OK, it isn't tomorrow... that's Christmas for you. Things went a bit nuts and suddenly it's January. Anyway, back to the review.
Crafting
This is a a trump suit for both games - it's a big part of what makes me return to Istaria every time and the thing that drew me to Wurm in the first place (along with the promise of a sandbox game).
These are two tricky games to compare as they take very different approaches to crafting. Wurm is about as hardcore as a game could get: crafting isn't an option, it's quite simply the only way to survive. You start out with a backpack full of tools and away you go: want a cart? Build it. Want a house? Build it. And when I say build, I mean from the ground up.
And it's really, really tough. Starving is a genuine problem, if it gets dark you simply can't see (unless you can build some sort of light source) and everything degrades - fast. Add this to pretty bad graphics and average sound, you might be thinking it's a write off. However, somehow, it's hugely compelling. You soon forget the mind-numbing dullness of the actual thing you're working on, because of the complexity and difficulty of the task. It's an odd feeling when you give out a "yes" and pump your fist at making a very poor quality weapon blade - only to then lose it when trying to fix it to the handle.
While I really enjoyed the challenge of the game (I could go into the fact that the game itself tells you next to nothing - you spend as much time asking advice and looking things up on the Wurmpedia as you do actually doing anything, which I loved) it does take it too far at times. For example, I built myself a lovely wooden shed to live in and have started surrounding it with a stone wall. This took a lot of time in itself, but the next day I had to repair everything - which again took ages. This becomes a bit annoying, to say the least, and if you're not going to invest a lot of hours in the game you're going to struggle. You can get around this to a point by grouping and joining up with a town, but as in any relationship, it's give and take - if you don't put in the work, others will lose faith in you.
Istaria is a much lighter crafting experience. Nothing degrades or breaks, and you can't fail to make an item - if you put the time in, you'll get what you wanted. The tough side can be getting hold of the materials: even at lower levels, some of the resources are in tricky areas so you may need some friends to hand or at least a few levels of adventurer training to get by.
The graphics are far better in Istaria, but that is paid for by a much less pliable world. The resources are always in the same place and you can only build in areas designated for the purpose - you buy a plot and build on it, or you work on a community project (or of course an item). In Wurm, you can go to bed with your house in a forest and wake up in a field with a road going by.
The processes are much simpler in Istaria too - instead, they are more repetitive. However, while much of the gathering process defines grinding, again it is strangely compelling. I think the reason for this is that you can often do it 'afk', which really appeals to me. Like Eve, where your character ticks over without you being there, it's the same kind of feeling: if you want crash bang wallop, you can put on your armour and fight stuff. If not, you can mine some ore while chatting.
Both games let you find a spot and build on it to your heart's content. One looks better, while the other is way more hardcore, but importantly both work really well. How games with vast budgets manage to screw crafting and house ownership up so badly compared to these much lower budget offerings amazes me.
In the end, I'm forced to call it a score draw on crafting. Both do a fantastic job of creating a crafting environment that feels worthwhile without forcing you into a crappy quest structure designed only to mask the pointlessness of what you're doing (hello World of Warcraft and Lord of the Rings!). Few other games have achieved this level of quality (arguably only Eve Online and the original incarnation of Star Wars Galaxies), so bravo. For anyone keeping score, that's 2-1 to Istaria. I'll look at community and extras next - and that may actually be tomorrow!
Istaria - www.istaria.com
No comments:
Post a Comment