So I am expecting the missing mechs to be released shortly and finish out the time period of the game.

This is the english launch of a Korean game that has been running for several years overseas. Content in Korea is properly leveled and balanced at level 60. What we have is the first translated build of the starter continent and first add on zones up to level 35 by Nexon USA.

I really wanted to like this game. I tried to recruit my friends and guild mates into this. I leveled all 5 classes to the current max level of 35 and outfitted them in heroic armor and gear. I maxed out the bestiary in the starter continent. I have over 500 hours played outside Steam. Like many, I patiently awaited the PVP update and like many others, have never been so let down in my life by a MMO or company. The PVP update had serious problems. Customers service has major problems with response times to tickets and is overloaded with complaints. Overall, this game was a major, major disappointment.

The recent PVP update was plagued by bugs. People had massive framerate issues. People had problems even getting into the zone. If more than about 35 people entered the zone frame rates dropped to unplayable levels. The game engine just cannot take it. Before you say "its your hardware" I run a GTX 980 with 8 GB of video RAM on a PC with 32 GB of RAM with a 4.1 GHz P7 HX6830 and SSD. I have games I can run stable at 60fps at 4K. My machine should be able to take it. The game however and their engine just fails.

People were upset over PVP. Mechanics were broken. People camped the zone-in killing people that were lagged entering the PVP area. It was a major issue with assassins and their damage as they could one-shot kill all caster classes. People voiced their opinions. After the huge uproar in the forums, the Devs immediately did their lethal knee-jerk reaction and nerfed damage in PVP trying to "equalize" things. Only they ended up nerfing it across the entire board. So people that used to do 50k damage when mounted using their dragons and crossbows now did 6k. This basically crippled PVE heroic encounters for everyone and some PVE encounters and tames undoable. The entire game became broken since the entire game is based upon the Korean game that is properly balanced at LEVEL 60. They have since tried to fix it and undo their changes, but its becoming too little too late. People are leaving the game in droves. I was in a guild of 45 that has since dropped down to zero active. Entire zones are dead now. You barely see anyone in cities. For a game only about 60 days into launch with 3 USA servers, people are already calling for server merges to "maintain the viability of the game".

So.. more about the game. It is a theme park game. You do a set series of quests and you WILL level to max. Just do the quests. It appears to be an open world but it is not. Fly too high or exceed a barrier and you hit invisible walls. The zones just look big but in actuality are very small. Some areas are open flight, but many are capped or land mount only. It is far from an "open" world or sandbox type game. You cannot go where you want or openly explore. You follow the themepark paths. Dungeons follow a set one way route. Definitely a themepark style.

The game is entirely about your mounts. Ones you can tame yourself (up to elite) and "heroic" ones that you have to fight 20+ other people for to try and tame. Heroics are way over done. It takes 10-15 people to battle down over 30 minutes at times to try and get a Heroic mount down low enough in health to "tame" and when that happens it is a battle for whomever can click the tame button and get lined up fastest to try and tame the mount. Even then you have to complete the mini-game successfully and face the RNG of the game to see if you tame or not. Some heroics being 1/6 or 1/14 chance to tame. Each chance consumes the "mark" you have to craft or buy which could cost you hundreds in gold per attempt. Quite possibly the WORST system I have ever seen. So you may waste an entire DAY trying to get a mount and fail or watch in disgust as someone who came in late to the battle just runs up and ninja's the mount from underneath everyone. Or watch them fail and see the heroic mount reset to full health again. Its pure frustration and broken.

Another painful mechanic is armor and weapons. Most armor is Bind on Obtain or Bind on Loot. So you accidentally loot armor for another class it is stuck in your inventory until you can go to town or destroy it. Group with someone and they loot or roll on items they can't use and they win (out of greed) and you are SOL. You cannot sell it to another person or even trade it on your same account. Also all looted goods roll random stats when it drops from ALL possible stats for all classes. So getting a "good" roll or appropriate stats becomes a lesson in pain and futility as casters will get items with melee stats and vise versa. Store purchased items are also character specific and bound to a character. Most crafted items are also character bound - so you must craft if you want crafted PVP/PVE armor and weapons. Each character has a fixed inventory and "ellum" wallet so cash shop goods are character specific. This leads to massive real world money cost inflation with multiple characters as even ellum you buy with real world money is character bound and is not shared across your account. It becomes a major money grab by Nexon at higher levels with the gear upgrade potions and taming chance potions.

Another major issue is their new "auto-ban" detection system. They put this in place to try and detect botters, hackers, gold sellers, gold buyers or other people that they deem bannable. Only thing is their system bugs out. If you do anything abnormal in game, its an automatic 4+ day ban. People are getting auto-banned for shouting too often in regional chat. People glitch out or fall off their mounts and are getting banned. Anyone emailing or receiving gold in game email is being banned. The witch hunt has gone INSANE. Funny thing is, they are most likely banning all "whales" and major cash shop buyers with their bans as well. Since most whales are also gold buyers, they are all getting permanent bans. Funny that this may kill their entire game.

Overall, I wanted to like it. Lack of content, bugs, apathy from customer service and bad management choices seem to have already killed it. A shame. So much potential. So much frustration actually trying to play it. But stick a fork in it, because I can't see them resurrecting this thing. As a new game so close to the USA launch, I have never seen a game fail so quickly.