Info about Atlas Fallen: Reign Of Sand:

Official game description:
  
In solo or co-op, experience Reign of Sand, the ultimate version of Atlas Fallen. Ride the sands of a timeless land and defeat legendary monsters in spectacular Action-RPG combat using devastating powers.  
Master the sand to manifest devastating weapons and harvest the essence of your enemies to customize your own play style. Open a new era for humanity in a narrative campaign playable solo or in cooperation with a friend. Break your chains. Unleash the storm!  
An expanded world, new enemies, revamped progression, new quests... The world of Atlas Fallen is enriched by this major, entirely free update! Enjoy new voice acting, a reworked campaign and face even more formidable creatures armed with new Essence Stones. Persevere in your adventure with the long-awaited "New Game +" and challenge the gods with the nightmarish difficulty mode. Many more surprises and improvements await you in this content-rich new version!  
Surf the dunes of this desolate world to unravel its mysteries and free your people from oppression. It's the perfect time to start your adventure thanks to a revamped progression and a narrative campaign with reworked voice acting.  
With a new Nightmare mode available in New Game +, being two won't be too much to fight the Gods. Take on the new challenges of Thelos and face unprecedented legendary monsters with unique abilities.  
Unleash the power of your gauntlet, forge your legend with a fluid, dynamic, and completely customizable combat system. Reign of Sand completes your arsenal with Essence Stones and armors infused by unprecedented effects.

Release date: 9 Aug, 2023

Categories: Action RPG, Real-time Combat, Cooperative Multiplayer, Single-player Story, Open-World Exploration, Character Customization, Character Progression, Endgame Content


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Fluid & Satisfying Combat (weight 0.6): The combat system is highly praised for its fluidity, responsiveness, and satisfying feel. Players enjoy the dynamic nature of fights, the depth provided by skill and armor systems, and the ability to tailor combat to their playstyle through various builds and customization options. The parry system and momentum mechanics are particularly highlighted as enjoyable and impactful.
- Underrated & Enjoyable Experience (weight 0.49): Many reviewers express pleasant surprise and overall enjoyment with the game, often stating it exceeded their expectations, especially considering its price point or initial reception. It's frequently described as an underrated or hidden gem, offering good value and a fun experience.
- Deep Character Customization (weight 0.28): The game offers extensive character customization through armor, skills, and Essence Stones, allowing players to create diverse and personalized builds. This system provides strategic depth and encourages experimentation, enhancing replayability and adapting to different playstyles.
- Excellent Co-op Play (weight 0.28): The cooperative mode is a significant highlight, allowing players to experience the entire campaign with a friend. Reviewers praise its seamless setup, shared progression, and the enhanced fun it brings to combat and exploration, making it one of the best co-op experiences available.
- Rewarding World Exploration (weight 0.27): The game's world is consistently described as beautiful, vast, and rewarding to explore. Players appreciate the detailed landscapes, hidden secrets, and the sense of adventure it provides, with many activities and points of interest that make exploration worthwhile.
- Classic Action RPG Feel (weight 0.27): The game is often compared favorably to classic action RPGs and hack-and-slash titles like God of War, Darksiders, and Devil May Cry. Reviewers appreciate its blend of genres, fast-paced action, and the feeling of being a powerful hero, offering a nostalgic yet fresh experience.
- Dynamic & Fluid Movement (weight 0.21): The movement system, including sand sliding, double jumps, and air dashes, is highly praised for its fluidity, speed, and enjoyment. It makes traversing the world and engaging in combat dynamic and liberating, contributing significantly to the overall fun.
- Engaging Storyline (weight 0.18): The story is generally considered engaging and well-told, providing enough intrigue to keep players invested without being overly complex or lengthy. It serves its purpose in driving the gameplay and progression, with some reviewers finding it surprisingly interesting.
- Unique Sand-Sliding Mechanic (weight 0.14): The unique sand-sliding mechanic is a standout feature, frequently cited as incredibly fun, satisfying, and a refreshing way to traverse the desert environment. It adds a distinct element to the game's mobility and is often considered a highlight on its own.
- Beautiful Graphics & Art (weight 0.14): The game's graphics and art direction are generally well-received, with many reviewers noting the beautiful visuals, detailed environments, and impressive landscapes, especially the desert settings. Optimization is also mentioned as good, allowing for smooth performance.
- Varied Side Quests (weight 0.08): Side missions and activities are well-integrated and contribute positively to the gameplay experience. They are varied, not overwhelming, and often provide meaningful rewards or additional lore, making exploration and completion enjoyable.
- Extensive Aerial Combat (weight 0.05): The game's combat mechanics allow for extensive aerial combat, with features like double jumps and air dashes that refresh upon hitting enemies. This enables prolonged airborne engagements and complex combos, adding a dynamic and fluid dimension to fights.
- Immersive Desert Setting (weight 0.05): The desert setting is well-implemented and visually appealing, creating an immersive and unique atmosphere. Reviewers enjoy traversing the vast dunes and ancient ruins, finding the environment itself to be a significant part of the game's charm and fun.

