Info about Ars Notoria:

Official game description:
Roadmap
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About the Game
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Ars Notoria is an **open-world survival crafting game** set in a rich fantasy world. Blending classic gameplay elements like **building**, **crafting**, and **survival**, it invites you on a journey filled with wonder, mystery, and discovery.
Venture out alone or team up with friends to explore a land full of secrets and danger. Build your base, gather resources, expand your influence, and stand against the ever-shifting threat of the Enthralled. Whether you prefer to go solo or fight alongside allies, the game delivers a complete and rewarding experience.
**Vast World, Survival Evolved**
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*   Explore a dangerous open world filled with forests, fields, dungeons, and more, where breathtaking landscapes shaped by magic await discovery.
*   Delve into shadowy depths and frozen caverns, traverse ancient magical ruins and the hidden lairs of bandits, confronting a wide variety of Enthralled along the way.
*   Face intense boss fights against colossal, corrupted creatures that threaten to bring ruin to the world.
**Master Magic, Lead Your Squad**
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*   Learn six distinct schools of magic: Fire, Frost, Poison, Lightning, Chaos, and Holy. Each brings unique spells and playstyles.
*   Combine magical sigils and traits to craft spells that suit your fighting style.
*   Imbue your gear with magic and elemental powers to enhance your effectiveness in battle.
*   Build a team of adventurers with varied fighting styles, weapons, and roles. Switch between them during battle for fluid, tactical combat.
**Join Factions, Grow Your Influence**
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*   Align yourself with various factions and rise through their ranks to expand your influence across the kingdom.
*   Assign faction members to handle essential tasks like gathering resources, guarding outposts, crafting equipment, or researching new technologies.
*   Each faction offers unique questlines and branching narratives, with your choices shaping the future of the kingdom.
**Gather, Build, and Prosper**
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*   Build and upgrade your base using a wide range of structures and materials. Customize patterns and colors to create your ideal refuge, fortress, or outpost.
*   Streamline routine tasks with automated systems that help your settlement grow while you focus on exploration and combat.
*   Use global resource storage to keep materials without overloading your inventory, and access what you need anytime, anywhere.
*   Tame wild creatures or summon arcane companions using magic or skill, and gain allies that aid you in harvesting, defense, or battle.
**Adventure Together, Fight Side by Side**
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*   In online co-op mode, team up with friends to explore the world of Ars Notoria.
*   Share the journey as you experience story quests, conquer dungeons, build a dream base, and shape your own epic tale together.

Release date: 27 Nov, 2025

Categories: Open-World Exploration, Survival, Crafting, Base Building, Cooperative Multiplayer, Action RPG, Squad Management, Faction Management


- 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:
- Enjoyable Gameplay, High Potential (weight 0.99): Players find the core gameplay loop fun and engaging, noting its significant potential for future development as an Early Access title. The game generally runs smoothly with impressive performance at higher resolutions and few game-breaking bugs, enhancing overall enjoyment.
- Impressive Indie Development (weight 0.77): Reviewers are consistently impressed by the game's overall scope and quality, especially considering it was developed by a small team of only two people. This achievement highlights the developers' ambition and talent in creating a substantial title.
- Rich Content, Deep Exploration (weight 0.37): Reviewers appreciate the vast amount of content, including a large map with distinct biomes, numerous dungeons, and a wide array of skills and features. The game offers significant choice in builds and exploration, contributing to extensive replayability and an adventurous feel.
- Unique Survival RPG Blend (weight 0.18): The game is praised for its fresh and unique take on the survival genre, artfully blending elements from RuneScape, Kenshi, and Medieval Dynasty. Players particularly highlight the intriguing magic system, the generated world, and innovative NPC recruit/relationship systems.
- Solid Crafting & Building (weight 0.17): The crafting system is considered comprehensive and innovative, offering next-generation mechanics within the genre. Players enjoy the freedom and flexibility of the building system, further enhanced by streamlined resource gathering and automation features that reduce grind.
- Fair & Generous Pricing (weight 0.16): Many players feel the game's Early Access price point is very reasonable, even generous, given the substantial content and potential it offers. This affordability contributes positively to the game's perceived value.
- Adequate Visuals, Animations (weight 0.04): Players generally find the game's animations to be adequate, with many stating that graphical quality is not a critical factor for their enjoyment. The game's strengths are perceived to lie more in its mechanics and content rather than cutting-edge visuals.

