Roleplay Inn

(Four out of Five Ales)

One MMO that seemed to come out of nowhere this year was the new "Atlas MMO". A pirate themed MMO built in the same engine as Ark Survival Evolved. The reviews for this game were terrible, but when it went on sale for half price (15$ instead of 30$) I decided it was worth it to purchase this game and give it a try.

After trying this game I've come to two conclusions:

Much of the criticism is merited, but it is not a bad game.
Those were 15$ well spent.

Innovation

(Four out of Five Ales)

So as stated earlier, this game is built with the Ark Survival Evolved engine. A lot of what you experience while playing Atlas is going to remind you of playing Ark. The tame system is similar, especially passive taming which functions the same. Combat functions like Ark's combat. Endgame largely revolves around breeding better animals and getting better blueprints to make better items. Base building functions very similarly and is of similar important. All that said, it's a different game, and it stands out in a few important ways.

First is ships. Unlike Ark where boats were more of an afterthought, in Atlas they are more of the focus of the game. You can build anything from a raft to a full on galeon complete with 52 gunports. And that ship is heavily customizable, almost like a floating base. You can use wooden structure components to create structure elements you want within the hull of your boat, and fill it with whatever you would put in a normal base. Storage, crafting facilities, etc. But the more you add the greater the weight of your ship, and the greater the weight of your ship the lower the speed. Making your perfect ship is a balancing act between making sure it contains all the features you want, and keeping it's weight low enough to go the speed you want.

But where are you going to find the friends to man all your cannons, your sails, repair the boat as it takes damage etc? While other players assisting on your boat of of great value to you, with some gold and a larder of food, you can gain access to the most important tames in Atlas: crewmembers. Hiring crew makes it viable for a single player to sail a full sized ship, in particular I would never leave port in anything larger than a sloop without a crew member on every sail, allowing me to raise, lower, and turn my sails without leaving the helm of my boat. Crew can even be mounted to cannons, elevators and other elements of a shore base to keep your base functioning and defended even when you are offline.

Out on the waves with your crew, you will face many challenges. For one, the waves themselves. Atlas has the most complex physics I have ever seen for water in a game. Your ship responds appropriately to the rolling waves with waves battering against the helm of your rocking your boat and slowing your speed, but larger boats making an easier go of it than smaller craft. In extreme weather cyclones form that can deal damage to ship and crew making it a real experience to be out on the ocean during a storm. All this in addition to aggressive whales and enemy ships you will have to conquer or avoid.

But there are many rewards for braving the ocean. Chests rewards like blueprints and gold float on the water waiting to be claimed by divers or towed in with a grappling hook. Floating debris show where sunken ships and their plunder can be found beneath the waves. Bottles litter the shoreline with maps waiting to show you to great treasure. And while the normal player can only reach level 50 discovery points for uncovering the secrets of the world can raise your level cap all the way to 100.

Character advancement is also a bit more like a sandbox MMO than Ark. Skill trees unlocked by skills gained as you level give access not just to crafting recipes but also to combat perks and abilities.

Character Control & Combat

(Four out of Five Ales)

Combat is pretty standard if you have played Ark. First or third person perspective with ranged attacks needing to be aimed and melee attacks hitting targets in front of you. There is a bit more depth to combat with melee weapons due to skills, and guns take a long time to reload, with a mini-game as well as abilities that can be used to making loading go faster. Ship combat as a captain can be done in first or third person with forced first person if you enclose the steering wheel with structures, captains can issue commands to their crew to do things like tell them what to fire at as well as controlling the movement of the ship.

Customization

(Five out of Five Ales)

You are given attribute points to put into things like health, carry weight, intelligence (which gives a bonus to items crafted with blueprints and the cooldown of abilities) etc. In addition you gain skill points each level to be spent on various crafting recipes to unlock and other character perks like the ability to hold your breath longer underwater, activate abilities like healing a ridden mount or increasing the effectiveness of an attack with a certain weapon, seeing loot crates from further away at sea etc.

