It started with Palworld. I had a few days off but couldn’t really rest, so I took today off. I thought I should play some games and turned on my computer, but Monster Hunter – I’ve played it enough so it doesn’t appeal to me anymore, and if I start Baldur’s Gate, it won’t let me go, so what caught my eye was Palworld. But even though I opened Palworld after a long time, maybe because I played it enough last year, it wasn’t fun anymore so I closed it quickly. While browsing through Steam, I saw Cratopia, which was on sale by the Palworld developers to celebrate an update. The video looked like a really bizarre game, but since I enjoyed Palworld, I paid for it to give it a try.
Craftopia
Cratopia doesn’t officially support Korean, but there’s a user-made Korean patch. My first impression was that I liked the cute characters compared to Palworld. The characters were so cute that it made me wonder why they made Palworld characters so ugly…? And after starting the game… I had no idea what was going on ㅋㅋㅋ
Palworld doesn’t really have proper quests either, but I bought this one because it looked fun watching streamers play it on YouTube, so I roughly knew what style of game it was and adapted to it. But Cratopia was a completely new game to me, and with no guidance, I wandered around in a ??? state until I somehow managed to get a quest.
But the quest was something like “build a tower” or something like that, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. Then I got a bit annoyed and tried killing NPCs(??) The NPCs would run away and come back to their spot, run away and come back to their spot, and even though my player was level 1, level 5 guards died without putting up any resistance, and when morning came the next day, I saw the dead NPCs back in their original positions… Hmm… I think it’s better to just play Palworld… so I refunded it.
Immortals of Aveum
After that, I turned on my PlayStation and saw that Immortals of Aveum was on sale, so I tried the demo. What I liked about this game was that the guidance popped up consistently. Maybe because I had just wandered around lost in Cratopia, I felt that was particularly appealing. It was pretty good except for being a bit dizzy, probably due to the PlayStation’s low framerate, so I turned on my computer and downloaded the demo again to play it. But I’ve never seen a game like this with no skip function before…
The main character is pretty funny, so throughout the tutorial he keeps exchanging comedic dialogue with his mentor ㅋㅋ
The more I look at this mentor, the more I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere, but I just can’t remember. Why do her face and voice seem so familiar? Did I see him in The Equalizer TV show? Where did I see her?
The worldbuilding is quite interesting and the background graphics are impressive too.
Maybe because it’s an EA game? It had a taste of Anthem when controlling ㅋㅋㅋ When I opened the menu, I could also slightly taste some Ubisoft flavor.
The game itself is an FPS so it’s not my style, but the story was a genre I absolutely love. ‘Fantasy + magic + hero player’s coming-of-age story’ – exactly the combination I go crazy for, so even though I thought the first-person perspective might make me motion sick, I was going to buy it and try it.
I have all kinds of motion sickness, but I don’t get gaming motion sickness – today felt like I was going to experience it for the first time. The screen was a bit dizzying. I wondered if this was just a poorly made game…? It was dizzying enough to make me think that.
30 minutes later… I got lost ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ Where am I supposed to go? And refunded.
First Berserker: Khazan
Then I installed and tried the First Berserker: Khazan demo. This one had an Elden Ring taste ㅋㅋㅋ Still, what surprised me was thinking “Nexon copied this so well?” I was amazed. The same Nexon that made me go “…??” when I played Arphiel before? They copied it, but still, they made it like this? No, if you could make it like this, why did you make games so terribly until now? I was that amazed.
Of course, the games they’ve made so far have been so mediocre that Khazan seemed well-made in comparison, but the game itself wasn’t actually fun. From my impression of playing it for less than an hour, I thought ‘if I’m going to play this, why not just play Elden Ring again…’
However, if this game had been $30, I probably would have waited and bought it when it went on sale for about 30% off. I had absolutely no intention of buying this game for $60. Looking at the $60 price, it seems like the playtime might be long, but I couldn’t even finish Lies of P, which has graphics that are my style, so I don’t think I’d finish Khazan, whose graphics aren’t my style, either. It would look reasonable if it were really more generous at around $40, but game prices have gone up so much these days that everyone seems to be releasing games at full price. Anyway, for me, if the price were in the $20 range, I would try it. I’ll have to try it after about 2 years when it goes on discount.