Common complaints:
- Outdated and low-quality visuals. (weight 0.8): The game's graphics are frequently criticized for being low-quality, blurry, and looking outdated, sometimes compared to games from the early 2000s. Visuals are described as 'crappy' and 'eye-searing,' negatively impacting the game's overall presentation.
- Severe performance and stability issues. (weight 0.73): The game suffers from significant optimization problems, leading to frequent frame drops, severe lag, crashes, and abnormal GPU heating. Players encounter issues like prolonged loading screens and menus becoming unresponsive, requiring game restarts that are often slow or ineffective.
- Unpolished and unfinished game state. (weight 0.72): Players widely report the game feels unrefined, janky, and incomplete, suffering from pervasive bugs across many systems, especially in multiplayer. Many feel it was released prematurely, lacking the expected polish even for an Early Access title, leading to disappointment after a long development wait.
- Combat lacks impact and polish. (weight 0.61): The combat system is criticized for being clunky, simplistic, and lacking satisfying impact, often described as 'hitting air'. Players feel that weapon skill sets are poorly designed, making combat a weak point of the game's launch experience.
- Unreliable multiplayer connectivity. (weight 0.54): Many players report significant issues connecting to online multiplayer, including persistent connection failures and difficulty joining via platforms like Steam. This severely hampers the ability to play cooperatively, a key feature for many.
- Frequent stuck situations and broken teleport. (weight 0.26): Players frequently get stuck within the game world due to glitches like falling through geometry or getting caught on ladders. The 'unstuck' feature is ineffective, often teleporting players far from their objective to the initial spawn point without an easy return, severely disrupting progression.
- Clunky controls and poor controller support. (weight 0.16): The game's controls are widely described as stiff, strange, and generally poor, making gameplay difficult. Furthermore, there is a noted lack of adequate support or optimization for Xbox controllers, hindering accessibility and user experience.
- Lack of clear quest guidance. (weight 0.16): Players struggle with unclear task objectives, finding it difficult to locate quest-giving NPCs due to a lack of names or markers. The in-game guidance system is generally poor, leaving players unsure of how to progress or what to do next.
- Numerous bugs with horse mechanics. (weight 0.13): The horse system is particularly buggy, causing visual glitches such as disappearing models and incorrect player postures. Specific issues include dismounting teleporting players to the starting point, UI elements disappearing, and severe frame drops when near a tamed horse.
- Inventory items frequently disappear. (weight 0.13): Players report frustrating bugs where purchased or owned items, including money, disappear from their inventory or cannot be equipped. The pickup system is also problematic, sometimes causing items to occupy multiple slots or go missing in multiplayer.
- Building system lacks essential features. (weight 0.06): The building system is considered problematic, with players noting a lack of fundamental features like snapping functionality. The overall system is described as terrible, and the absence of weathering effects detracts from realism.
- Cluttered and confusing user interface. (weight 0.06): The game's user interface is criticized for being messy, having too many buttons, and lacking intuitive design or logical categorization. This makes navigating menus and understanding options difficult for players.

