Craftopia Review by D3athbySp0rk
Before I dive in, I also wish to add, Hamatchi is not required for multiplayer. You just need the host to port forward their router. There are many guides on the internet for this if you have not done this before. The default port for Craftopia is 8787.
My experiences were through multiplayer, and while I had some glitches and bugs, none of them I encountered were devastating. I should also note this review I’m writing is after 3 hours deep of gameplay, and while that may not be much, I feel like it is enough to evaluate the game to some degree.
Aesthetics:
Firstly the aesthetic of the game is fantastic. From a visual sense, it reminds me of a breath of the wild. I personally found the music to get annoying after a while, as it was on a constant loop and sounded low quality (coming from a bit of an audiophile). So I simply turned that off. Some of the animal’s sounds also seemed off. Such as the deer didn’t sound like a deer to me, though this is a minor flaw. There really isn’t anything I can complain about visually, and I didn’t encounter any issues or bugs with graphics. The interface is standard of an RPG, easy to understand, so there’s not much more you can ask for in that regard.
Performance:
The game ran alright, At 1440p my fps were almost always ~60 (capped at 60) with a 8700k, 1080 TI. Sometimes they’d drop a little into the ’50s. This title can be demanding on your graphics card, depending on your resolution and graphics card choice. At the current moment, their graphics settings are relatively simple in terms of customization or optimizing your performance. The best you can do is downscale resolution and disable antialiasing so that some additional graphical options would be a tremendous improvement for players.
Gameplay:
The gameplay is fun. Melee combat is movement-based with broad sweeps, jump attacks, and charge attacks (additional attacks and skills can be unlocked). It feels very classic-like. The combat felt familiar, such as titles like Ratchet and Clank. Magic seemed to be blended with melee and range, as those weapons also offered bonuses to magic attacks. I’m unsure if there are specific magic weapons, but with what I’ve seen, if you were to go pure magic, the best stat stick is the best sword you can get your hands on. This gave magic more of a supportive side class feel rather than one of the trinity (melee, ranged, magic).
Building:
Building is simple, not that I feel it needs to be complex, but it has floors, walls, ramps, conveyors, and simplistic automation. Your autonomous devices mostly serve as a quality of life and still require player interaction somewhere along the line.
Progression:
Progression is short, but also fun. With 3 hours, I’m at stage 4 out of 5 (There are currently only five stages released, but there are more planned). Even though each stage expands on the grind and the requirements to progress, I found it’s still pretty fast progression. This is alright for me, as I’m okay making my own goals in a sandbox environment, such as going out and discovering things rather than focusing on gathering and crafting. I plan on investing a lot more time in the title later, but I’m waiting for a few hotfixes and patches before progressing further. It’s obvious in-game that they plan to expand it much more.
Exploration:
While progression is short currently, exploration seemed to have many places to go. This game isn’t an open-world entirely, but instead, you can travel to new maps, with different level designs, monsters, and resources. The zones seem to have a level recommendation, though I did not check if you need a level requirement to move to a new tile. You would have a more challenging time if you went under-leveled though due to enemy scaling.
Glitches:
There were some glitches I’ve encountered. While I wasn’t hosting in the multiplayer session, I discovered a fair amount of desyncing. Enemies that were there for me, but not for the host. Boss went into a lazer attack, died for the host, but never stopped firing the laser. The host got stuck in a default pose, no animations. (re-equipping armor fixed that) and the host had a couple of UI bugs that a quit to menu and relaunching the session fixed.
Do you recommend the game?
This game is very much “early access” If you’re willing to be an early adopter and enjoy what the game has to offer, while it isn’t a lot. It’s still substantial, and there’s a lot of fun to be had. If you’re looking for an in-depth experience, I think it’d be best to wait and see where development goes and what Pocket Pair adds. There are quite a few skills and some weapons/items that show in the menus but are locked out labeled, “coming soon.” Past that, I have no idea of their direction. It’s too early to tell. But as is; It is a game with a hand full of things to do, places to explore. And I will admit an enjoyable one.
Pros:
- Relaxing gameplay
- Polish Combat System
- Multi-genre (crafting, exploring, looting, automation, RPG) a jack of trades
- Simplistic styled graphics, but nice to look at
- Multiplayer
- Plenty of exploration
- Intuitive UI
Cons:
- Lacks magic class diversity
- Multiplayer is a little bugged and requires third-party software or port-forwarding.
- Various other bugs
- Poor optimization
- Graphical settings are non-existent
- Progress is a little too easy (could change after the additional stages are added)
Written by @D3athbySp0rk
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