Wild Hearts
The next game I tried was Wild Hearts. I bought it thinking “Oh, EA made something like this besides FPS,” but when I ran it, it turned out to be a Koei game. Hmm, I enjoyed Nioh 2, so this should be good, right? While my excitement was growing… the menu settings controls were really weird. Press R to apply and U to complete? Whose brain came up with this key layout? Usually people press spacebar or enter to proceed, who…
The next even more bizarre thing was that this… was released in 2023…? I wondered if they sold this one with these graphics without getting criticized? Even with Nioh 2, considering it was released in 2020, I thought “isn’t the graphics too mediocre?” But since Nioh 2 was so fun as a game itself, I just let it slide. But this time too? Even with Wo Long, I wondered “are they serious with these graphics in 2023?” And this game too????? Anyway, since it was a Koei game, I kept my expectations up and continued playing.
But I’m sure I’ve seen people say this game copied Monster Hunter, yet while playing it, the controls had a Nioh 2 taste(?)
Did they make those clothes with a mesh polygon plan of like 3 pieces? Why are they like that?
Here, when the player dies, some person revives them and gives them a power saying “this is a power only you can use~” and the power they give is box ㅋㅋㅋ stacking ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ What even is this ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ If they’re going to copy anyway, they could’ve just copied the wirebugs action from Rise ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ What is this ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
The graphics looked more and more disastrous as I played through the game… It actually got worse compared to Nioh 2. No matter what, this is a full-price game that costs around $70, but they released a game with these graphics in 2023… If they weren’t confident, they should’ve just made it with cartoon rendering instead… What is this…?
Even the keyboard controls are confusing.
Right-click (opens menu) -> Mouse wheel (changes menu) -> E key to select -> Enter key to install
Who came up with this creative control scheme? Opening a menu and changing it with the mouse wheel is already not great, but let’s say that’s fine. I naturally thought left-clicking would install it, so I clicked and it didn’t work. When I looked carefully again, it told me to press Enter. I’m controlling with left hand on keyboard/right hand on mouse, and suddenly you’re telling me to press Enter, which is on the right side of the keyboard? It seems like they mapped everything for controller controls and just carelessly made the keyboard controls.
It’s a key mapping that requires pressing 4 keys just to install something, and in the middle of that, they’re telling me to take my hand off the mouse and hold down Enter?
And after setting up camp, I went into it to try different weapons but there was nothing like that (Is this copied Monster Hunter!) I came out and tried to at least hunt one Kemono, but this game’s framerate jumps all over the place. This is the first game I’ve seen with such erratic framerates.
To give you an idea of how bad it is, I have a 7950X+4070ti that runs Baldur’s Gate 3 and games like MH: Wilds stably at 60+ fps on QHD and peaks at 100 fps, but this game with those graphics only manages 15-100 fps. It’s already ridiculous that the max framerate is only 100, but it constantly drops and stutters to below 20 fps to the point where it’s hard to play. Since the game wasn’t great anyway, I didn’t bother adjusting settings and just refunded it immediately.
I wanted to relax and play games today, but every game I start up is like this… Maybe most games have become boring to me after playing Baldur’s Gate 3…
+ But Steam’s refund system is really great, isn’t it? On PlayStation or Switch, I have quite a few games I bought but didn’t play because they weren’t fun, but with PC versions, if I think ‘this isn’t it,’ I can just refund immediately and they accept it all, so it’s really convenient. Today I refunded 3 games and they already processed all the refunds. That’s why I feel even more comfortable buying games when they look decent and refunding them without worry. Sometimes I discover fun games this way. When I bought Baldur’s Gate 3, I was hesitant because it was a turn-based game that wasn’t my style and cost around $50, so I bought it thinking I’d try it for 2 hours, but I ended up playing 6 hours straight and hit 60 hours in no time ㅋㅋㅋ