Odd that Slowbro didnt make it anywhere up there. I find him to be unusually strong, has access to decent moves and has a high cap on him.
Not surprised to see no Gyarados. Holy shit is he not worth the effort when you can just get an Exaggutor or Slowbro really easily that are just as good.
@AzatiS: The game seems to make certain mechanics inconvenient and lock design solutions to them in certain places.
The biggest thing is that the game doesnt have auto-loot as a base feature, which really takes away the flow of the combat if you have to stop to pick everything up while killing mobs - and there's a ton of mobs and loot around. Auto-loot can be attained if you buy a pet in the Pearl Store, they will pick loot up for you automatically at certain intervals, so the more pets you have the faster you'll loot things and not have to worry about missing a loot drop (they despawn after about 1 min). it's $10 for a pet, it levels, gains passive skills like identifying nodes etc and you have to feed it. I bought two, but not that I was forced to, I did so for a few positive reasons and I get something that makes me enjoy the game in return. I also do like that white cat with a black face and Pomeranians.
Weight limits are quite tight if you are a huge hoarder and this game drops so much junk loot to weigh you down (the currency also has weight), it's alot of management to get around this. It's a mere annoyance as this game isnt as stupid with encumberance like a bethesda game, but this can really be a hindrance during guild boss scroll runs as you definitely dont want to be overencumbered in the middle of those. But you can increase your capacity in-game by increasing your strength by walking around in trade packs or doing strength quests. You also gain loyalty points which is a daily log-in reward that you can trade in for a weight limit increase (this will take time as it costs quite abit). The easiest thing around this though is to just buy the carry limit increase through the pearl store.
Inventory space is limited for those that want to fish early, but you can get up to 52 slots in game without using the cash shop if you like to explore and do quests. You can also attain inventory space though loyalty points. I dont think inventory space is a popular thing to buy in the cash shop since the game is quite generous with providing them
Horse breeding. It's probably the most RNG life skill to branch into if that's your thing. I personally dont do the horse breeding stuff and I prefer to just buy the ones people have trained but I do have a friend that's doing all of it and it seems frustrating and not as rewarding as other trade/life skills. But there are cash store items that do things to reset breed counts and change (not delete) horse skills, which you cant get through loyalty points.
There's an Energy System. Although it may sound like a mechanic similar to what you'd find in mobile games. It's generous here and is a resource mechanic that actually benefits and paces the game giving it a nice gameplay loop. While it may seem tight at first, you'll attain knowlege and soon learn to manage it and utilize how the game does a great job with 'alts' as you start to play the game as a 'family' instead as energy is per character and uses an account wide cap. If all you want to do though is gather, process and play in-game harvest moon, or maybe even just play the social butterfly with the god-awful amity minigame, then you might run into instances where you'll burn your energy. While it accumulates passively, you can purchase energy through the cash shop, spend the free loyalty points for an energy tonic, or buy the cash shop bed furniture item that allows you to accumulate more energy if you rest in it, which is better than the one you can buy/craft in game.
If you're into PVP, some top guilds arent taking in anyone without the Treant costume/Ghilie Suit. There's mechanics in game now that makes the costume useless when used, so im not sure if that's the case anymore. The Treant costume is only attainable through the cash shop and it costs $30 and I dont know how it will impact the node wars PVP since that isnt out yet (supposedly nobody uses it in KR/JP servers).
But dont let the existence of microtransactions stop you from playing this one. This one really surprised me after being quite cynical about it initially.
@hoyholyhoy: I like the game, too. And I have a very lenient description of what "Pay to Win" is compared to most people - I dont define efficiency or stupid terms as "silver/gold/isk per hour" as 'winning'. But this game definitely crosses the line with some items in the Pearl Store.
The outfit skins, particularly the weapon skin gives you straight up +100 Stamina with that skin. It may not sound much when you're likely at 1500 stamina at level 30 breath. But for certain classes, like the Sorceress, that 100 is huge with how it ties into its distinctive resource mechanic and evades. It's basically a free internal buff that's equal to the +100 stamina from a Zereth armor piece.
The Luck underwear is another. Mind the blatant sex sells approach, but it gives you a +1 luck stat boost. While max luck is easy to obtain in-game without the cash shop item and luck merely determines loot drops, this can free up a spare crystal slot and crystal slots are obviously significant.
Then there's the Treant Outfit, or better known to community as the infamous Ghillie suit. While I think the issue of this is overblown in the community and my guild has no issues actually killing Ghillie suit players (they turn red if they flag up anyway), the ability for the suit to hide their guild tag/name is annoying and powerful on a metagame level. It takes the fun out of PVP, creating a non-PVP situation, since you dont exactly know what guild that player is in for your guild to declare war on them, if you kill them willy nilly you'll take a karma hit. There's two mechanics now in-game (one of which is useless because of its short range and cant be used in-combat) that allows you to reveal those players' nameplate, but having to approach a player differently in PVP because they have a cash shop item is silly.
There are other things that definitely bother me with the cash shop: Silly outfits in a game that excels at providing you with an authentic game world is just aesthetically jarring. Horse taming mechanics that are locked behind a pay wall and items that serve as design solutions to game mechanics that seem to be designed to be more inconvenient than what they should be.
All of which could easily be solved if the game had the ability for you to exchange loyalty points for pearls.
@R4gn4r0k: It's oneof the most complex RPGs i've played, with a fantastic combat engine, a rich systematic economy filled with various and has one the most authentic game worlds ive come across that scored higher than the same developer that made something as poorly paced and repetitive as Alan Wake. See how that works.
The game's mechanics and core gamplay loop has a rather strong understated storytelling that involves the dungeon and the heroic/doomed adventures of your party members. It's elegantly put together in a way that provides experience-driven world-building and it further informs the excellent tone that the game has.
And I personally think that kind of understated, experience-driven storytelling is a stronger, more unique and more interesting method of videogame storytelling than glossy, produced and directed cutscenes. I feel that what it delievers in 'story' is described quite well within the review.
Probably gonna be a tablet version judging by the UI and the developers history. Anomaly for the tabletphones was pretty good actually, felt really natural to play.
I love the building element and the management. I always called it a 'slice of life' real time 'grand' strategy game. You basically form allies, expand, build, 'conquer', doing so vertically through an individual -- which is an interesting premise, as the strategy genre has been plagued trying to deal with horizontal expansion by implementing arbitrary annoyances like upkeep or lofty approval ratings.
But it has some problems that have been plaguing the franchise for a very long time. I hate the way it deals with time. It's attached to real life logic in that you always underestimate the time it takes in sims tome to do something, particularly once you move into a big house.. I always end up putting my bedroom and bathroom near the entrance of my home just to 'optimize' time in the mornings so that my sim isnt late for work lol.
Activities arent all that fun as they sound. There are all these quirky and exciting stuff in game. Yet your Sims just go into a place while you just sit there through the downtime and wait till it's done and not actually seeing anything happening.
@SoulScribe Yeah, I switched over recently for my recent playthrough. It's abit tricky to use at first and I'd only reccommed it to advanced modders who know what they're doing (eg. they know what a bashed patch is, a reproccer and have TES5EDIT) and it's prefrred if you're using ALOT of mods. But it's great, you have more control over what you're overwriting and what mods to prioritize.
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