September 28th of 2021 will go down in history as one of the greatest days in my gaming career. I was able to set sail for a darkened land for treasures untold and ended up finding a whole New World. I was lucky enough to be invited to the Alpha and then again for the closed beta of this magnificent and fantastic MMO and there simply aren’t enough great things that I can say about this game. New World is by far the most majestically beautiful game that I had the pleasure of feasting my eyes on. The gameplay itself provides players with multiple aspects of a survival/MMO genre that brings me very close to living the style of game that I wanted from other RPG games. Since the second day of its release, I can not say anything negative about this game.
The first day of the game was unfortunately a disaster for anyone who wished to start the adventure when the servers were open. Once the servers went live, there were hundreds of thousands of gamers that tried to barge into the gateway and the queues exploded. Thankfully, Amazon listened to our cries for help and by the next day, there were multiple servers created to help streamline the queues. Then, Amazon made it known that if the server you waited on was not available at this time, then you had to create your character on another server. As a bonus, during the second week of release players were offered a free character transfer to any server that they wanted to play on.
I took the initiative and jumped at a chance to make my character on a new server and explore the world that has been taking over my mind since the last beta. I was not let down in the least. After logging in 6 days straight now with over 30 hours of play time, I am in awe with this game and I am not stopping. In fact, I have got my son a copy of it to play with me and I talked 4 of my friends into joining me on this adventure as well. Not one person has regretted it. We have a blast with every aspect of the game.
The game starts off where you see the interaction between a captain and a mysterious stranger in a tavern. The mysterious stranger tells this story to the captain of an island with riches and treasure but also danger. The captain takes his leave and next he is on a ship that is sailing for this island. Then the game begins with your character creation. This would be my first issue of the game. I was looking for more of a personalized character creation like that of Sword of Legends Online, and it is not that advanced. It does, however, give you more options than World of Warcraft, but it is a little mundane for me. Pick a hairstyle, hair color, face, eye color, some sort of marking, maybe a tattoo. But that is about it as you can’t move tattoos around, widen the nose or bring in the cheeks, stretch your person out, or make them plump. I personally would like to see more options, and maybe down the line, they will make this more available.
Once you make landfall, you learn the movement of your character and how to attack, dodge, and even block oncoming attacks. You make it out of the shipwreck area and up the hill and this was my first time ever seeing how gorgeous this game truly is. The first time you see the trees and the pollen in the air, the sun peeking through the clouds and lighting the shrubbery below is absolutely breathtaking. I stood in one spot and watched leaves falling off of trees to see the sun outline each leaf for over 10 mins and it was mesmerizing to say the least.
The top of the screen directs you on where to go just like that of a compass. You will get your first quest and off you go. With each quest, you get experience to level up. You may get an item or even a crate. Inside the crate can be a green item to increase stats, or you can even get resources to help with your other skills.
You have to gather resources to build things to gather other resources. For example, while you start fighting the withered near the wrecked ships, you see flintstones on the ground. Pick them up. In fact, here is a pro-tip, if you see anything that you can pick up, I would do it. Just know that you only have so much weight you can carry on you, so watch your bag. But once you have the flint, then you can see about making a skinning knife. So, when you kill a boar you can skin it to gather hide. Now that you have hide, you can use the hide at the tannery to make leather. Now that you have leather, you can use it to make either a weapon or clothing or something else. Also unlike other MMORPG games, when you do a gathering ability you actually earn experience points so you are still leveling up even if you aren’t doing quests.
Each resource provides a step into doing something else, just like a lot of other MMOs, but for me, this was a lot more fun. I was in a forest to kill wolves. While I was there, I was skinning wolves, cutting down trees, and gathering herbs, hemp, and mushrooms. So, I was not just running to one area and killing wolves then running to another area to gather wood. I was able to multitask the whole time and it gave me the feel of the way they would have done it during this time frame. My favorite gathering so far has to be the fishing. You set up near the water and hit the F3 key, then depending on if it is fresh or saltwater, you can use a specific bait to help you fish. There are so many types of bait, it is just as fun. Next, you cast the line with your left mouse click. Then when a fish is on the line you not only have to left-click to set the hook, but you also have to concentrate on the meter to make sure that the line doesn’t break. When the meter goes from green to orange, let off the left mouse button. If it goes red the line breaks and you lose your fish. I am very proud to say that fishing gave me my first Legendary item, which was a Legendary Fish.
The combat system is also very well thought out. You can do sword and shield, rapier, spear, two-handed hammer, and even a battle ax. Then for range, you can do musket, bow and arrow, life staff and I even ran across some ice gauntlets. You can level any of them up and use them. You do not have to be in a specific class to use the weapons as it lets you try and master any of them you like. I personally enjoy the Rapier and the Bow and Arrow gameplay. Shoot them with a bow to draw them in and parry and kill with the Rapier. I use a lot of Dexterity and Constitution to do great damage and have more life.
The look of the armor is spot on in this game. You can find a conquistador plate helm and a swashbuckling pirate tunic as if you pulled it straight out of the history books. Each item can give you better stats to help with your damage and your ability to survive. Some even give you special traits like Leech, so a portion of your damage will heal you as well. I was able to find a few crafting mods while I was out and about gathering resources from crates that increases my ability to get a specific trait on my weapon. I made an Iron Rapier and I added a mod to give me a +8 to dexterity. It felt good to make something that I could get better use out of.
Once you reach level 10 and have all the beginning quests out of the way then you unlock factions. There are 3 factions in the game you get to choose from to help earn rewards and take over the island in player-vs-player or player-vs-everything quests. They are the Marauders, Syndicate, and the Covenant. Marauders are a ‘ruthless military force’ who seek to use their strength to obtain freedom. If you’re looking to flex your muscles and strongarm your way to the top. The Covenant is a ‘fanatical order’ on a mission to cleanse the land of impurities and heretics and restore justice. The Syndicate is a ‘secretive organization of boundless guile and intellect’.
As you can see, there is so much to do, see and get into that there is always something to keep you entertained. And I haven’t even mentioned the housing creation yet. I guess you will have to play the game to see that part. Amazon’s New World was released on September 28th, for PC through Steam and Amazon. The Standard version costs $39.99 while the Deluxe version is $49.99.
If you love the world of Skyrim and want an MMO that is a little like World of Warcraft and maybe even Genshin Impact. However, you do not want to have to pay a subscription each month, then this would be the perfect game for you. What is best about this game is I am not losing out on the real world at all. So if I need to go to the gym or the store or even make dinner I can just walk away from it and not have to be in the state of mind of I still have the rest of this raid to do for 4-6 hours so I have to plan around it. Amazon, this was a masterpiece I can’t wait to see what new things you bring to this world and thank you for letting us play in this New World.
This review was written based on a digital copy of New World for PC provided by Amazon Games.