Common complaints:
- Clunky & Repetitive Combat (weight 0.96): Many players found the combat system to be clunky, repetitive, and unpolished, leading to a boring and frustrating experience. Issues with camera control, especially during combat, further exacerbated these problems, making it difficult to track enemies and execute actions effectively.
- Poor Performance & Camera Issues (weight 0.83): The game suffers from significant performance issues, including frequent frame drops, stuttering, and blurry graphics, even on high-end systems. The camera also exhibits erratic behavior, leading to motion sickness and hindering gameplay.
- Generic Story & Characters (weight 0.3): The story, characters, and world-building are consistently described as generic, uninspired, and forgettable. Players found the narrative to be shallow, predictable, and lacking emotional depth, with underdeveloped characters and minimal lore explanation.
- Empty Open World & Repetitive Quests (weight 0.25): The open world and side content are widely criticized for being empty, repetitive, and unrewarding. Quests often involve generic fetch tasks or simple combat encounters, lacking narrative depth or meaningful rewards, which makes exploration feel pointless.
- Limited Gear & Customization (weight 0.14): Players expressed disappointment with the limited weapon and armor variety, with only three weapon types available. The progression and customization systems for gear were also found to be linear and unimpactful, offering little meaningful choice.
- Limited Enemy & Boss Variety (weight 0.13): The game features a limited variety of enemies and bosses, with many types being recycled throughout the game. Boss fights are often disappointing, lacking unique mechanics and sometimes suffering from bugs like resetting or becoming unhittable.
- Frustrating Flying Enemies (weight 0.07): Flying enemies are a particular source of frustration for many players. They are often difficult to hit, stay out of reach, and can glitch into terrain, making combat encounters with them annoying and tedious.
- Underutilized Sand Surfing (weight 0.06): The sand-surfing mechanic, while initially interesting, is criticized for being too slow, lacking depth, and having limited utility outside of specific sandy areas. It often feels like a glorified sprint rather than a dynamic movement system.
- Confusing Essence Stone System (weight 0.05): The Essence Stone system, intended for strategic build customization, is often perceived as overly complex and unrewarding. Many stones are considered useless, and the lack of clear numerical feedback makes it difficult to understand their impact or create synergistic builds.

