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The Sineath Review
I won't be subbing after my 30 day free trial is over. Its not designed at all for a computer, its designed completely to be played on a console. Because of this, the slow load times, the slow NPC response times, the slow UI response is NOT because of an engineered design to help game mechanics.
I like the game but the design is CRAP. I will not be forced to spend 30 seconds to get my character to wave at someone. I can live with the lack of instructions like DAoC was before WoW came out. I will not spend 30 seconds to tell a NPC that I want to talk to it or buy/sell something. I choose options in 5 different choice windows to do something that a KEYBOARD would let me type a command in less than a second.
It is not difficult, It is not a challenge, its a good game with a crappy impossible UI that NO ONE can justify. I've played this for days now, and I've definately gotten used to the UI. I should have known better when the box reccommends a gamepad but I've never played a console game style mmorpg and didn't know you spend 30 seconds to do what you can on a keyboard in 1 second.
Again, GOOD game, but NOT A PC GAME. They made it computer compatible but didn't tailor it to be played on a computer. Yes, I read all the posts in here for weeks. I heard the complaints and ignored them. After playing, 80% of them was just whining, but since I had never played an online mmorpg console style game before, I didn't appreciate the warnings people posted.
I wish everyone well that continues to play this game, and if they decide to utilize the keyboard for anything other than character movement and opening the main choice window, I'll play it again, but for now, its 'unplayable' as a computer game. OK, not unplayable...its garbage in its current setup.
graphics 7, because most people have to play this game with low or average settings or be lagged to death.
game mechanics 4, because of the UI
game variety/fun 8, high marks for the game design not making you do various things but steering you down that path.
Unfortunate that the variety and fun factors don't make up for the clunky UI design. My first game ever that I strongly recommend not playing.
Comments
While I agree the UI really does need work for mouse and keyboard I didn't find it unusable. I will admit though I did enjoy using my logitech game pad a lot more. So I won't argue with you review as well you're right :P. Hopefully that at least optimize it more for the PC as I don't mind using a game pad.
I am using my PS3 controller and I just imagine I am playing on PS3 and not a computer and that makes me less sad. Doesn't fix the load times of things, which is annoying, but I'll blindly assume that the game is optimized around the 8-cell processer of the PS3 as well and hopefully in 6 months those 8 cells can keep up with the game? Which reminds me, am I going to be able to use my PC character on my PS3 with it comes out?
Yes, everything is the same except the systems between the PC and PS3 versions.
I'd guess they'll have the slow response times to everything fixed for the release to the Play Station 3. Its not a buggy game, far as I can tell. Should be a great game when it releases for the play station console machine.
I would bet that the lag will be fixed within the next month. As far as the UI complaints; I would not hold my breath on that.
"Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game."-Guybrush Threepwood
"I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they've always worked for me."-Hunter S. Thompson
Dragnon - Guildmaster - Albion Central Bank in Albion Online
www.albioncentralbank.enjin.com
I don't know, I find these critiques to be a bit overgeneralized.
The design of CRAP, you say? That's actually a good thing.
But for the most part you're just saying the UI is slow and ponderous... well, yes, it is, but personally I've adapted and am comfortable with it. Plus, I'm pretty sure the developers are working on that, so it's not a permanent problem.
The game is not difficult or challenging? I'd say you haven't really reached the difficult or challenging part of the game, yet. Like any other MMORPG, they try to ease the player into it, and until you're doing level 20 guildleves (and some level 10 ones) you won't see much challenge.
That's pretty much the entirety of your review, you just repeat these two points (sticking mostly to the UI) over and over again.
It's interesting, you will see a big gap between players who like and dislike the game if you look at Metacritic or Amazon. Very few in the middle, just roughly slightly over half being negative and the greater bulk of the remainder being overwhelmingly positive. It seems that there's a big hurdle there in whether or not you can get over the UI which, once surpassed, apparently reveals a very solid game.
The reason I say its not a PC game, its a Console game is because the keyboard does nothing. The F keys do nothing. It has hotkeys set for 1 through 0 which is fine, but the rest of the keyboard focuses on wasd movement and ijkl camera panning. This game was made to be used with a gamepad, hence CONSOLE, instead of a PC game with a keyboard and mouse.
As previously stated, the game itself is good with little to no bugs. I was wrong to say its not challenging or difficult; I should have said, challenging and excitement are ingame.
As to saying the game was impossible, I never said that. The console style play is garbage compared to PC style while on a PC. Half the keyboard is not utilized unlike most other games.
Dare to be different? This is final fantasy... FOURTEEN. lol, sorry, couldn't resist. Its too funny to hear a troll say 'dare to be different' while this is the 14th iteration on the final fantasy game world.
The response and load times are the killers, to be honest. Once they speed up load times that take minutes to make them takes seconds, and having the NPCs respond in less than a second instead of up to 30 seconds. Those are the major hurdles of this game.
Dragnon - Guildmaster - Albion Central Bank in Albion Online
www.albioncentralbank.enjin.com
Aion looks just as good, yet loads so much faster.
I guess if you give them time and money, they could optimize it. And they should. There's nothing worse than having to wait.
I have yet to be able to make anything in FF other than some meaningless jewelry. I'm getting pretty close to making some chain armor. The inventory has killed me. 2 tools for each class? That's like 20 items, plus I've got like stack after stack after stack of copper ingots and not able to make crap with them; how can I have 12 stacks of copper ingots? I'm completely full now on my merchant and character. I'll likely spend an hour selling everything(because it takes like 25 seconds to sell each item) and just starting with a free empty inventory.
I have like 4 crafts leveled to 12 now and still can't make anything. Alchemy, Black Smithing, Armorer, Goldsmithing. I've spent hours and days upon days and can't find crap to buy. Everytime I want to make an item, I'm held back by one ingredient or the fact that a lvl 12 item takes a dozen lvl 12 ingredients and one or two lvl 17 ingredient...drives me crazy, lol.
I guess I need to level up weaving, leatherworking, etc. Fine, I can do that.
Harvesting, however, just DRIVES ME CRAZY. It makes close to no sense to me. It takes like FOREVER to harvest. Its so damn boring. And, you can spend an hour at it, and only get one or two things you'd expect to get followed by 40 wierd things. I have yet to get zinc ore, damn it. I can't ever find it for sale on any player merchant and NPC vendors are just plain crazy expensive.
I think there's just toooooo many materials in game and no way to target what you want. You shouldn't have to fish for 5 hours and get 300 different items, of which you only wanted like 3 of those items.
Oh, while whining, here's the biggie for me, you click a window and it takes like 30 seconds for the next window, regardless of crafting or harvesting. So, you end up spending like 3 minutes to do something that'd take 30 seconds in any other game. Lets not go into the combat lag where I'm still fighting and hitting the mob 3 or 4 more times before I realize its dead, or when I cast a heal or buff on myself, try to run away and am frozen in place for like 2 minutes before the world catches up and I'm way dead, then I return to my spawn point, and go through being invisible, and waiting for the game to catch up so I can move. And, the sad thing is, its worse than what I'm describing.
Four things keep me going:
I'm with guildmates.
Its all new.
There's hope for changes like with any new game.
There's nothing else out there worth playing.
P.S. Silly me, I wanted a complex crafting system and they provided it; but, my god, you can't even put your inventory in alphabetical order much less by craft. The items aren't labeled for which crafts can use them. There's so many small little things like this that add up to making this frustrating.
Oh, and thank goodness, the crafting quests provide the materials. I can NOT imagine this game if that didn't happen. You know what. They should make you get crafting materials on your own, then they'd fix the damn crafting system or there'd be no one crafting at all.