Gameplay feedback:
- Familiar Crafting, Grindy Materials (weight 0.12): Players find the core building and crafting mechanics familiar, akin to other survival crafters, including standard gathering and workbench systems. However, some materials are described as super grindy. There's also a notable 'one-stop production system' and a specific request for an auto-alignment mode for building to improve furniture and plant placement.
- Evolving Multiplayer Features (weight 0.1): Multiplayer is currently in testing, allowing players to visit each other's worlds. Feedback regarding loot mechanics is mixed, with mentions of both shared resources and independent loot drops. Players explicitly suggest an option to toggle independent loot drops, indicating a desire for more control or clarity.
- Dual Camera Modes (weight 0.05): The game provides two distinct camera modes: one that maintains a forward-facing perspective with a cursor, and a free-roaming mode. Players can conveniently switch between these modes using a configurable button, offering flexibility in gameplay perspective.
- Dominant Gun Usage (weight 0.02): One player reported heavy use of guns during their playtime, suggesting that firearms might be a prominent or highly effective combat option. This observation is based on limited feedback.

Performance notes:
- Poor game optimization (weight 0.23): Many players report significant performance issues, including sluggishness, stuttering, and poor graphic performance. Excessively long loading times are also a frequent complaint, indicating a general need for better optimization across the game.
- Horse proximity causes lag (weight 0.03): A specific performance problem has been identified where being near a tamed horse causes severe frame rate drops. This suggests a targeted optimization issue related to certain in-game assets or mechanics.

Recommendations:
- Game needs significant polish (weight 0.55): Many players acknowledge the game's potential but strongly advise against purchasing or playing in its current state due to numerous flaws, bugs, and unfinished aspects. They recommend waiting for substantial patches, often suggesting 1-2 years for improvement, with some even refunding or pausing play until then.
- Niche appeal for genre fans (weight 0.1): The game is specifically recommended for enthusiasts of open-world survival crafting RPGs, particularly those who enjoy 'janky' experiences akin to Gothic or Outward. Players within this niche are more likely to overlook current imperfections and find enjoyment in the core gameplay loop.
- Good value for supporters (weight 0.1): For those willing to support early access development, the game's current price point (e.g., $20) is considered a worthwhile investment, despite its flaws. However, some advise caution for players who cannot easily gamble the cost on an unfinished product.
- Players abandoning the game (weight 0.05): A subset of players has decided to stop playing the game entirely, indicating a significant level of frustration with the current state. They are moving on or uninstalling, suggesting that the current experience is not compelling enough to retain them.
- Unacceptable load times (weight 0.03): One player specifically cited extremely long and unacceptable load times as a reason the game is unplayable. This highlights a critical technical performance issue that severely impacts the gameplay experience.

Other player notes:
- Enhance accessibility & localization (weight 0.33): Players desire proper controller support for platforms like the Steam Deck to improve accessibility. Russian localization was a requested feature, with some feedback indicating it is planned for December.
- Early Access state & small team (weight 0.27): The game is recognized as being in a very early Early Access state (version 0.4.0), implying many features are yet to be implemented. Reviewers frequently acknowledge the small development team (reportedly two people), which provides context for the current state and number of bugs, though some express concern about the scope of an open-world survival game for such a team.
- Address pricing & value concerns (weight 0.18): Some players question the current Early Access price, feeling it may be too high for the game's present state and content. There's a sentiment among some indie game players that they should not feel like they are 'paying for nothing,' though awareness of standard refund policies exists.
- Desire for multiplayer support (weight 0.05): There is a strong interest in playing the game with friends. Players explicitly request dedicated servers to facilitate and enhance a cooperative multiplayer experience.
- Publisher support suggested (weight 0.02): One reviewer suggested that the publisher, Lilith, should provide technical support and performance-related guidance to assist the small development team.