Gameplay feedback:
- Dynamic Combat System (weight 0.24): The combat system is a core element, offering a unique and dynamic experience with three distinct weapon types (fist, axe, whip-spear) that can be combined for varied playstyles. It emphasizes parrying, dodging, and building momentum for powerful attacks, making it engaging and flexible.
- Moderate Length & Co-op (weight 0.19): The game offers a moderate playtime, with the main story completable in 10-15 hours and full completion taking 20-40 hours. It supports full co-op for two players, which enhances replayability and allows for shared progression, though only the host's save progresses.
- Essence Stone Customization (weight 0.14): The Essence Stone system is a key customization feature, allowing players to equip active and passive skills to tailor their combat style. With over 150 combinations, it offers significant build variety and progression, activated by the momentum system.
- Momentum Risk-Reward System (weight 0.08): The unique 'Momentum' mechanic is central to combat, where dealing damage builds a meter that unlocks powerful abilities and increases damage dealt. However, higher momentum also increases damage taken, creating a risk-reward dynamic that encourages strategic play.
- Armor-Based Progression (weight 0.08): Character progression is primarily tied to acquiring and upgrading various armors, which determine stats and unlock skill perks. This system replaces traditional leveling, offering around 10 upgradeable armors that influence character build and difficulty.
- Genre Blending Gameplay (weight 0.07): The game's combat and gameplay are frequently compared to other action RPGs and slashers like Darksiders, God of War, Devil May Cry, and Monster Hunter. It blends elements from these genres, leaning more towards fast-paced action than Souls-like precision.
- Action RPG Open World (weight 0.06): The game is primarily an action RPG set in a semi-open world, featuring third-person combat, exploration, and character progression. It combines elements of traditional ARPGs with a focus on action-oriented combat and a conditional open-world design.
- Mixed Story & Pacing (weight 0.06): The game's narrative and pacing receive mixed feedback; some find the story mediocre and the initial hours slow due to frequent tutorials and pop-ups. While the core action gameplay is generally enjoyed, the story and character development are often considered secondary.
- New Game Plus Mode (weight 0.04): The game includes a New Game Plus mode, offering replayability after completing the main campaign. While some reviewers note a lack of extensive endgame content beyond NG+, it provides an option to re-experience the game with existing progress.
- Relaxed Open-World Exploration (weight 0.04): The game offers a relaxed, combat-focused open-world experience that encourages natural exploration for rewards. It features fast movement and a unique sand-based art style, aiming to provide an engaging experience without excessive grinding.

Performance notes:
- Crashes and API Issues (weight 0.06): Some players reported frequent crashes, particularly when using DirectX 12, or occasional hard crashes. There are also mentions of issues with Vulkan, including stutters and crashes.
- Mixed Steam Deck Performance (weight 0.03): Performance on the Steam Deck is mixed; while some users report smooth gameplay at 30-40 FPS with FSR, others experience freezes, frame drops during battles, and issues with text readability or settings not applying correctly.
- V-sync Issues (weight 0.01): Players noted issues with V-sync, with some reporting it didn't work or required specific configurations (like forcing 60 FPS or adjusting monitor refresh rates) to achieve smooth gameplay.
- Graphics & Upscaling (weight 0.01): The game's graphics are generally praised as beautiful, especially for an independent studio, with good particle effects. However, there's inconsistency regarding upscaling technologies like DLSS and FSR, with some reporting FSR has no effect or DLSS is absent.
- Minor Bugs Present (weight 0.01): Minor bugs are present in the game, such as invisible enemies, flickering lighting, or clipping errors. While some are resolved by restarting, they generally do not significantly impact normal gameplay.
- Smooth Co-op Experience (weight 0.01): Co-op mode is reported to run very smoothly, even with multiple players using flashy moves and different skills, with no disconnects experienced.
- Licensed vs. Free Version Performance Discrepancy (weight 0.01): A specific and unusual issue was reported where the licensed version of the game lagged and froze, while a 'free' (likely pirated) version worked perfectly with identical settings, suggesting a potential DRM or specific build issue.

