Recent reviews by ShoX

Doesn't live up to the hype at all. Slow and boring story line, janky console port controls feeling, your first 2+ hours are just cut scenes and running from A to B to avoid noticing how bad the game play is and avoid refunds I guess. A solid meh out of 10

Pros:
Nice combat system, zergs dont reign supreme purely from numbers
PVP in the loot zone is very fun if and when you can find it
Loot system is nice, you get rewarded for kills but not reset to 0 each time you die
Has an afk skill system where you can train overnight completely afk
Can transfer XP from afk skill to other skills
Dev team is very communicative on discord about what's going on when servers have problems etc

Cons:

Armor seems to make little sense. Light armor has no speed benefits and only a tiny damage and stam boost, you get 2 shot by big plate wearing guys while you are required to 5-6 shot them

Game feels empty, the world is mostly barren with copy paste mob camps littered randomly throughout.
Trees and rocks everywhere, but you can only harvest wood from already fallen trees and predetermined rocks. Feels very old and outdated for an open world game

PVE content is severely lacking, 2 world bosses that respawn and some events you just click to join every so often that give a bit of silver. Not much to do outside of endless unrewarding PVP

Crafting feels pointless and unrewarding, better to just farm gold and buy from the AH

Interfaces are laggy and a buggy mess, having to spam sales on the AH to eventually list it on the 8th go, items don't auto stack in the inventory etc.

PVP outside of the lootzone feels completely pointless and a waste of time. The only reason to do it is farming nation points/levels is painfully slow and that is the only reward for this type of PVP.

The servers constantly move around on the login menu, can easily press the wrong 1 and have to restart the entire game because there is no way to go back

Player models fly into the sky and back down again rapidly and repeatedly when going down slightly steep terrain

Servers and the ability to craft go down often (this is probably just a mmo launch thing and will be fine later)

Items vanish from inventory and AH often

GFX are lacking for 2023, looks 15+ years old already

This feels like a game that just entered beta, not a 1.0 release and certainly not 8 years old. Some of these issue are frankly unacceptable for a game of this age and I just feel like if they haven't been fixed by now, they never will be. A true shame as this game seemed to have a lot of potential initially

Makes New World look like a polished masterpiece. Buggy piece of crap that crashes constantly 0/10. Free is somehow still a piss take price for this game, I want a refund

Visuals: 10/10
Graphics: 10/10
Sound: 10/10
Gameplay: 5/10
Development team: 2/10

Early game is super fun, mid game gets a little boring and grindy, endgame makes you stop playing
Watermark system is a boring tedious time gate on progression
Nothing to do outside big zerg content other than gather materials
Dungeons are behind yet another ridiculous time gate so you either do them inefficiently (<600 watermark) or have to wait for people you're playing with to catch up. I quit in the time it took others to get to the dungeon stage as I was bored waiting around for 3 weeks with nothing to do but a daily chest run or gather raw materials. There is no other content
Wars are laggy and bugged all the time
Gold and item dupes ruined the economy

In its current state this game is garbage, however it has a lot of potential and I will check it out in another 6 months or so

Fun. Portal lite

Decent room escape, couldn't fathom the controls for getting the camera into the tiny hole - resorted to googling for that bit. Otherwise solid and engaging 9/10

Too much of a grind now, not friendly for solo players at all. Public official servers are never worth playing on, always run by cheating undermeshing scum clans. Player moderated servers are the only way to have any hope of a fair game. The main map (Exiled lands) has become a PVE game with PVP as an afterthought, there is so much PVE crap you have to do now to get the best armour and weapons to be relevant in PVP. Shame, it used to be really good when it was simpler. Can't comment on the Siptah expansion, sounds more PVP focused but not willing to drop more $ to find out.