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Personally, I picked up NRFTW after the first hotfix for The Breach and I haven’t run into pretty much anything most of the negative reviews are complaining about. There were 100% tuning issues with the original Breach update and they got pummelled for it in the reviews, but in less than a week they fixed 90% of the problems.
It’s an early access game, so no, of course it’s not perfect yet, but it’s a really solid product with a ton of potential that’s fun to play right now.
The problem is that reviews are rarely updated, so right now there’s a ton of reviews that capture a tiny snapshot of the game’s life that don’t reflect where the game is merely a couple weeks after they were left. I’m sure there was a bunch riding on this…they’d been locked up in legal proceedings getting the rights to the game and getting out from under a publisher, and I’m sure part of the hype train around The Breach was to spur a renewed round of funding.
As someone newer to its community, I’m really surprised at how much complaining there is about end game longevity and a bunch of other things that make me want to ask, “You…you know the game isn’t done yet, right?”
Moon Studios took a risk going independent which means two things: (a) they have strong faith that their project can stand on its own, and (b) they are far more sensitive to cash flow now than they were under a publisher. One thing I think they’ll need to work on is their community relations, and it’s a shame because it almost always means we hear less direct communication and more stuff filtered through PR people.
I’ll leave a positive review b/c I’ve played about 10 hours and I’m really enjoying the game in front of me and look forward to the updates coming through the rest of 2025.
Yep… ARPG gamers are literally among the worst, most unpleasable types of gamers. They will bitch about everything, because they all want a very specific type of game for them and them alone. Just look at every other isometric ARPG and their communities; 90% of the time, they’re filled with negative posts and comments, constantly upset about balance, end game, leveling, loot, etc etc.
I think NRFTW is fantastic, and it’s exactly what I was expecting it to be. However, people saw it at the same “style” as Diablo or Path of Exile and expected the game to be like those… except they’re not. And for those that do realize that, you have the other idiots that refuse to accept that it’s an EA game that still has a long roadmap until completion and bitch about the lack of an “endgame.”
I think NRFTW is fantastic, and it’s exactly what I was expecting it to be. However, people saw it at the same “style” as Diablo or Path of Exile and expected the game to be like those… except they’re not. And for those that do realize that, you have the other idiots that refuse to accept that it’s an EA game that still has a long roadmap until completion and bitch about the lack of an “endgame.”
Honestly, I think trying to compete with Diablo and PoE2 is already too much, even if it’s trying to say it’s not those. Those games are huge, with long-running, dedicated fanbases, and they do enough to oversaturate the market just fighting amongst themselves.
This was the wrong type of game to be trying to dive into the first time they cut themselves off from Microsoft’s financial cushion.
I honestly don’t see much comparison at all, to be honest. This doesn’t have a web of skills to unlock nor does it have the rapid-fire pace of a Diablo game. I guess a vaguely isometric 3rd person action game is automatically Diablo?
It’s 1,000% in the Soulsborne category, but with select systems from ARPGs mixed in, and the pains of figuring out how to adapt them are showing, but the potential is huge.
And maybe that’s the thing; coming at this from “I want an alternative to a Souls game” and it lands great. If I picked this up expecting Diablo or Torchlight (ha! I’m old!) or something, I’d be WTF-ing within 8 second of the game starting.
Agreed on all points. Just spending more than a few seconds watching gameplay footage would put a lot of initial misconceptions to rest. But yeah, while the game is great (in my opinion), it definitely still has a ways to go to fully come into its own and I really hope they secure more funding to see their vision to completion.
They’re sitting at 71% (mostly positive) for a game they released as early access. If your studio can’t survive that kind of response, you don’t get to blame the fans, you’re not managing your company well.
Not only that, but using the typical back of the napkin math based on the number of reviews (you can usually multiply the number of reviews by 55 to find the number of copies sold, and I omitted the reviews they’ve gotten in the past 48 hours that they asked for), they’ve brought in over $30M for their unfinished game.
Yep Around $26 million according to https://games-stats.com/steam/game/no-rest-for-the-wicked/
According to Wikipedia they have at least 80 employees. Ball park cost per employee is around $10k a month (this includes more than just salary). So around $800k per month to run the studio. $9.6 million per year. So they probably spend more than a third of their earnings since launch. And Take Two got their cut (usually half of net revenue, so revenue after the store cut) before Moon Studios went independent, they only became fully independent in March of this year. So they have even less money left. So yeah they saying that they are in financial trouble is probably not exaggerated.
Where did you get the “multiply by 55” part from?