Recommendations:
- Buy on Sale (weight 0.54): Many reviewers recommend purchasing the game, but almost exclusively when it is on sale. The full price is often considered too high for the content and experience offered, with specific price points and discount percentages frequently mentioned as acceptable.
- Genre Appeal (weight 0.07): The game is recommended for fans of specific genres, particularly action RPGs, hack-and-slash, and open-world games with fast-paced combat and exploration. Reviewers often compare it to titles like Dark Souls, Warframe, Darksiders, or Monster Hunter, suggesting it appeals to players who enjoy similar gameplay loops and mechanics.
- Hopes for Sequel (weight 0.05): Many reviewers express a desire for a sequel or future content, hoping the developers will expand on the game's concepts, improve existing mechanics, and create a more focused or larger world. This indicates potential that was not fully realized in the current game.
- Better with Co-op (weight 0.04): The co-op mode significantly enhances the game experience, making it more enjoyable and less frustrating than playing solo. Reviewers frequently suggest playing with a friend to maximize fun, though some mention existing co-op bugs that need fixing.
- Solid Game (7-9/10) (weight 0.04): Reviewers frequently assign numerical scores, with a common range being 7/10 to 9/10, indicating a generally positive but not perfect reception. These scores often reflect a decent or good experience, especially when considering the game's price point.
- Good for Killing Time (weight 0.02): The game is often described as a suitable pastime for when players are bored or looking for a short, casual experience. It's seen as a game to fill time rather than a must-play title, suggesting it's good for brief entertainment without deep commitment.
- Beware Review Bias (weight 0.01): Some reviewers caution against blindly trusting other reviews, particularly those that are overly positive or based on limited playtime. This indicates a polarized reception and a need for players to form their own opinions based on specific gameplay aspects.

