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- Grind your life away.
- If you played New World, have you played Invasions or Outpost Rush?
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- New World - Final Review
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By Gabriel Moss
Updated: Mar 21, 2022 6:40 pm
Posted: Nov 11, 2021 12:31 am
What happens when you combine the shell of a hardcore fantasy MMORPG with the trappings of a hardcore survival game? I just spent the last month and a half finding out with New World, Amazon Games’ Colonial-themed MMO that plops you and other human survivors onto a cursed island where you must gather, craft, and fight for the dominion of one of three competing factions. It’s visually gorgeous and its ideas for a player-driven economy are bold, yet coming away from over 170 hours spent reaching the level cap and exploring the endgame content, it comes together as a thoroughly unremarkable game thanks to a needlessly drawn-out grind with not enough variety or swashbuckling to sustain it.
The premise of New World is pretty simple: You’re a pirate shipwrecked on a mystical island called Aeternum, which is rumored to be full of treasures. This is all a thinly veiled excuse to go out and plunder everything you see, and New World wastes no time teaching you how to cut a direct swath through its breathtaking wilderness; you’ll soon find yourself chopping down every tree, skinning every animal, and mining every ore node in sight, then turning their raw resources in to the local Town Project board or just selling them to other players at the trading stall. And even after reaching the level cap of 60, you’ll still need to engage heavily in all this crafting and gathering business, even when you finally get to engage with the thoroughly enjoyable Outpost Rush PVP mode.
There is action combat, of course, and it feels especially slick in the initial few battles. For instance, enemies are way more reactive than in other MMORPGs, often dodging and darting around you. It forces you to stay on your toes at all times. Since there’s no tab-targeting system, you need to aim each of your attacks, so the timing of a particular attack or dodge roll can make or break a fight. This would be exhilarating if it were built upon from there, but it drops the ball in that there isn’t all that much variation to how your character plays over time as you level up.
Yes
No
Didn't make it nearly that far
Questing on Aeternum is sure to put that combat system through its paces, but by the end, it’s far preferable to sail off to some other distant shores. What begins as an interesting battle for survival against the island’s ancient undead guardians, dryads, and the odious, otherworldly Corruption rapidly devolves into a mad dash to gather the most resources. The reward for all of that effort is getting to watch your numbers go up at a tick so slow that it makes progress in Pokémon GO feel speedy. On top of that, even when you’ve gathered plenty of one specific material, there’s no knowing when the corresponding Town Project that requires it will appear at your local settlement’s Town Project board to scoop them up in exchange for a major payoff of XP.
Sure, you can find plenty of lore scrolls that vaguely tell you what’s going on, but NPCs are sparse and their quests are almost always written with no more enthusiasm than “go here and kill 10 rats, because I said so.” It’s nice that the main quest at least forces people to cooperate for a few dungeons, but it still ends on a note so forgettable that you can blink and miss it entirely. Just a short conversation with a throwaway character, after all of that? Really?
In its favor, Aeternum is a massive, sprawling island.
But good graphics can’t sustain an MMORPG forever, and even New World’s gorgeous vistas get old after a while. It’s frustratingly inconvenient that fast travel is limited to a very select group of points on the map. Because you’re forced to spend a scarce resource when using it, you’ll often find yourself hoofing it from place to place. Sure, this makes Aeternum feel spacious, but it’s exacerbated by the fact that there are no mounts to speed up your pace. After enough of those long treks, it becomes apparent that very few of these spectacular locations have any unique personality. Really, they usually serve as themed set dressing for cookie-cutter areas stocked with the same reused monsters and loot containers, every time.
Microtransaction Reaction
New World features an in-game exchange where you can turn real money into Marks of Fortune, which is the currency used to buy things in the microtransaction store. The most basic exchange rate is $4.99 for 5,000 Marks of Fortune, but the larger packs offer incremental bonuses based on tier. For example, the largest pack gives you 60,000 Marks of Fortune for $49.99. This is all run directly through your Steam wallet, so you don’t need an Amazon account for any of this.
Right now, the only items featured on this in-game microtransaction store are cosmetic; there are assortments of dyes, housing items, emotes, costumes, and weapon skins that cost anywhere from “free” to up to 25,000 Marks. It had previously leaked that Amazon Games planned to include “conveniences” such as XP boosters in its microtransaction store, but it then received pushback for this (now scrapped) model. Amazon appears to have settled on keeping New World’s microtransaction store limited to cosmetics for the time being.
New World’s repetitive crafting, refining, and gathering systems can become fun – but only if you take part in the heavily PVP-oriented player-based economy. That often means either selling your items at the local market or contributing spare items and resources to the highest-level crafters in your company, AKA guild. New World’s PVP-focused endgame, where all of these pieces come together and become relevant towards driving your faction’s war engine rather than just grinding, finally opens up at 60. But it really is a mad dash to get to the end, once you realize that levels 1-59 play out virtually the same and there’s nothing much to the story, even after you become a Soulwarden with the power to drive back the Corruption.
There’s nothing much to the story, even after you become a Soulwarden with the power to drive back the Corruption.
New World asks for the same quantity of time investment as any other traditional-style MMO, which means it desperately needs far, far more story content and gameplay variety to fill the gaps in its massive and visually gorgeous yet otherwise unremarkable world. The PVP endgame is where things start to get interesting, but the grind to get there is ...
Review scoring
okay
New World is a very pretty survival-MMORPG hybrid that saves its best moments for the endgame – but you have to be willing to grind like hell to get to them.
Gabriel Moss
- Gabriel Moss
Feb 29, 2024 · 1. Final Fantasy VII Rebirth. Feb 29, 2024 • Rated T. FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH is the new story in the FINAL FANTASY VII remake project, a reimagining of the iconic original game into three standalone titles by its original creators.
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Games World (Toy & Game Shop): 2.1 out of 5 stars from 11 genuine reviews on Australia's largest opinion site ProductReview.com.au.
