➤ Skyforge, review 🎮

A few weeks ago we concluded our Skyforge trial cautiously optimistic. The new massive multiplayer online game of the Allods Team, the same developer of the famous (and somewhat infamous) Allods Online, had turned out to be a decidedly curious product that tried to distance itself from the clichés of the genre to have its say in a landscape that becomes more sterile every year. The combat system, spectacular and action oriented, had convinced us, and the freedom granted to the player in the construction of his "immortal" avatar had amazed us, even if we had only scratched the surface. At that time we had not yet tried PvP, nor unlocked the Order or reached the level of prestige necessary to face the endgame contents ... also because we had immediately crashed into a wall, the weekly limit that prevents players from accumulating the many currencies. over a certain amount. Now that we have delved a little more into what Skyforge has to offer, we can formulate a slightly more concrete opinion. Let it be clear that this is an MMO, a game that can change overnight thanks to a few updates, and that our assessment is based on the current state of the game. In short, changes are welcome.

Skyforge could become more than just the bizarre hybrid we've played so far

Order and chaos

As we anticipated in the hands-on, the value called "Prestige" totally dominates the progress of Skyforge players, unlocking new features and activities as it increases. The algorithm that governs it is unclear, but it is essentially affected by individual progress regarding equipment, the Ascension Atlas and the Order.

The latter unlocks quite early, and represents the real "cult" formed around our avatar: we remind you, in fact, that in the universe of Skyforge we are immortal demigods, and the very subtle plot of the game revolves around our ascension and the ambitions of other demigods. After playing the Final Fantasy XIV expansion, or even the controversial Warlords of Draenor alternate timeline, the Skyforge story has left us quite indifferent, admittedly, but the basic idea is really interesting, as are its developments. in terms of gameplay. The Order, moreover, recalls the garrison implemented by Blizzard in its latest expansion of World of Warcraft, for better or for worse, and probably it is not a coincidence: maximum yield, minimum expenditure, since both tend to become very little soon. more than a three-dimensional browser game. The Order allows us to recruit new adepts and followers who increase their power, and to establish temples and places of worship in various regions of the world: in reality, we will never see any physically, and their existence simply serves to grant bonuses, collect new currencies and increase our prestige.

At a certain point, the micromanagement of the Order becomes one of the most important moments every time we connect to the game servers: we have to decide which followers to send on missions, which ones to upgrade, which to dismiss and which changes to make to the built structures. The problem is that, sooner or later, it also becomes one of the few reasons to log in daily, especially once the weekly currency limit has been reached. The boundary imposed by Allods Team has caused a lot of discussion, but in some ways it is understandable: on paper, it serves to prevent players with more free time from progressing too much, creating a gap in terms of Prestige, economy and performance that is difficult to face. . It is a limit that works in half, as it is reached quite easily once you learn how to play, and at that point you find yourself connecting to Skyforge only to micromanage the Order or "farm" the missions for the other necessary currencies, for example , to upgrade weapons. In the long run, it is a situation that creates quite a few imbalances. In the guilds, here called Pantheon, players tend to connect for a few hours after each weekly reset, and then disappear until the next: this creates a detachment from the game, and rages on the performance of the Pantheon itself, given that many features of Skyforge , especially in endgame, they rely on the community and risk not even being touched. In this sense, not even the exorbitant number of currencies to accumulate through the completion of missions or the internal economy does not help to keep the interest high: they are simply too many, they generate not a little confusion especially for newbies and transform the experience into a repetitive and exasperated grind.

Wandering through the Atlas

The important thing, however, is not to make the mistake of considering Skyforge a traditional MMORPG along the lines of World of Warcraft, Final Fantasy XIV or Star Wars: The Old Republic. In this sense, the title of the Allods Team is more like a kind of Diablo III sui generis, in which missions and dungeons are repeated in search of some rare loot, in order to accumulate the currencies you need and, above all , the Sparks that are essential for unlocking the nodes in the Atlas.

Also in this case, the first few hours of the game can be disorienting: the information displayed at the same time are too many, the currencies to manage are numerous and the cumbersome and unintuitive interface certainly does not help. Once you become familiar with the Atlas, however, everything becomes a little clearer and more natural. After all, this is the heart of the game: while in many MMORPGs you progress by finding new items and leveling up, in Skyforge, growth revolves around the Atlas and the discovery of its nodes. By spending the various categories of Spark, you acquire new bonuses and skills and follow paths that can lead to the acquisition of new classes. The player, in fact, initially can only choose between Cryomancer, Paladin and Lightbinder (assuming that he has not purchased the founder package with the additional ones) and can change it at any time, as long as he is not fighting: at that point he changes the equipped weapon and the loadup of skills, but the character always remains the same, with all the passive bonuses already unlocked on the Atlas, including those in the field of other specializations. It is an interesting mechanic reminiscent of the Job System of Final Fantasy XI and Final Fantasy XIV, and therefore allows for enormous versatility on the battlefield, especially if you find yourself needing a support class instead of one focused purely on the battlefield. 'attack. The various classes differ significantly in terms of skills, spells, roles and fighting styles, but unlocking them all is a titanic undertaking that, either for the way the Atlas is structured, or for the weekly limit of accumulated Sparks, will take months and months of time. This is why it is better to focus first on unlocking only one, the one that interests us more than the others, and that is why it is the game itself that offers a kind of tutorial that allows you to try them all in advance and even a simulator that allows you to track on the Atlas the shortest path to the class of our interest.

Too bad, therefore, that in terms of PvP and balancing there is still a lot to do, especially if you consider the obvious advantage of players willing to swipe their credit card to buy bonuses on the Allods Team store and increase their Prestige at a much faster rate than free to play players. The "pay to win" drift, in short, makes itself felt soon, and it is not surprising that there are several Prestige bands in which it is practically impossible to find other players for dungeons or group activities. The latter also made us turn up our noses. Skyforge employs a rolistic trinity of its own, in which there are no real healers but support classes, and in which it is above all to do damage in the shortest possible time: Enemies, especially bosses, have an infinity of life points and at some point it becomes a race to kill them before they are killed. From the point of view of the gameplay, fans of the action will feel at home: even normal enemies can be a big problem, and the bosses have peculiar mechanics that oblige not only to move nimbly around the battlefield, but also to use the head. As we said, in short, Skyforge is not an MMORPG, but more an action RPG MMO: a formula that, in our opinion, should be decidedly deepened.

PC System Requirements

Test Setup

Processore: Intel Core i7-2600k @ 3,4 GHz
Video card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570
Memory: 8 GB of RAM
Operating system: Windows 10 64 bit

Minimum requirements

Processore: Intel Pentium Dual CPU E2160 1.80 GHz
Scheda video: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS, Intel HD Graphics 3000, Radeon HD 4650
Memory: 2 GB of RAM
Operating system: Windows XP (SP3), Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8

Recommended Requirements

Processor: Intel Core i5-4430 3.0 GHz
Scheda video: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275, Radeon HD 4870
Memory: 4 GB of RAM
Operating system: Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10

Comment

Digital Delivery Official site Resources4Gaming.com

6.8

Readers (13)

6.6

Your vote

Beautiful to look at and fun to play, Skyforge has all the qualities to break into the free-to-play MMO landscape, but you have to approach it with the conviction that it is not a real online role-playing game, but a hybrid that could give way to a new way of understanding the genre. Too bad that the developer has treaded a little too much on certain aspects, such as the abstruse limit imposed on the progression of players. Between a PvP almost completely to be reviewed, a confusing interface and big balance problems, Skyforge deserves a nice overhaul: the ideas are there, now only goodwill and a bit of reasoning are missing.