Other player notes:
- Mid-budget, average experience (weight 0.2): The game is generally perceived as a mid-budget, 'AA' title rather than a AAA blockbuster. It offers a decent, albeit not groundbreaking, experience with an average story and graphics, often noted for its fair price point and shorter playtime.
- Combat system comparisons (weight 0.05): The game's combat and gameplay mechanics are frequently compared to a blend of other action RPGs and hack-and-slash titles, such as God of War, Monster Hunter, Devil May Cry, and elements of Souls-like games, without being a direct copy.
- Major post-launch update (weight 0.04): A significant 'Reign of Sand' update, released a year after launch, substantially improved the game, addressing many initial issues and adding new content. This update led many reviewers to re-evaluate their opinions.
- Variable game length (weight 0.04): The game's main story can be completed in 12-17 hours, with full completion (including side quests and achievements) extending playtime to 20-35 hours. Some reviewers noted even shorter rushed playthroughs.
- Inconsistent voice acting (weight 0.02): Voice acting quality is inconsistent, with some finding it good (especially the German dubbing) and others describing it as wooden, stiff, or mediocre. Dialogue delivery is also noted as dry and sometimes agonizing.
- Excessive, forced dialogue (weight 0.02): The game suffers from excessive and often forced dialogue that cannot be skipped, interrupting the gameplay flow. The writing is frequently described as insufferable and outdated, reminiscent of older games.
- Disappointment and regret (weight 0.01): Reviewers expressed disappointment over the game's perceived failure and low sales, leading to concerns about a lack of continuation. Some found the game boring and regretted their purchase, wishing the developers would return to previous genres.
- Context of play experience (weight 0): Reviewers often mention when they played the game (e.g., at launch, after updates, on Steam Deck) and whether they tried co-op, indicating varying experiences based on game version and platform. This point is less about specific feedback and more about context.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.31): Players found satisfaction primarily in the game's core mechanics, including fluid combat, unique movement (especially sand surfing/gliding), and engaging exploration. The game's overall value for money, customization options, and co-op experience also contributed significantly to positive feelings, often exceeding initial expectations.
- Disappointment (weight 0.19): Disappointment stemmed from the game's perceived generic open world, repetitive quests, and a bland or uncompelling story. Players also expressed dissatisfaction with technical issues, lack of content variety (especially weapons and enemies), and clunky combat mechanics, leading to a feeling of unfulfilled potential.
- Frustration (weight 0.17): Frustration was frequently caused by technical issues such as bugs, crashes, and poor optimization, leading to unplayable experiences. Combat mechanics, including targeting issues, camera problems, and repetitive or unfair enemy encounters, also contributed significantly to player frustration, alongside unclear quest guidance and tedious design choices.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.08): Players experienced enjoyment from the game's engaging combat system, unique sand-surfing traversal, and rewarding exploration. The co-op experience, character progression, and overall entertainment value, often despite minor flaws, were key drivers of positive sentiment.
- Excitement (weight 0.05): Excitement was generated by the game's unique combat system, fast-paced movement, and the potential for deep build customization. The co-op experience and the game's overall quality, often perceived as an underrated 'hidden gem,' also contributed to a sense of thrill and positive anticipation.
- Joy (weight 0.04): Joy was derived from the sheer fun factor of the game, particularly its combat, fluid movement (especially sand surfing), and enjoyable co-op. Players also found joy in the engaging visuals, story, and the overall sense of being a 'badass' within the game world.
- Boredom (weight 0.02): Boredom arose from repetitive missions, a bland and uninteresting open world, and monotonous combat encounters. The game's pacing, unengaging story, and a lack of incentive for continued play or exploration also led to players losing interest over time.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger was primarily directed at the game's poor optimization, numerous game-breaking bugs, and perceived incompetence in design choices by the developers. Players felt swindled by the game's quality, especially when unable to obtain refunds or progress due to technical issues.
- Appreciation (weight 0.02): Players expressed appreciation for the developers' commitment, responsiveness to feedback, and continuous efforts through free updates and content. The game's unique mechanics, good value for money, and focus on core gameplay elements were also highly valued.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise stemmed from the game unexpectedly exceeding players' low expectations, often due to negative initial impressions or lack of prior knowledge. The game's overall quality, fun factor, and unique world beauty contributed to this pleasant surprise.
- Annoyance (weight 0.01): Annoyance was caused by frequent interruptions from pop-ups and tutorials, along with minor technical issues like poor performance. Specific design elements such as annoying flying enemies, inaccurate maps, and certain voice acting choices also contributed to player irritation.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion arose from unexplained game mechanics, unclear mission guidance, and discrepancies between personal positive experiences and widespread negative reviews. Technical issues with unusual FPS behavior and game-breaking bugs also contributed to player bewilderment.
- Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration was directed towards the developers for their responsiveness to community feedback, the game's high quality compared to AAA titles, and outstanding map and level design. The overall competence and passion of the development team were also highly praised.
- Hope (weight 0.01): Hope was expressed for future improvements, more content (DLC), and the potential for a sequel to address existing flaws and expand upon the game's unique ideas. Players desired continued support and success for the developers.
- Relief (weight 0): Relief was felt when the game avoided common frustrating mechanics like stamina bars or losing progress, and when it was not a 'Souls-like' title. Players also experienced relief upon overcoming initial negative impressions or getting the game at a low price.
- Mixed feelings (weight 0): Mixed feelings arose from a balance of good and bad aspects within the game, such as inconsistent combat animations or varying quality across different game elements. Comparisons to other popular titles also contributed to this ambivalence.
- Acceptance (weight 0): Players expressed acceptance of the game's flaws, including its story and combat clunkiness, often due to a low price point or the game's overall mediocrity. Minor annoyances were also accepted as part of the experience.
- Pleasant surprise (weight 0): A pleasant surprise was experienced when the game's quality, particularly its well-implemented co-op features, action, and skill customization, exceeded expectations. The combat system being less overwhelming than anticipated also contributed to this positive unexpected outcome.
- Nostalgia (weight 0): Nostalgia was triggered by the game's old-school hack and slash feel, platforming elements, and overall classic game design. Players felt a connection to older PS3-era titles and a return to a preferred gaming style.
- Mild disappointment (weight 0): Mild disappointment was caused by slow pacing, visual confusion, and a bland story with uninspired voice acting. Limited weapon variety and a lack of meaningful benefits for late-game side quests also contributed to this subdued negative feeling.}