Recent reviews by Drango

Look it's an awesome game but *only* if you have the computing power for it. Either you have the power to run this game and it looks great and is super stable, or you have less than cutting edge tech and it will be a low FPS less stable experience.

It is still *massively* CPU bound like ark has always been, and the new game is doing a lot more. I upgrade my computer every few years and can only play this looking great as I have only stepped onto newest gen gear. Frame generation even on a 14 series i7 is a must. I can play island at 100fps only with 4080 frame generation, otherwise i'll be getting half that.

This game has produced some of the most amazing scenes I have ever witnessed in decades of gaming, the lighting color and hue changes throughout the day/night cycle are awe inspiring. The storms coming through in scorched earth are mindblowing. It is a *stunning* game when it's working well.

I highly recommend this game ONLY if U have a CPU capable of very high single thread speeds (you want raw single core GHZ not high core numbers here) and a GPU capable of hardware supported frame gen. I know it currently works on nvidia 40 series I am unsure how FSR is working the the game so far, if you have ATI i would check that first.

If you are still sitting on respectable hardware that's a bit below the newest generation, I would probably wait a bit longer and maybe come back to this game next time you get to upgrade. The lack of performance you get on this game compared to other AAA titles will likely be frustrating and the game seems to get less stable when it's struggling to push out frames.

They had something pretty unique going and then changed most of it back to generic fps gameplay.

There is nothing particularly different that this game does, there are a lot of systems designed to 'encourage teamwork' but really it plays out no different to any other arcadey team based FPS.

If you are looking for something with a bit of character and tactics to it, look elsewhere.

It is otherwise a decent FPS with impressive maps and pretty crappy performance. Newer games will provide the same experience and look/run better. The 100 players is a cool feature but it just devolves into series of short little one on one ambushes so you never appreciate it.

It's a shame that with all the work that went into crafting what should be a cinematic masterpiece, the complete lack of blood on launch for their little DLC trick down the line makes the game look goofy at best, comically bad at worst.

I'm not even a fan of gore or anything like that, it's just SO jarringly absent. With the game about mass warfare literally not having a single drop of blood to be seen even on surfaces like white snow all of a sudden it looks more like a goofy bunch of colourful monsters doing interpretive dance.

Look it's understandable that long-running free to play titles like this must find new ways to get players to spend $$ to be profitable.

But the recently added submarines are horrible to play with/against. Any semblance of reality was thrown out to try and shoehorn a new "fun" mini game into what a battleships game that had not recovered from the last such exercise (aircraft carriers) resulting in wacky 'ping seeking homing torpedos' and the movement speed of the subs is a joke. I would steer clear of the whole mess until they fix submarines, or just go find your fun elsewhere.

EDIT: It got so, so much worse. Since the last review not only have submarines been buffed, they actually introduced tier 11 "SUPERCARRIERS" which actually fly post WW2 heavily armoured jet-bombers and conventional prop planes with "jet assisted takeoff" which can fly across the map in seconds and drop devastating ordinance bypassing even the most desperate WW2 flak defence. Community contributors have quit in droves and the player base in general is falling apart.

My biggest regret is that I spent money on this game. Perhaps $200+ AUD over 2 years, and now I cannot see anyway to enjoy the money that I have invested. Be warned with free to play, it may be your favourite game to play right now, and that may make you feel justified in spending money on it (I did) but there is ZERO protection from developers completely turning a game on it's head to try and shake more money out of the community. Then one day you realised the game you loved is completely gone.

Second Edit: I have found that there is still enjoyment to be had in Clan Battles, as it is the most organised and "serious" of the game modes all the ridiculous meme boats such as tier 11, aircraft carriers and submarines are disabled. This is basically as close as you can get to playing the original game before the worst of whale bait wargaming has dreamt up in their quest to degrade the game for money. Unfortunately you still need tier 10 ships to play clan battles, and this will take hundreds of games of eating crap in the now clown-car random mode. So I would not recommend a new player bother putting in the time.

This game is beautiful and the world is full of interest, but that doesn't matter. It's great to explore with your mates, but don't do that either. Anything that stops you from watching where the next griefers are is a distraction.

Don't buy this game for your kids, the community is predatory and toxic and you will be exposing your child to the worst the net has to offer. The first time I joined a random 4 man crew via match making we had been sailing for 5 minutes before we found a one man sloop that was loading/unloading at dock. Our crew immediately opened up on the defenseless vessel, and it's owner came running back audibly crying over voice comms begging us to stop, I could hear his father in the background saying to him "you know they won't stop" in the kind of tired way that told me that it happens all the time and he is urging his son to not be depressed about it. I disconnected at that point. I'm not really into going around and 4 v 1 whaling on 10 years olds who don't even want to fight.

Sadly that seems to be what this game is about. There is an "Arena" mode for players who want to PVP, but that's not really the majority of 'pvp' players, they don't use it. That would mean two crews of equal size who are ready for a fair fight, when sea of thieves is really just griefers waiting for you to become distracted by quest tasks in the game so they can attack you essentially AFK and steal everything you have and burn the rest just for laughs. They don't want to fight an alert vessel with equal crew numbers.

There are a great number of awesome story and puzzle/exploration things to do, but if you try to enjoy them with friends you will just come back from hunting treasure on a island to a burning ship, if you engage AI fleet battles a bigger player driven vessel will wait until you are damaged and low on ammo and attack you from behind. Literally anything you do that is story-driven or PVE is a liability.

The saddest thing about this is that the PVP elements of the game are the most half-baked. The servers are laggy, hit reg is an absolute crap-shoot and the "sword fighting" is the most simplistic in any current game to boot. Basically the controls say "casual" but if you bring any of your casual friends or family in they will get griefed by try hards.

The answer to any of this from teh devs or the community is that the game is called "sea of thieves" so just remember that before you buy the game. Don't worry about the "legendary voyages" and all the regular content updates. The longer the story voyage the higher the chance someone will attack your vessel whilst your busy and throw your quest-essential items overboard just for fun and waste hours of your life (they won't even benefit from the items, just griefing).

PVE quests often take time and have multiple steps, but you can just spawn in, jump on a boat and be shooting at some afk trader within minutes, so even when you fight pirates off, they can just spawn in straight away and they lose nothing so they can keep on trying, wasting your gaming time in the process.

The only way to approach this game is as a griefer battle-royale, and on that front the PVP combat is just too janky, there are a million better PVP games on the market that are cheaper and do PVP way better.

I would steer clear of this one until they separate out the PVP from the PVE or better still just wait for a game that does it all better.

Haven't encountered any of the issues people seem to be complaining about.

Is very cool, and one thing i notcied is that the way I play the game is slowed waaaay down, as i actually *walk* through areas looking around as oppoed to sprint to the next glowy objective with WSAD.

I found all the menus made sense and looting is fine. Some people are complainging that you can't "open every box and drawer manually" and i also thought this, but then realised if i had to do that with the 5 million individual containters (most of which are empty) in the game world i would not finish it before I die of old age.

Really cool, IMHO the first all encompasing open game for Vive, I am excityed to see what Bethesda makes in the future when their titles are designed with VR functionality from the ground up.

Update: the worst bit about this game is how sore my feet get when i play a few hours straight XD - i am using super sampling 1.3 for a mix of looks and fps on 1080 with older ram and mainboard