Have over 1,000 hrs in game and its current state is woefully unbalanced and not welcoming to newer players, particularly in Normal mode. Starting is easy, but when you're further into the game(lvl 35-40) expect to die a lot since bosses often one-shot you in NORMAL mode. Game's loot tables/storage is big issue due to needing to farm gear for all characters for different boss battles. Resistances are stressed too much imo. End game content is one thing, but when you're leveling/equipping a character for first time, a group of skeleton archers will drop a caster in a matter of seconds if you don't have high enough armor AND piercing resistance. So you manage to get those resistances? Guess what? Your damage will be lower than a snake's butt or other important stats will approach depth of whale poop and some other mob will hit you with aether, poison, etc. Debuffs, DoT, etc., teeny weeny tiny icons that show up on bottom right side of the bar are useless. Are we suppose to pause game in the middle of a big fight just to have a chance to scroll over and see what it is before it disappears? Nobody wants to be jumping back & forth between game and desktop to look stuff up online when it comes to fighting bosses & some common trash. This is just lazy game designing that results in a bigger learning curve because you have to go on a website outside of the game and try to figure out what you're getting dirt napped with. This game had a lot of promise and wasn't bad until they added "Evade" and made the overall entry into game too difficult in the 4th quarter of 2023. The helpful Life Leech was nerfed, too. Only recommend buying when its on sale at steep discount to see if you tolerate it. They do have expansion coming out in 2024, so there's plenty of time for them to break game balance even more. Too many fanboys that "piano-play" characters in the game 24/7 nonstop complained that it was too easy for them, so Crate caved into them and went crazy buffing the mobs.
While its certainly not the worst game of its type, the quest system is a complete mess of frustration. Having a list of 25+ incomplete quests is just ridiculous and shows a lack of foresight on the part of the designers. Plus there's the issue of needing to figure out where to go, who to talk to, etc., to advance/complete some quests, which equates to running around retracing your steps and so on since some of the quests give you absolutely no clues whatsoever. Not only are you doing a lot of running around and back tracking, you also have to be mindful that there are quests that have to be completed in a specific order or you will fail to complete some of the others if the NPC disappears or is killed off too early. In my opinion, a game like this shouldn't be feeding you quests at a rate where you're receiving so many of them before being able to complete each one that you end up with a LONG list you have to scroll through and try to remember which was which since many of them cannot be completed right away or are somehow tied into a different quest that is not received until later on in the game. Also, some of the quests are broken. Overall, it just seems like they did a half baked job with the game. Good combat system and the graphics aren't bad, but the quests seemed to have been lazily thrown together with very little thought or design behind it resulting in a mess. They could have done much better than this.
