Update: this post is old and the game has changed significantly since. I've been finding the game difficult to get back into, and I can definitively say it's not the same game I had been playing before. If this game is still as good as it was then, it becomes that way after a siginificant amount of play
To be very clear, I had no original intention of trying Pagan Online, but ended up being very glad I did, despite it being early access.
Why?
1) The gameplay. This is kind of big, so it's going to be divided up:
Characters. To
summarize, I like the freedom of having a completely different
playstyle available to me without all of the overhead of rerolling
and/or farming for the new build you typically see in other aRPGs. I
also like the depth each character has individually. Here's some more
details. In Pagan Online, you're choosing between characters instead of a
"build." Each character has a core mechanic, and then a set of
abilities. Often there's explicit and implicit synergies between those
abilities. So instead of "picking" a build, you're "learning" a
character. To make up for the fact that playing one character could turn
very repetitive, It's very easy to swap between characters: your lower
level characters can wear gear crafted or found by your higher level
ones as gear requirements are based on ACCOUNT level instead of
character level. So you can hit the ground running as soon as you unlock
a new character (they still get stronger as they level up, but they're
still very playable with high level gear) Also, you can freely swap
between characters at the main hub without logging out. So if you get
bored, you just swap between your favorites. The fact that your
inventory is shared makes this even easier. There's also another
advantage to playing multiple characters: every time a character levels
up, it contributes experience towards your account level and your
account level increases experience gained by all heroes, so you're
literally losing nothing when you swap between characters because it
makes leveling your "main" easier.Also, as long as you have the mats for crafting and/or are collecting a few extra gear pieces, it's generally easy to gear up a new character: The only unique slot is the weapon slot. That doesn't mean that there aren't stats that are better for different characters. And most of the time you don't have an optimal build in the gear, but just being able to put really strong gear on a low level character off the bat makes it easy to switch between play styles.
Skills. In most ARPGs,
you choose a "build" from a set of skills and you tend to spam certain
"core" skills while using other skills as the situation demands it. In
contrast in Pagan Online, your skills are fixed depending on your
character and all of them are on a cooldown except your main attack.
Also, monsters tend to have stronger mechanics as you progress through
the game. So you're not really "spamming" anywhere near the amount you
would in a traditional aRPG. You're playing against mechanics and trying
to use your skills in a smart way. Here's an example: My main, Istok
has a shield and it's my primary source of damage mitigation. I may want
to kite and use another ability to Slow my attackers to keep them away
when when my shield is on cooldown to avoid taking damage instead of
just spamming my slow ability for extra damage while my shield is in use/off cooldown and
spamming my auto attack after, depending on the monsters I'm fighting.
Also, many characters have synergies between particular abilities, so
you're balancing your character mechanics against cooldowns and the
mechanics of the monsters you're fighting as well. Also, every character
has a core mechanic that needs some learning. I find balancing my
skills and class mechanics far more engaging than traditional aRPGs
where I'm mostly spamming. The abilities themselves feel impactful
enough that you don't feel underpowered despite the cooldowns. I
understand though, that the bulk of people who like the aRPG genre are
not used to this. I hope by explaining how the game works that they'll
enjoy it more when they actually try it, instead of just canning it the
moment it doesn't meet their expectations. I also hope that people who
traditionally don't like aRPGs may notice that there's more to this game
than they're used to and will be willing to try it out. It was really
satisfying downing the boss that used to be Dagoba's champion: I had to
time and land my skills really well to win. I died the first time i
tried it because I was still learning my "main". That leads me into the
next point:
Difficulty. Most games nowadays are not actually
"hard." Generally they start out easy and 90% of the time when things
get "hard" it's due to a "hard" counter or "medium" counter that
requires you to integrate something "gimmicky" into your build like a
resistance skill, or just another skill the monster in question isn't
immune to. This keeps the gameplay pretty "flat" as in it hasn't
actually gotten harder and is outright frustrating if you didn't put the
right mitigation to the counter in your build. In contrast in Pagan
Online, I find myself playing against the mechanics that the monsters
have. There are some monsters that are very punishing to be close to
while they use their special ability, this means if I'm playing a melee
character, I need to be very conscious of when they use that ability and
which abilites I don't have on cooldown to counter. It may mean that I
wait a bit before using a cooldown and I use a different ability
instead. The mechanics seem well thought out and I've died enough that
the game is challenging, but not so much that it feels
tedious/impossible.
