Embers Adrift

Is it me, or are all MMORPGs starting to follow the same formula? Embers Adrift feel to be another title that followed standard procedure. Get announced, promise a lot, stay in endless early access, leave players disappointed, and continue peddling on. Maybe that's just the nature of the business now, but why do fans continue investing time into these games?

Embers Adrift is a medieval-fantasy massively multiplayer game that never really showed any promise of being different than other similar titles. The fact that it's more PvE-focused shed some interest, but anyone who went through the beta process will know the game didn't meet expectations. We could say that Embers Adrift wasn't the result we hoped for, but let's discuss why.

From the Embers, We Rise

Let's take a moment to appreciate that ten developers created Embers Adrift. That's right; only a handful of people managed to clump their skills together and create an MMORPG game that usually involves hundreds of teams. However, the human resources behind the game's development may be why the title feels lackluster in many areas. You might think there was a rush to get a finished product to market rather than deliver their unique ideas.

The game world is similar, only varying in biomes slightly. The character customization isn't marvelous, really only offering the bare minimum of what such an MMO game should have. Finally, the overall gameplay is the most uninspired element of the bunch. Embers Adrift feel like a colossal grind that's ultimately going nowhere.

While the combat is fun, questing is mundane, where you lose direction without proper tracking. The dialogue, meant to create intrigue behind your actions, is well-written but unfortunately cluttered. In an age where MMO players' attention spans are short-lived, the game struggles to capture hearts and minds and provide an incentive for your character to go on an adventure.

The critical issue with Embers Adrift is that you get the feeling it's an MMO of the past trying to trigger nostalgia. However, we have plenty of those games, some of which are old MMOs that are still active. Players struggle to find a reason to invest time in Embers Adrift, and it's not hard to argue why.

Direction Adrift

So why would we bother with Embers Adrift? Some positives can reel players in, the main one being seeing a lean-developed MMORPG in action. But there's also a strong community with an unbridled dedication to seeing the game succeed, which it may well do if there are some significant improvements to gameplay. The title could head in the Dragon's Dogma direction but with the massively multiplayer touch.

Round-Up - Pros & Cons

Pros:

• An impressive accomplishment for a small dev team
• The great community behind the game
• Fantastic PvE content in areas

Cons:

• Grinding gameplay that gets boring quickly
• Visuals are substandard for the genre
• Not well optimized for varied devices