V Rising

TL;DR is that the game has a lot of visual charm, fun combat and builds, interesting world, and engaging building, but falls shorter when those initial pros get expanded in the later game to becoming meta-reliant builds, relying on bosses to not do certain moves at the right time and the right place to win, and the world hindering your efforts just for the nerve of being there to begin with. The Good: - Visual Style. The unique visual style is honestly gorgeous. From the design of some of the enemies, the castles you can make, some of the cosmetics you can get, it's honestly all very good looking - The combat. At times (more about this later) the combat can be really enjoyable, especially when you find weapons you like and feel natural with. There's lot of options so finding a weapon you enjoy or spells you like the synergy of is almost impossible not to find. - The building. Building in this game feels fun and well crafted. Granted, I'm not the best builder and my layouts are something out of nightmares for better players, but I never felt like it was too hard to understand. - The world. Some of the biomes and ways how to navigate around the world feels interesting. Each area has unique hazards you have to learn your way around that I actually find enjoyable. The Bad: - The bosses. I am probably gonna get strung up and hung for this, but some of these bosses are unbearable. While in most games with bosses and their difficulty being a centerpiece like in a souls game for example, usually you can step away from the fight when you beat them with a sense of accomplishment and adoration for the boss. This game does not give me that after a certain while. Once you start getting to around Act 4 or maybe even 3, the boss difficulty scales from them having movesets that test your cooldowns, positioning, and managing your timings for your attacks to an artificial difficulty through gimmicks that feel almost impossible to deal with. If you fight them in their lair area, it's a place that if you walk even a single step out of line and that's it, fight is done, you died. Some of which is unpredictable and requires cooldowns that the boss already had you burn, making it a roll of the dice if you win or not. Or if they are a wandering boss, they only wander in a path that forces you to fight them in a 1x1 block with impassible terrain on either side with enemies potentially showing up that you can do nothing about. It's a constant cckblock that makes getting the later bosses unfun. - The builds. In a game where you're allowed and even encouraged to experiment with all sorts of weapons and spells and counterplay, it eventually boils down to the meta being the only viable option in the late game. If you enjoyed a certain playstyle and found it fun, well unless that style is the meta, too bad, you don't get to play the fun game anymore. Before anyone goes, "technically you can play the game with anything and win," yes, you can, but I also enjoy being able to play my favorite version of the game without feeling like I'm being sounded with a spiked rod just because I'm not playing the meta and playing the game in the way I have fun with. The Ugly (Personal Gripes): - Building can be fun, but with how you're expanding new buildings almost constantly, it gets really annoying to have to reconstruct whole rooms or wait forever to get materials to make whole new ones just because you can't get rid of the older unlocks. If they were to make it so that the new building is an upgraded version of the old ones you needed where you can make the things the old one did with the new one and save yourself some room and space, that'd solve this easily. This gets a lot more noticeable when it comes to forging. - While most biomes are fun, there's a few exceptions. For example, the Cursed Forest intentionally nerfs your character since you have to settle with a weaker cloak that allows you to see through the woods rather than one that actually would allow you to get to a closer gear level to fight the things in it, especially it's late-game wandering boss. I've never enjoyed an area in a game all about gear levels that forces you to take a weaker alternative just to be in it, against enemies that easily stomp you because of it. - Multiplayer can be a blast assuming you play it with friends. I've had experiences in other server-based base-raiding games before where someone who's been grinding since the servers conception still sticks around waiting for new players to feel a glimpse of enjoyment before running them off the server and complaining no one is coming in to give them something to do. While V Rising is better at this issue than those games have been, it's still a problem with how steep the grind can be at times for new players to stand a chance in anything other than PvE or playing with friends.