Generally a more varied and vibrant game experience than anything else I have played. I first caught wind of their Kickstarter over a decade ago. I am not as frequent **** as I would like to be, but when I have time to game I come back to SOTA time and time again. It is more immersive than most games even attempt. The one real downfall is the loading screens between instances.
I do not mind the cash store at all, as it is entirely vanity items. Nothing gains you an advantage in game except your own investment in time and effort, as it should be! And the time a developer spends to create new in game assets for us players should be compensated fairly. You can purchase many things from pieces of outfits to armor styles, and dyes for equipable items, special character emote effects, lot deeds and different house styles, decorations and furnishings for your home.
Travel is more realistic than most games even dare to dabble in. And we have mounts now! The ability to travel the entire world map with just a few instanced choke points and the occasional boat ride strikes a fair balance between immersion and tediousness.
I LOVE the diversity of things I can do here. I love having a home that is a persistent part of the game world, where I can chill or socialize, where I can display and organize my game assets (not just the bank) to my hearts content.
I can also collect rares or not so rares, I can craft, I can cook, I can grow and harvest crops as well as harvesting crops in the world at large, gather resources, I can TAME creatures, I can hunt and battle NPCs, solve and complete intricate quest lines (which are not just "Go get me 3 frog legs" kind of crap quests) I can train any skill wish, and untrain a skill and regain experience to apply to a skill I prefer to train.
The entire game is vast and wide, with much opportunity for cooperative and social game play, including raids and one can have or participate in large player devised and hosted gatherings (especially centered around various holidays) including dance parties. The developers interact with the players in their forums regularly, and also have live streams monthly. In my opinion, the best thing about SOTA is their NO botting/macroing policy (unlike sooo many games that are ruined by such.)
I love that we can customize our characters so thoroughly not just at creation, but if one changes their mind, a character can be modified in game for a small in game cost.
If you want, there is a single player mode, as well as the MMO world, which is vast, and mirrored in the single player.
Some aspects are a bit grindish as crafting requires time at a crafting bench of various types for each step in an item's creation.
Simply put, Shroud of the Avatar is a wreck. It tries to be a single player experience and a MMORPG at the same time, and fails on both counts. Everything is out of time: the combat system is boring, the progression of the avatar is repetitive, and the the graphics would have been OK fifteen years ago.
The title says it all. There is a corpse underneath the shroud and the virtues were indeed forsaken. The informal successor to the Ultima series proves that Tabula Rasa was not a one-time slip and Richard Garriott belongs in the past. [06/2018, p.70]
Games great theres a TON of things to do, the only issue i had is getting through the initial quests. They're very easy to skip over but once i read the handbook that the game provided things made more sense plus i met a group of players who helped explain things as well. The game has this cool oracle that you visit and he informs you about the virtues. You can end up being good or evil in the game based on choices made which is really cool. The emote system is the best ive ever seen in a game, the fighting system is smooth and very fun. The class diversity is so cool you can really fine tune your character like you can be a mage specializing in fire or you can specialize in life which makes u a great healer or u can be an expert swordsman with magic mixed in or u can be a combo archer/ swordsman/ mage. Same thing with crafting the crafting system is very deep and you won't become a gm blacksmith overnight thats for sure. Also the game has tons of cool items that you can hang in a home literally everything u can think of and you can build a dungeon in the basement of your home and fully customize it with monsters down there and everything! so awsome. Take care everyone and happy playing :)
I played probably roughly 1,000 hours.
I was able to max out an Archer character, start a new player guild, and reach the highest forms of PvE. This game is inventive, and the crafting system uses crafting tables and the like for the first time. The graphics are reasonable, and the players I encountered were friendly and helpful. However, this game was full of bugs. The game was largely unpopulated. It is pretty taxing on your computer system; you have to have a decent GPU.
So I tried the free trial of this because I was really curious. It may be that I never got into Ultima Online but I just can get into the world Garriot has made. Not because the lore **** - in fact it's kind of intriguing. It's all the technical issues the game has.
Pros -
Love the skills-based leveling system
Tons of housing and crafting possibilities
Huge world, interesting overworld map
Very challenging, lots of possibilities for roleplaying.
Intesting PVE questing, makes you really think about how to complete each one.
CONS
Horribly optimized and a lagfest in towns and game crashes quite a bit.
Housing costs HUNDREDS of real-world dollars. This will prevent most players from ever owning one.
Kind of crap sound effects (not a big deal to me)
No fast travel and PVP (i've heard) is non-existent for the most part.
Grindy (to be expected for an old school rpg) in certain areas.
SOTA has some potential but it just feels really unfinished and the devs seem more concerned about cash shop purchases for virtual real estate and the next "chapter" but aren't doing much about the current bugs, poor gameplay.
I'm not invested in this game emotionally or financially - not a backer. Ultimately the game is disappointing. The combat system with dynamic cards for decks is flat out dumb. Game feels extremely unpolished, buggy and clunky. The graphics are insanely dated. I played for just over a week and only spotted 11 different players - apparently population is pretty low and confirmed my suspicion using steam charts. Maybe worth another look in a year or so when it's been heavily worked on and population is healthy.
Disappointing.
I was an original backer from 2013, and this game just doesn't deliver much of anything. The game on release is still very buggy, still has placeholder text and names, and stuff that in game states it is not done yet.
On top of that the missions and world are super boring and lazy implemented, the controls are slugish and bad, the graphics is 10 years dated and music and sound design seems to be absent.
SummaryA fantasy RPG that combines a single player narrative with a sandbox MMO. It is being created by a team that includes: Richard “Lord British” Garriott (Ultima), Starr Long (Ultima Online), and Tracy Hickman (Dragonlance).