Reign of Guilds
Last updated: 2025-11-28
- High-quality visuals.
- Unique, hardcore MMORPG with challenging open-world PvP.
- Deep, integrated crafting and extensive customization.
- Fundamentally flawed game design.
- Critical bugs and technical instability.
- Tedious grind and content scarcity.
Emotions
Players express satisfaction with the game's overall quality, robust and deep systems (crafting, progression, economy), and engaging gameplay (PvE options, challenging freedom). Key factors include significant early access additions, absence of pay-to-win elements, effective new player protection, and developers' responsiveness to feedback and bug fixes. The immersive world, good performance, and its free-to-play nature further contribute to this positive experience.
Frustration primarily stems from numerous game-breaking bugs, server malfunctions, and unplayable states (e.g., loading screens, crashes). Players also experience frustration with clunky controls, poorly designed UI, inventory limitations, unclear mechanics, and an excessive grind. Some dissatisfaction arises from critical quest bugs preventing progression and the inability to access game content.
Disappointment is driven by the game's unfulfilled potential, poor implementation of ideas, and lack of polish, often resulting in an unplayable or low-quality experience. Specific issues include critical bugs, frequent performance problems, cumbersome interfaces, and a perceived lack of content or slow development progress. Players are also disappointed by the game transitioning to free-to-play shortly after purchase and the absence of expected language support.
Players feel excitement for the game's unique and hardcore mechanics, particularly its non-target PvP, castle sieges, and dynamic resource battles in black zones. The game's potential for future development, deep crafting, player freedom, and immersive medieval fantasy setting contribute to a "breath of fresh air" experience. Improved onboarding and a growing player base also fuel this anticipation.
Anger is primarily caused by a severely poor and unplayable gameplay experience, marked by numerous game-breaking bugs, crashes, and persistent issues that render the game irredeemable. Players are also angered by poorly designed and illogical mechanics, perceived predatory monetization practices (e.g., in-game taxes), and developer inaction on critical bugs, especially considering the game's history as a paid product. Losing items or progress due to crashes further fuels this sentiment.
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 55% · Negative 45%. Score: 45 / 100
Positives:
- The game boasts impressive, modern graphics and a pleasant visual component, creating a grim fantasy feeling while remaining appealing even on older systems. The art style is often compared favorably to titles like Bannerlord and Kingdom Come: Deliverance.
- Players express high enjoyment, finding the game captivating, well-implemented, and highly addictive. Many see significant potential for it to become a fantastic game, especially appealing to old-school MMORPG enthusiasts due to its unique mechanics and refreshing approach.
- The game offers a distinctive hardcore MMORPG experience, blending old-school mechanics with modern visuals (UE5) and innovative systems. It provides a challenging, non-casual sandbox environment reminiscent of classic titles like Ultima Online or Darkfall, without typical P2W elements.
- Developers are highly responsive, actively listening to feedback, communicating transparently, and implementing changes and patches frequently (multiple times a month). The community is also noted as being very helpful, especially towards new players learning game mechanics.
- Initial player experience is improved with effective PvP protection in starter zones and the addition of welcome PvE content, including solo and group dungeons. This provides a less punitive entry into the game while maintaining engaging combat and a helpful community for beginners.
Negatives:
- Players report significant issues with the game's core design and implementation, leading to a clunky, unintuitive, and unpolished experience. Mechanics are poorly explained, the UI and inventory are cumbersome, and general gameplay feels rigid and unfinished. This poor execution often overwhelms new players post-tutorial, leading to frustration and disengagement.
- The game is plagued by widespread bugs, ranging from minor annoyances to critical issues that render it unplayable (crashes, freezes, endless loading, server malfunctions). Specific bugs affect core systems like combat mechanics (weapon removal, mob AI), quest progression (broken quests, no credit), and the tutorial island itself. This instability severely hinders player progression and overall enjoyment.
- Players find the game dominated by monotonous grinding, especially in the early game and tutorial, with little innovation or rewarding content. Leveling is extremely slow, quests are primitive and uninteresting, and the world often feels empty with poor mob density and diversity. This repetitive loop, coupled with a lack of meaningful activities, makes the game boring and tedious.
