168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New World: Aeternum might be the most indefinable game I have ever come across. At first glance, you'd think it was an expansion to 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:New World, but it's actually an entirely new game. Except it's actually the old game. Somewhat confusingly, it’s an entirely new game that contains all of the content from New World and its only true expansion, Rise of Angry Earth, plus the entirely new content of Aeternum. It's bringing the game to console, making it both a content port and light remaster, and it's also designed to be played solo and Amazon calls it an action RPG. Except it's still an MMO.
I was puzzled about exactly what it was when I sat in a press pre-briefing about the game, but once I got my hands on it at 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Summer Game Fest, it made a bit more sense. It's best to think of it as a fresh starting point for New World. If you haven’t played New World, Aeternum is now the place to take your first steps. It's still New World, and it will be free for anyone who already has New World and Rise of the Angry Earth. So, with this confusion out of the way, what actually is New World: Aeternum?
You play as a shipwrecked pirate who interrupts a Conquistador performing an arcane ritual and gets wrapped up in this curse. You start hearing a dark voice taunting you as you make your way across the island to remove the corruption sweeping across i🐭t that has turned many of your crew, and those of other shipwrecked survivors, into rotten husks.
It sounds like a killer action RPG pitch, and this is what Amazon describes it as. In the narrative prologue, it plays like an entirely solo action adventure game, and a pretty great one. I found the story compelling in how it teased the mystery, combat felt fresh thanks to my Musketeer build fitting the era but not mimicking the thousands of other action RPGs out there, and the character of Grace O'Malley (based on a real pirate) was written with verve and humour. It was the kind of game I could see myself spending a lot of time in. And then it became an MMO.
There are multiple classes you can play, including more traditional options using swords and shields, but of the four screens I could see during my preview, we all picked Musketeer. It's just the coolest one.
After you make your way through a chunk of narrative, you're given lots of exposition and dull tasks like crafting a hunting knife, cooking a meal, foraging for supplies, and the pacing hits a dead end. Immediately after this you get to go to a town, and it then spends even longer teaching you how to store items and trade materials. It's a lazy criticism to say that a game should be more like the things I like and less like the things I don't, but with Amazon stressing the single-player aspect and billing this to console players as an action RPG, it slams on the brakes just as you want to rev up.
Maybe this is just because we were playing right from the start, and many games are slower in the tutorial stage. In the ꦆmore linear prologue, I saw enough of what New World: Aeternum could do for me to have faith that it will speed back up again. I also feel like with most MMOs being decent enough to play alone aside from when hardcore raiding, the emphasis on solo play here and the deliberate labellin🧸g as an action RPG might mean some of these elements are more stripped back.
And they're not bad to begin with, it’s just that they're in every MMO. This is essentially a soft reboot for the game (another label to toss on the pile), so it feels fair to criticise relying on MMO old faithfuls in a game you're not outright calling an MMO. Crafting and the endless upgrades with the relaxation of repetitive actions will appeal to enough players anyway, and the gameplay is promising. But the people who liked that stuff were your New World audience. Allowing the confusion of sequel/successor/expansion/port/reboot to define this as a new game feels like a play for a new audience. It had me on board until it turned back into New World.
There's still a lot to like about Aeternum. We haven't seen pirates and fantasy meshed together like this enough in gaming, and the Musketeer had some impressive-sounding skills that, as a new player, I couldn't see in the preview. I’m into this, and I’m the core audience, in a way. I'm not going to commit to a hardcore MMO, but a console-based, solo-friendly action game is exactly my jam. New World: Aeterum was good enough that I'll be checking it out when it launches on October 15 this year, and despite the confusion, I suppose that's a job well done.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: New World: Aeternum
- Released
- October 15, 2024
- ESRB
- T For T�🧔�een Due To Blood, Violence
- Developer(s)
- ꦰ Amazon Game🥀s
- Publisher(s)
- Amaz༺on 🧜Games
- Engine
- Amaz﷽on Lumberyard, ⛄Azoth
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer 🧔
New World: Aeternum is an action RPG set in the same world as Amazon Games' MMO, an island riven by supernatural forces. Played solo or co-op, it also features PvP and a deep story.
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS5, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series X, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series S
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