The idea of saying “ at 15 bucks this game is worth it” or “ has a free game with my origin vip membership of dicksuckin, its worth it” needs to vanish from our collective thinking as gamers. Thats selling out to using a failed product and trying to justify its use. My bicycle has 1 wheel with a rusty frame but since it was 15 bucks its worth it. Fuck this mindset.
At 15 bucks, its a trash game. Dont buy shit, dont sponsor bullshit and dont support this business model. You’re killing gaming.
This isn't a true comparison. It's more like renting a fully functioning bike because I only need it for a certain period of time, because that time period is all the enjoyment I'm going to get out of it. I don't need to buy something I'm not going to use after the first month. "Renting" it for $15 worked out perfectly.
I've been having hella fun playing this with three buddies. Myself and another have 970 PRO M.2's, the other two are running 860 EVO's. One of the guys with an 860 accidentally installed the game on his backup HDD and he was constantly facing loading walls because we'd hit the next area before he even loaded in. Once he reinstalled to the correct drive we all load at relatively the same time, and at a monster pace. It never takes more than 5-6 seconds except for strongholds when we're missing a person and it forces you to wait for everyone to load before starting.
I have complaints, but they're not stopping me from enjoying playing with bros. Complaints which are pretty typical to BioWare games - good fucking God there is so much useless dialog, and it literally gates you behind having these conversations for loyalty and available quests. I've gotten pretty adept at smashing the Esc key to skip through most of it, because it's 90% folks complaining or talking about the before times and the current situation, and nearly zero story progression. There's one guy who literally says he has so many stories to tell, says it nearly every time you talk to him, but he never actually tells any tales. Just leads you to the next "protect the arcanists" or "collect" quest...
The story with the big bad, the guy who sounds like James Spader reprising Ultron is badass. The unskippable cut scenes that you're forced to sit through, or the disconnects after the cut scene, after you've hoarded a ton of loot, all lost. Fortunately missions are short as fuck, and 95% of the loot you get is unusable anyways, so the nuisance is mild.
One other complaint is the lack of a character sheet. Having to do manual math to make sure damage or cooldown reduction are both decent when you have items that also have negative effects (namely +50%CDR and -20% damage, or -20%CDR and +50% damage, or +elemental damage -physical damage, or +speed, what the fuck is speed? Casting speed?).
I've stacked enough CDR on my Storm javelin that I literally only use my weapon between casts to proc other secondaries or if I'm trying to lure an enemy without too much aggro. Same with our melee guy, we equip weapons based on their bonuses and give zero fucks what kind of weapon it is or its performance, pistol with gear damage, sniper with only 15 rounds, why not. When I can empty a magazine and do less than 1/10 of my weaker spell, a spell that can wipe out an entire group of mobs...
Multiple build variants are going to be viable because of how combos work. Splitting between two types of spells becomes less effective. I'm full lightning, other Storm buddy is all fire. Given this is a PVE game and balance can fuck off, the potential meta builds looks promising.
Do I think I'm going to be playing this game for the next year? Lol, most likely not. But that wasn't at all my expectation.
Does it have server issues? Sure. Do encounters sometimes bug out with infinite respawns? Yup! Could it use a few QOL updates? Most definitely, especially to the Freeplay option that lacks player location on the compass and any ability to communicate with random who aren't using the bullshit integrated voip system.
Are the harder strongholds with a solid 4 man group fun as fuck? You bet your ass.