Emotions:
- Disappointment (weight 0.22): Players experienced significant disappointment due to the game's unpolished and unrefined state, marked by numerous game-breaking bugs, poor optimization, and clunky mechanics. Many felt the game was unfinished, particularly regarding animations, combat, and online functionality, leading to a subpar experience despite its potential after a long wait.
- Frustration (weight 0.2): Frustration stemmed from encountering critical, game-breaking bugs that hindered progression, often requiring restarts or leading to lost progress. Poor controls, awkward combat, design flaws like stamina management, and technical issues such as constant crashes and long loading times also contributed to player annoyance and a feeling of an incomplete product.
- Satisfaction (weight 0.14): Satisfaction arose from finding the core gameplay loops enjoyable and engaging, particularly crafting, building, and exploration, despite the game's flaws. Developer responsiveness to bug reports and the perceived progress made since early playtests also contributed to a positive experience for players who enjoyed the unique blend of RPG and survival elements.
- Hope (weight 0.14): Players expressed hope for future optimizations, bug fixes, and general improvements, recognizing the game's significant potential despite its current rough state. Anticipation for continued development, added content, and polishing of fundamental aspects like graphics, animations, and user experience fueled this optimism.
- Excitement (weight 0.06): Excitement was driven by the game's perceived potential for growth and improvement, especially within its Early Access phase. Players found the core mechanics refreshing and the exploration engaging, leading to anticipation for new content and future development that could fulfill the game's vision.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.03): Enjoyment was derived from engaging with the game's core gameplay experience, including its crafting, refining, and building mechanics, despite technical issues. Players found satisfaction in the character leveling system, lore exploration, and the specific niche aesthetic the game offered.
- Optimism (weight 0.03): Optimism was rooted in the game's strong potential despite its current unpolished state and jankiness, particularly as an Early Access title. This was reinforced by developer responsiveness and the belief that the game had a good foundation upon which future improvements could be built.
- Joy (weight 0.02): Joy was experienced by players who found the game inherently fun and relaxing, with core gameplay loops that provided genuine entertainment. Some also enjoyed its nostalgic qualities, finding it reminiscent of classic RPGs.
- Admiration (weight 0.02): Admiration was directed towards the small development team for their impressive achievement in creating such a comprehensive and feature-rich game. Players recognized the creativity and effort involved, especially given the limited resources of two developers.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger stemmed from feeling scammed by what was perceived as an unfinished product marketed by an 'indie studio.' This was exacerbated by critical, progression-blocking bugs that forced players to delete saves.
- Acceptance (weight 0.01): Acceptance reflected an understanding that the game's current clunky and buggy state was part of its Early Access nature. Players acknowledged these imperfections while still recognizing the game's underlying potential.
- Concern (weight 0.01): Concern arose from issues like severe GPU heating during gameplay and doubts about the small development team's capacity to complete such a large project. Players also worried about the game's long-term viability and ability to improve its current state.
- Criticism (weight 0.01): Criticism focused on the lack of visual polish in character models and crafting, as well as numerous specific issues across skill systems, quest design, and UI/interaction. Players highlighted concrete areas needing significant improvement.
- Appreciation (weight 0.01): Appreciation was shown for the development team's effort and the useful inclusion of a built-in bug report and feedback tool. This indicated a positive sentiment towards the developers' dedication and transparency.
- Confusion (weight 0.01): Confusion was caused by illogical requirements for interacting with loot and unexplained game glitches that led to character resets. These issues created a perplexing and sometimes frustrating gameplay experience.
- Hopelessness (weight 0.01): Hopelessness emerged from the game feeling less promising over time, leading some players to uninstall and harbor low expectations for future improvements. The perceived lack of progress despite a long development period contributed to this sentiment.
- Understanding (weight 0.01): Players expressed understanding regarding the challenges faced by a small development team, particularly concerning the prevalence of bugs in an Early Access title. They acknowledged the inherent difficulties of game development in such circumstances.
- Discomfort (weight 0.01): Discomfort was reported due to specific game mechanics, with some players experiencing motion sickness from the first-person view on dodge. Playing for extended periods also caused dizziness for some.
- Encouragement (weight 0): Encouragement was extended to the developers, acknowledging their dedication and expressing a desire for them to continue working towards making a great game. This reflected a supportive attitude despite current issues.
- Confidence (weight 0): Confidence was expressed in the game's current state and its future potential, indicating a belief that the title had a solid foundation and would improve over time. This suggests a positive outlook on the game's trajectory.}