Hey guys, Tidesson here. I’ve spent 160 hours on the CBT2, and something kind of compelled me to come and write this huge wall-of-text-of-doom. I guess I just need to vent all the frustration and stress I’ve built up while playing this sometimes beautiful and sometimes horrible game. So here it goes, my “review” of Tree of Savior CBT2.
First of all, yes, I played the CBT1. But only for a couple hours, as the exp rates were a total turn-off. And yes, I also played “that other game which name I won’t mention” some 10 years ago or so. But unlike others, I was not looking at ToS as a “that other game which name I won’t mention” sequel, so let’s just get that out of the way. I played as a swordsthingy > hoplite > cataphract. Proof:
TL,DR: pay attention to the text in bold
As a starting point, I’ll just go ahead and say this game is a lovely mess. It has such great ideas and potential, but such horrible realization. You guys need to go back to the design desk, grab your papers and carefully think about what you’re doing. It seems you want to do things differently, which is not necessarily a bad thing… when there’s a reason to do so. And to me it seems that the game changes some very basic things for no reason whatsoever, which I’ll try to explain.
The most amazing things in this game come from its art. I think everyone will agree that the graphics and the music are superb and fit very well within the game. But general bad gameplay/class & skill/progression/map design choices outshine the good things. Those are purely design matters, and as such should be remedied as soon as possible, rather than dragging them along as they greatly impact everything else in the game. And the further the game is on its development pipeline the harder they will be to fix, for obvious reasons. This game is far from being at an acceptable state (as the exploits recently discovered have shown) to go into open beta. If exploits like those surface on the open beta it will be a complete disaster. Unless you are planning to wipe on the open beta. And I don’t recommend doing that…
The storyline is pretty good. I was skeptical at the beginning because it seemed too cliché: a random hero appears to save the day. But the fact that when you start the game you know absolutely nothing about the state of the world and you begin to understand it as you travel through the different areas and meet different characters is actually pretty nice. It even comes to a point where the name “Tree of Savior” even makes sense. I like it. And the goddesses are cute. That’s a big + in my book.
From a gameplay perspective, just what is this game? Is it a “theme park”, or is it a “free-roam” (I won’t use the term sandbox, the game doesn’t have enough content to be categorized as such)? The game doesn’t clearly define this. It starts as a typical theme park, but rather soon you find out that quests don’t cut it when it comes to progression. The EXP walls happening every now and then further emphasize this issue. So, is it a free-roam? No way; the game is just too linear, not giving the player enough choices as to where to go to progress. It might look this is somewhat taken care of at higher levels, but it’s just an illusion: the lack of content is what makes you move from one map to another seeking stuff to do - it’s not freedom, it’s starvation. This is an important issue: theme-park fans will dislike this game in its current state, but “sandbox” fans will do so as well.
The experience walls… whats the point of them? I just can’t see any, no matter how hard I try. If you wanted to halt or delay progression in any way, why don’t you use the class levels? I mean, they are already hard-capped at 15. Why add another virtual cap at random intervals? Why not just remove base levels entirely and just use class ranks and class levels? If it is because of the stats, you could distribute stats in a million different ways more beneficial to the gameplay than just “leveling up”. Leveling the class, completing quests, finding areas, finding statues, finishing quest lines, completing achievements, completing collections… those are just some off the top of my head, and guess what? You are already using them! (but in a very poor fashion: +1 INT for a collection? Are you guys serious…?)
Regarding character customization: this is a big thing in the game. There’s a cute factor to ToS, very similar to that of “that other game which name I won’t mention”. So I think that allowing players to customize their characters more, and allow for more outfits, not necessarily tied to specific classes, is something you have to look into later on. But I guess that won’t happen until you announce the payment model. But really, it’s important.