- The initial player experience is exceptionally difficult and confusing. Players face high mortality rates in starter zones, significant loss upon death, and an excessive grind just to leave the tutorial island. The lack of clear direction, coupled with technical issues and a punishing environment, creates a frustrating entry barrier.
- The game suffers from a critically low player population, often peaking at only 10-40 daily players. This makes the game feel "dead" and impacts the MMO aspect, leading to isolation and difficulties with group content or interactions.
Gameplay:
- The game prominently features open-world, non-target PvP, with a strong emphasis on guild warfare, castle sieges, and territorial control. PvP rules and loot-on-death mechanics vary significantly across different zones (yellow, red, black), encouraging strategic engagement. Guilds can tax players, raid caravans, and form alliances to dominate territories.
- Players consistently highlight the game's extreme difficulty, hardcore elements, and steep learning curve, exacerbated by a complete lack of hand-holding. Death is particularly punishing, leading to loss of experience, gear, and reputation. Solo players face significantly greater challenges with scarcer resources and constant threats.
- The game offers vast character customization with 14 classes/professions and a flexible, Skyrim-like leveling system allowing for unique builds. This is complemented by a deep crafting system, requiring players to gather, refine materials, discover recipes from bosses, and master craftsmanship to create high-quality items for personal use or market dominance.
- The game features a dynamic open world where player actions influence the economy, quest rewards, and mob populations. Players can explore vast PvE content, including multi-layered underground dungeons (caves, mines) and hidden areas with merchants and ruins, often requiring group efforts.
- One reviewer suggested that melee combat, particularly sword blocking mechanics, could be improved by emulating games like Mordhau or Chivalry 2 for a more intuitive and versatile experience.
Performance:
- Many players report frequent crashes, freezes, disconnections, and pervasive lag within minutes of gameplay, even on high-end hardware. Initial loading times are excessively long, and various visual and control bugs persist.
- Despite widespread issues, some players report a smooth gameplay experience with no lag, even on older or less powerful machines. This suggests performance problems might be configuration or hardware-specific for certain users.
- With each patch, players are observing a reduction in prevalent technical problems, such as periodic desynchronizations and characters falling through the map, suggesting active developer efforts in improving stability.
- Players have found that using DirectX 11 mode instead of DirectX 12 can lead to more stable performance, indicating potential optimization or compatibility issues with the DX12 implementation.
- The game does not include a standard enabled FPS limit feature, which is a common expectation in PC games for managing hardware load and performance consistency.
Recommendations:
- Many players strongly advise against purchasing or playing the game in its current state, citing it's not worth the time or money and lacks current appeal. Some extreme feedback suggests developers are 'ripping people off,' which might indicate a review-bombing sentiment.
- The game is recommended for players who are willing to invest time to learn complex mechanics, endure grind and bugs, or enjoy a slow-paced experience. It's suggested for those seeking something new, but not for perfectionists or those expecting a modern AAA casual title. Players are advised to try the free version, be prepared to learn on their own, or consider waiting for further development.
- Players express concerns about the game's slow development pace, noting it feels years away from being fully playable. Despite this, many are hopeful for its future, wishing developers continue working on it and anticipating improvements that could lead to a more positive experience.
- Several specific issues detract from the experience, including a significant language barrier for non-English speakers (especially French) and the perceived necessity of joining large guilds to access content. Some players are disappointed enough to suggest reimbursement, or desire specific mechanic changes like removing the tax system or adding proximity chat for immersion.
Miscellaneous:
- There's a strong desire for continued developer support, focusing on fixing long-standing issues like quest tracking and improving the initial island experience. Players suggest an in-game bug reporting tool and hope the game won't be abandoned.
- Reviewers propose various additions such as interactive NPC communication, more fantasy elements on the map, improved atmospheric music, and dynamic dungeon systems allowing for player interaction. Specific gameplay tweaks like character and melee speed increases are also suggested.
- Players acknowledge the game is in early development, noting its current imperfections but seeing potential. Many are waiting for the full release to fully engage or revisit the game.
- The game transitioned from a paid model to free-to-play, causing some dissatisfaction among early buyers who paid for the game.
- The game is generally seen as more enjoyable when experienced with friends. However, some players opted against bringing friends after reviewing external content, suggesting potential barriers.