Format. Every mission is instanced. This makes pacing my gameplay easier so I don't end up spending too much time on it. While in a mission, as you move through it, you are periodically trapped in rooms or areas and then monsters spawn. This makes combat more difficult and interesting than a lot of aRPGs where you can run really far away to be "safe" and start over again, because in Pagan online, I'm forced to deal with the problems I'm facing now in the moment.
Gear. There's definitely some random in the gear system. The nice part about it is you have some levers you can pull on the system. The most valuable pieces of gear come from crafting. Crafted gear has some guaranteed stats and some random. Once you craft something, you can "reroll" it during the process if you have extra crafting materials. This takes some of the edge off of the punishing RNG that's normally present in Arpgs: You can hand-pick some stats and reroll an item you know is going to be good/have higher stats at will as long as you have extra materials. That's way more forgiving than i'm used this. They probably made it this way so building multiple characters wouldn't be as difficult.
2) The art style. For the most part, I like the detail on the character models and casting animations. They were very well done, and far exceed my expectations. They are also very unique, making the game feel very fresh. Also characters have in-game earnable skins with a level of detail that you wouldn't see mixing and matching "transmogs" in other rpgs. Also, I know this may turn some people off, but there is no where near the amount of flying gore you see in other games of the same genre. It still has a dark feel you want to see in an aRPG, it's just not over the top.
I will say, however, that Anya is a *slight* turn off to me because I don't like hyper-sexualized females in video games in general, but the worst part of her is the selection screen when you pick your first hero and you never see that screen again. For some reason she's bending over at you. After that she doesn't seem anything near the jiggly bit women you would see in an Asian MMO (the worst offenders by far in the category). Afterwards, when you can pick a character, she still seems a little over the top but not that bad. I have not played her yet, I picked something else. I almost returned the game at the selection screen, but I'm glad I didn't.
3) The story is very charming and fresh. The lore of the game is very based in Slavic pre-Christian lore, making it very foreign and enjoyable for me to learn. I'm not super familiar with Slavic lore but am in general interested to hear the lore from a variety of peoples. Also, as you're fighting through the campaign there's a lot of books you can choose to interact with to get even more backstory. The developers did not pull punches trying to develop lore from a completely new game.
It's not all rainbows and sunshine though, the game still has some issues, that I hope the devs will work through:
1) It's not "online" yet: Multiplayer has yet to be implemented. They tried it but their servers couldn't take the load, so they're still working on it. You CAN see other players in the hub and there is a chat.
2) The guiding arrows screw up from time to time. Opening my map with "M" can usually help me know where exactly I should be going.
3) I've had some bosses on missions bug on me. It was really frustrating getting "stuck" because I couldn't kill a boss once. (the boss somehow moved out of the combat area
4) A quarter of the time when i log in, I get the error "cannot authenticate with steam" I've discovered this error seems both intermittent and constant depending on the root cause: If there's maintenance, it's constant. If there's not, generally logging in and out of steam fixes it faster than if I haven't. There are additional steps you can try, thankfully, I've never had to do a full re-install for this. It was really frustrating hitting this wall when i first installed. it did not leave a good impression. I failed to authenticate multiple times after the fresh install. I'm sure many people would have stopped and just asked for their money back.
5) The updates seem clunky. Even when there's a tiny update the update process takes a long time.
In summary I would say, if you're looking for a new aRPG, don't mind it being single player, can tolerate some bugs and the style sounds interesting, go ahead and try. If not, then wait for the game to fully release. As someone who works in tech, I can say that solutions to synchronization issues/efficient protocols can be tricky, so the devs have their work cut out for them, so I wouldn't recommend buying the game for a future guarantee of multiplayer because you don't know what their skill level is with those sorts of issues. I'm fairly certain there's solutions to them, but we'll learn the capabilities of these devs as we watch the early access move forward.I personally am enjoying this and have been off of guild wars 2 for a while in favor of it.
