Astaryn: RPG Idler

Dev is a known scammer. check out their other game (idk of more) Vespera

I'm very torn on this review, the game is only $3.99 which puts it on par with a mobile game cost - but it also went from Early Access to 1.0 launch recently. The game itself is a UI driven skilling idle game, unfortunately it is also incredibly buggy and incomplete. It's a late alpha or early beta at best and the most recent patches are incredibly small tweaks - feels like abandonware summer project that used AI to put together and move. The result is something that's hard to complete and maintain.


What's broken: "I can do this all day" -Captain America

- Elements in the UI do not update, this includes skills that go up a level, quest objectives marking complete etc. The only way to force a refresh is by navigating to a different submenu and toggling back. Now imagine doing this constantly with everything you do on nearly tab over and over and over again
- The UI has a lot of placeholders for missing content. Want a mount? Nope, no trace of it. Want to skill up certain professions ? Have fun grinding the initial profession level 1 task while you are much higher in level (yes some professions hide higher level tasks you can force to show up properly if you click through sub menus but some professions literally do not reasonable higher level tasks w/ a more appropriate XP reward
- Inventory management is pointless, the game lacks enough content for you to care about inventory and equipable armor and weapons are rare as you progress to the point where it feels you are on a monorail with going from dungeon to dungeon and getting the new one armor piece for that slot
- The talent trees are very minor improvements and the skill trees are very similar
- At not time during the progress through all of Act 1 and most of Act 2 did I feel any level of accomplishment, no dopamine huzzah feelings at all
- Progress is incredibly one dimensional. You spend your entire game life following the Quest guide. It step by step forces you down a gameplay trail of skilling a very specific profession X to a very specific level Y, then make 2-3 craft items Z. Rince/Repeat this over and over and over again - there I just spoiled Act 1 and Act 2 for you
- The mounts are a big fat lie, the mount empty slots literally say as an example I need revered with Iron Concord - hey look i maxed out my tier reputation with that faction no quartermaster mount options ( the shop tab has sub tabs for different things, and no mounts at all anywhere not even with the very few things i still havent unlocked)
- Leadership board and ranking has a huge gap between the top 3 and everyone else, i suspect the "leaders" are game devs and qa. The scores have so much disparity it's shameful to look at. You cant even tab through different leader board categories, more placeholder
- Tool tips and the UI can be complete blockers at times. I recently unlocked glyphs which is the armor and weapon enchant mechanic and the tooltip text ends prematurely b/c the text goes off the tool tip box without wrapping and no there's no mouse over and drilling deeper with sub menus. And yes glyph choices are very limited so you have very little choices to make yet again


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Bottom line:
Ultimately I'm stopping the review early and ending it with open disgust the game went to 1.0 from Early Access. This is abandonware. The most recent patch notes from the last couple months are trivial minor changes (claims of quality of life improvements but I see no deltas at all) and the discussion thread gets a troll vague responses from the lead developer

At first I was a bit overwhelmed by the information in the UI in this game but as I followed the tutorial and went along with it, it made more and more sense. I chose to be a Thornkeeper and the pace, balance and activities got me hooked burning quickly through the first act quests. Other events like Dungeons get unlocked as you progress adding an extra layer of challenges, but also high rewards.
After playing for a few hours I can say it's an awesome idle game that you can spend good time with.

It's a Melvor idle-like RPG game and there are a lot of competitors to it in that (Visseron idle, Idle Crown, Idle Realms, Glenwich idle, Eldara). Still this one is quite good while somewhat easy. I play as Aether warrior and I have to worry only about food because the equipment comes from the battle loot. There is some construction here, several skills, player auctions (not very active) and a story that guides you through the content with easy tasks. No action queues so far (alas) and no prestige so far (that is good).

I think this game is a wonderful combination Melvor Idle and Rocky Idle. It combines all the best of both but adds more content , story , art ....etc. I actually took Melvor Idle 2 off my wishlist because i honestly believe this is delivering what I hoped from Melvor Idle 2. AI or no AI I LOVE it.
As an aside for all you AI haters remember your great grandparents hated computers. All new tech has its haters just be thankful past generations were not successful in preventing all the tech they did not like. I am 48 years old and love new tech. Oddly enough I also understand it better than all of my children. LOL
Can't wait to see the final touches on this one.