Party gameplay needs to be improved. The only content that clearly states that is party-oriented are the missions in the mercenary outpost in Fedimian. You have to clearly indicate which quests and areas are solo-oriented and which are party-oriented (I hear this may have been improved on the OBT). I’m sure most people reading remember areas such as the Main Chamber, with sudden perma-freezing mobs and elites. Or areas like Nuoridin Falls with the Wendigo Searchers, or the Namu Temple Ruins with the Lizardman Magicians… just to name a few. Those areas are fine with a party, but when you’re solo and all of the sudden a quest throws at you 12 of those ranged elites at once… it’s not funny. Also, the game makes it very hard to play with your friends: experience penalties and enemies getting stronger by level difference; right now the lower level player gets the short end of the stick all the time - but it’s the high level player the one that should be penalyzed, not the other way around.
Basic gameplay features are lacking; for example: the market UI is atrocious. There should be at all times some room on screen to open your inventory. There is surprisingly no way of transferring items between characters. There is basically no pet interface: you can’t command your pet to stay down at critical moments (i.e as a cataphract you might be unable to mount because your pet refuses to stop attacking enemies, which at the same time renders you useless because you can’t use skills). Class and skill descriptions are very poor, forcing you to make random critical decisions, or by default to do a google search to find the information you should have right there. Classes should be elaborated on the class advancement screen, before making the choice. Skills absolutely must inform the player of what kind of weapons they are compatible with, if they can/cannot be used while mounted, their damage, and in case they are multi-hit, how many hits they do at each level. This is not a translation problem, as noone can translate information that is not there. HP regeneration, be it through potions, bonfires, or naturally, is incredibly gimped. The CON stat should further improve your HP regeneration and the effect of hp potions; and SPR should do the same with MP regeneration and mp potions (though mp seems to be better adjusted in this regard).
I will not talk much about class balance here, as it has been said countless times already. Clearly there is no class balance whatsoever right now. You need to improve circle advancements to make them as viable as moving to a new class from the next rank. The most useful attributes should always unlock at least at circle 2, never at circle 1. And circle 3 of every class should have a very powerful skill (call it “ultimate” or whatever) that justifies taking that path until the end. Obviously skills from lower ranks should have lower cooldowns, and more powerful skills from higher ranks should have higher cooldowns. The overheat mechanic is great and original, but it is generally assigned to the wrong classes (barbarian anyone?). You seem to be forgetting about the classes that use pets further up the ranks - hunters, cataphracts and schwarzereiters have no viable class advancements.
I don’t want to get into the linearity of the calculations within the game much either. There’s a lot of people that has done it already and much better that I can do. I will just go ahead and say that DEX is absurd right now, as many others have done. I know you want to keep things simple, but… this is detrimental to the gameplay. I’m of the opinion that you should recover the AGI stat, and make it increase evasion and maaaaybe attack speed for archer classes only and keep DEX as a critical/accuracy thing. But this would negatively impact tanks, and they are already in a very bad state as well. Having an attribute work for both offense and defense is plain ridiculous - specially given how poor physical defense impacts the damage taken (and this gets worse as you go up in levels). There’s only two options for tanking: evasion or blocking. Defense just doesn’t work and stacking hp doesn’t mitigate damage, it only delays your death a little bit. Evasion/block should work on magical attacks, given how common (and powerful) they are.
Map layouts are generally good. Well, except Downtown - that one is horrible. There is an obvious problem with monster concentration. Some people demands more channels, but the real problem is in the mob distribution and respawn times. It is just not consistent. Example of good maps that don’t need more channels: Crystal Mine, Tenet Chapel, Demon Prison. Example of bad maps: all the others above level 30. If you solve the mob population then you won’t need more channels - channels are meant to solve player population. If you cannot increase the amount of monsters due to server limitations, then I suggest a decrease in their respawn timers.
As far as gear goes… I think that changing equipment once every 30-40 levels is pretty boring. Mobs having all of a sudden their full drops removed and replaced by only recipes is pretty boring as well. The system the game has in place to distribute “cubes” from the world bosses is bad in my opinion, as it favours classes oriented to deal maximum damage and disregards the others. But I guess those are far from being one of the main problems the game has right now.
All in all, somehow, I still liked the game. If you manage to fix it, it will be great!
Storyline: 3,5 stars
Gameplay: 2 stars
Music: 5 stars
Graphics: 4 stars
Goddesses: many stars
And… I think that’s it. Phew! I feel better now.
Thanks for reading,
a fellow Toster.