The Matchless Kungfu

[h3]Short version:[/h3] Instead of fixing glaring (and sometimes gamebreaking) bugs, the dev(s?) added stuff to a broken game and made bizarre changes that didn't improve the game in any way. I think it's literally worse than it was as an early-access game. [h3]Long version:[/h3] I'm not going to try to list all the bugs or flaws because I'd be here all day, so I'll stick to the especially bad or stupid ones. You open your inventory. You want to use a "return pill" and don't want to scroll, so you start typing "pill" in the search box. What happens? Well, your entire UI disappears! Why? Well, "p" is the key that hides the UI and that's exactly what it does... EVEN IF YOU'RE TYPING INTO A TEXT FIELD. There are posts online from [b]two years ago[/b] from people thinking they'd somehow softlocked their game by searching for something in their inventory that contained the letter "p". I can confirm that as of [b]yesterday[/b], this bug is still in the game. That's an [i]annoying[/i] bug, but once you know about it it's easy enough to work around by just pressing p a second time. A more subtle but much more damaging bug is the one that makes some NPCs constantly gain negative affinity (think approval/rep) towards the player due to "Battle". Basically, every so often an NPC will be glitched in a way that makes it react as if the player is constantly attacking it, even if you've never fought them or any of their positive relations. It would be possible (but difficult) to work around this too, but once it happens enough, a special event occurs that makes all of the NPCs that "resent" you team up to take you down. Isolating and picking them off [i]would[/i] be an option, but the dev(s?) decided to make [b]all[/b] of them teleport to you once one finds you. So the combination of a bug and a [i]questionable[/i] design choice renders any miniworld unplayable given enough time, unless you jump around and grind to the point where you can take down a large chunk of the world, or just accept your death and make a new character. Having a "last stand" with the story being continued by a character's child can be cool thematically, but when it's the result of a bug happening over and over and the game's "cheating" by teleporting enemies around in order to force it to happen, it's not so cool. Having NPCs basically teleport to the player has other unintended consequences too, when it gets combined with bad pathfinding and a complicated world tile. When I was working my way through the poisonous wolf maze (I can't remember the actual name for the tile in the game), NPCs would show up to debate or attack me, and afterwards they would be trapped in the maze because they'd keep running or jumping into a wall instead of going to the exit. Some quests are still broken at least part of the time, and can't always be fixed using the in-game dialogue option for fixing quests. Yes, quests are so glitchy that there are dedicated "fix this quest" buttons for some of them, and even that isn't always enough. Miniworlds where you've placed a bunch of city and sect tiles will start to have lag spikes after you play in them for a while. Leaving and re-entering the miniworld temporarily fixed this for me. This didn't happen during EA, so my guess is that they made NPC behavior more complicated (and some NPCs are probably getting stuck trying to do the same thing over and over like the ones I mentioned being trapped in the maze, which could make it worse). Enough about bugs for now. What about design choices? Apparently we don't get vigor or stat boosts from completing challenges any more. We get it from... filling up an encyclopedia of items? Why would you make this a central mechanic instead of a side thing? Your first world ("Great Wilds") is now a canonical, premade world instead of one that's unlocked tile by tile the way the miniworlds are. From what I've seen so far since playing the "new" game, it seems to have a story that's more "on rails" and most territory is already owned by a Sect. You start off in a cold area where you'll soon start freezing if you don't follow a story NPC. Despite that, the "new" Great Wilds is currently a fairly easy world early on due to bandit spawns apparently being broken. I did a quick search to see if a [i]recent[/i] patch caused this, but no, it's apparently been that way since September of last year. I guess if you want enemies you just have to attack people or wait for the affinity bug to create them for you. Apparently there's a "Pokemon battle" sort of system in place where you can have one of your pets fight an NPC's pet. Someone will pester you about this in every world, eventually. I can't make myself care. There's a lockpicking minigame now? Okay, I guess. But why? A lot of stuff is locked behind being a member of a particular Sect, though this isn't as bad as it seems at first since you can use the miniworld system to join more than one (and this is probably the intent, to make players create multiple worlds with different settings). It's annoying to have basic stuff required for winemaking (jiuqu) be locked behind membership in the Drunken Immortal's Parlor, though, instead of just having the high-end recipes be locked behind it. Sure, they're the "drunken kung-fu guys", but they aren't supposed to be the only winemakers in the world... and it's odd to take a basic "bring me wine supplies" mission from a tavernkeeper and find out that I need to planeswalk to a parallel world where I'm a member of a specific Sect in order to complete it. [h3]Is there anything good?[/h3] Oh, definitely. The framework for a good game [i]still seems to be there[/i] under all the jank and [i]odd[/i] design choices. The combat system is fun sometimes. You can basically build a whole town or found your own Sect if you want. You can become wealthy growing herbs, making medicine from them, and selling it... or just run a few hot springs and bring in a huge amount of money with even less effort. Events and natural gameplay can still create some fun interactions with or between NPCs. I don't think it's unsalvageable, but the last update was in December of last year.