Apogea Playtest
I played this game during the “Final Play Test”.
I heard about this project some time ago, and I finally managed to play it. I play Tibia for a long time, so I am not indifferent to hard games. But Apogea does it a modern new way. I will divide my feedback in two bullet point lists and drawn a conclusion from there.
The Good:
The world feels amazing, very packed together and every path leads to some mistery.
Many quests, almost all NPCs have a task or are part of a quest.
The trinity is back, Tank, Healer, Dps.
Combat responsiveness feels good, the movement feels good.
3D Camera Done correctly.
The Bad:
XP Loss too severe but mitigated by Amulet of Blessing. Unfortunately, it is still too expensive due to the amount of gold dropped by monsters. I think this amulet is needed past lv24, and you make usually 3k after a day of farm, so 3k would be a sweet spot.
Healing: what you can kill, what you can run off from, it all depends on healing. In old Tibia, UHs were instantly, full life heal, as much as you can carry. This allows to out heal hard monsters, although at a cost. You COULD survive. But in Apogea, this is not true. I died at lv24 for a single Devil Spider as a Knight. My healing is bad, and I couldn’t run, it gives slow and it is fast. I was fated to die. That is a horrible thing in this game, you are fated to die. Most of the cases are because you have no access to reliable healing.
Monster Hunting: As above, the healing will determine what you can hunt, and with poor healing, you will hunt what almost deals no damage to you. I spent all this time hunting cave spiders, Pleas and Diggers.... 85 hours. We need better healing, so we can hunt better monsters.
Spawn: caves are too tiny, only supports a single player, and there is not much of them. So, it is hard for everyone to hunt. Some hunt places are not well designed, they have a single very strong monster, making it not viable to hunt, or they have too many weak monsters when you want to hunt the stronger ones.
Forge: the RNG is too strong with this one. It needs a rework.
Exploration is met with Death. Why do we need a team to explore the map? It should be explorable solo.. so better guidance should be provided. In some doors you can read "No way back", but in others you can’t, and you can’t come back. Shovel holes and ropes sometimes bring you to unknown places, and most of the time, to death. I am afraid to use those, even if it turns out to be a shortcut.
I had some good moments playing the game, like when “Blood Moon” event came and turned the world in PvP-Enforced. I had to run and hide among rats in the sewer. Or when I “figured” out, the outdated mechanic of loot bags was still a thing in this game, I made tons of money with huge loot bags, pushing it during night to the depot.
All in all, it has a good core gameplay loop, and it was rewarding, but the flaws will prevent me for coming back to an eventual launch. I hope more time is spent reworking what I pointed out.