Structures can be built and decorated in a nearly infinite number of ways, as can ships. Ships and mounts can be leveled up allowing you to increase attributes they have to things like health, resistance, maximum crew etc.

My only complaint with customization is the slight limitations to what kind of shapes you can make buildings, which is surely something that will improve over time.

Challenge / Pacing

(Three and Half out of Five Ales)

Combat is fast and full of action. It will surely appeal to you if you desire first person combat where reflexes matter, and appeal less if you do not, though there are plenty of things to do in the game for someone who doesn't want to be up in the action swinging a cutlass and blasting people with flintlock guns all the time. The environment itself poses many challenges with heat, cold, being a major issue as they were in Ark, with added complexity to the nutrition system of taking damage from overeating, too much of a certain vitamin, too little of a certain vitamin, and or course starvation.

Some find the number of different ways to die a bit tedious to manage, and others deal with it by simply accepting death and dying over and over to reset nutrition bars etc. While losing your equipment out in the wild or in PvP can be punishing, dying in your base or on your boat while it isn't under attack really is a simple matter of respawning in the nearest bed, grabbing your equipment and getting back to work.

Monetization

(Five out of Five Ales)

It costs thirty dollars (or less if you get the game while it's on sale) to purchase this title. There is no monthly fee or even microtransactions. Once you own the game, you own the full game.

Immersion / Artistic Appeal

(Four out of Five Ales)

The water of this game is amazing if I haven't mentioned that. Nothing game comes closer to simulating a real ship out in the ocean that I have seen. The graphics aim for realism and do a decent job at it though I've seen better. The music can get repetitive but is kind of catchy. I've caught myself humming bits of it as I go about my regular life.

The character creator is very detailed but also much less intuitive than many I've seen and can easily be used to make a hideous monster of a character. (And many people do!)

Overall most of my criticisms of immersion are small. Things like how you will kill every seagull and rabbit in the vicinity as your epic battle between your bear and a yeti unfolds and a rabbit or seagull unwittingly wander through and eat one of your bear's claw swipes.

Story / Lore

(Three out of Five Ales)

There was once a golden age that was ended by the hubris of man or something like that and the world descended into its current state of anarchy. Like Ark the lore is scattered throughout the world and you really have to hunt it to find it. It gives the world context and some people find it really interesting and engaging. Ultimately though, as a pure sandbox it's easy to forget about and ignore.

Crafting / Economy

(Three and a Half out of Five Ales)

Crafting is pretty simple. You go out gather resources, and if you have the proper skills and crafting stations you can then turn them into the items you want. The main added layers of complexity to this are blueprints and intelligence. If you can find a blueprint through means like grabbing chests in the water or digging up buried treasure you can then create better versions of the type of item the blueprint creates. If your character is intelligent you get a further bonus to the quality of the item you are crafting.

Blueprints may also require more specific items. While the base recipe requires metal a blueprint may specify a metal such as iron, and most islands have every form of basic resource you may have to travel or trade to acquire a specific type.

On the economy side one important thing to note is guilds can claim and tax islands, funneling a portion of all the resources harvested there to themselves. This makes it highly beneficial for larger companies to attract vassal companies to their territory, as well as to seize strategic territory as a part of their economic plan.

A few tasks such as digging and fishing can prompt a simple mini game that tests timing. It can make these tasks a bit more interesting but overall I've seen much better minigames.

Overall the game pushes the bounds a bit, and it's tax system is really interesting, but it doesn't push it in enough ways for me to rate it as anything other than slightly above average for an MMO.

Stability / Performance

(Two out of Five Ales)

While allowances can be made for the fact the game is a work in progress, it is very buggy. People have had issues with portions of the bases being randomly deleted. I frequently have to fight the game to even log in. I've fallen through the map making my gear unrecoverable. Climbing the rope ladder on the back of a ship is an exercise in frustration etc. Bugs are getting better over time but it would be a straight lie to say they aren't a major influencing factor to the enjoyability of gameplay at this point.

Overall, if you love the rest of what the game has to offer it's worth it to power through the bugs. If you only feel the rest of the content is mediocre or worse, it's going to ruin the game for you.