There’s a correlation to how many reviews a thing gets in a given marketplace compared to how many of it were sold. This was a mostly unscientific number shared among devs once the user privacy settings changed for Steam and we could no longer count on SteamSpy for copies sold metrics. At one point years ago, the multiple passed around was as high as 77. Here’s a slightly more scientific accounting of it.
I am always amazed and baffled at how statistics work
Yeah I’m sort of interested in the game but I wanted to wait for full release. I get that a lot of indie games are helped tremendously by the money and player feedback they get out of early access, but if if the whole bottom falls out because not enough people bought the game you’ve very openly told people “this isn’t finished, don’t buy into this if you aren’t willing to be a part of the testing process,” then something is very wrong. Early access income should help bridge the gap, but you shouldn’t be entirely reliant on it.
Why did they get review bombed?
Idk as far as i can tell it didn’t. At least not on steam
Its sitting at mostly positive 73% all time and 70% for recent reviews.
I don’t have any plans to get it bc it’s not a genre im interested in though the visuals from the screen shots look beautiful as I’d expect from them
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I love the Ori games! I haven’t played this game though so I guess I’m part of the problem lol
Maybe he can get some help from his friends in AfD.
Going to need a source for a bombshell like that.
This is rather disappointing. The game looks really good and I’ve been looking forward to playing it. But I meant to play the game in co-op with my husband and when it launched in early access it didn’t seem to have co-op yet (if I remember correctly) so I decided to wait until that was added (and working of course). But after hearing this news I’m a bit wary of buying a game that I’m not sure they’ll even finish. That’s such a shame because the game really looks amazing and super fun to play in co-op.
(What’s the state of the game right now? Have they added co-op yet and how is the game so far?)
I think the game is great right now. Sure, there are things to do still but they have a combat patch planned and i believe multiplayer is coming with that. Can’t wait to play it with my friends.
It looks super fun to play in co-op!
Yeah, I really hope I can convince my friends to buy it and play together. Since the areas are kind of open and you are free to split up an make your own way I think this is the way to play in multiplayer. If everyone keep together all the time I think it will feel a bit slow since you probably have to pick your own materials for upgrades etc, not shared. All depends on how they do enemies too. If they do scaling it will kind of suck to split up.
I bought the game on release mostly to support them. The folks at Moon Studios are seriously talented and deserve some support.
I played ~2 hours on release and thought the game was decent. The combat had some weight, the art style was excellent, the bosses were fun and challenging and the exploration was pretty neat. There were many performance issues which they have since mostly fixed but there were also a few systems taken from different genres that didn’t work that well together for me. I didn’t play for a while though, so maybe they improved things in that area.
Still, I’m also waiting for the coop, which is scheduled to release with the next major update.
I wouldn’t read too much into this news article. Their CEO has since clarified that he might have been a bit hyperbolic and didn’t expect the media to pick up on his random Discord post.
I don’t quite agree with his assessment of being “review bombed”. Most negative reviews come down to the game being released in early access: bad performance, many systems not working well together, being behind roadmap, missing coop on launch and more recently, difficulty. I do get their need for releasing in early access after Microsoft dropped them but it might have hurt them in the long run.
How often do they generally release major updates for the game? I almost bought it at (EA) launch but I think this kind of game might be the most fun (to me) if I play the full release, or would you say early access has plenty of content right now? I’ll still wait at least until co-op is out. Played Elden Ring with my husband using the co-op mod and really loved it. Watched the gameplay videos of this one and it looks really good.
They went pretty fast with performance improvements after launch and the first major update. There was a larger gap with the last update because they bought their publishing rights back and had to wait for all the legal stuff to settle.
So far they had one large update which added end-game content and another large update with a major balancing overhaul, which also reset character progress.
HLTB currently sets the game at 12.5 hours for the main story and 24 hours for main + side quests.
I’m planning to play it once co-op releases, the game seems to be in a good state and has enough content for me.
“detrimental” was definitely not the word they should have used. What would be a better word there? Comment below. It helps me keep bringing you great comments.
Necessary or any of its synonyms should convey what he’s actually trying to say. No idea how he came up with detrimental there.
I don’t know much about the studio but I’m guessing they are not based in an English speaking country.
Austrian
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Critical, essential, imperative
I think there’s a lot more that goes into a games success or failure than just reviews. I’m not entirely convinced that a wave of good reviews would financially save their studio. I also find it funny that he acknowledges that he doesn’t write reviews for things.
For my case, it’s been on my wish list for a while. I enjoyed Ori, but didn’t love it, and plan on getting around to the second Ori game eventually. But I have a zillion games to play, and right now they’re not that high on my list. But my moods change, and next month I may well be in the mood for something like No Rest for the Wicked, see it on my wish list, and finally pick it up.
But quite frankly, no review is going to sway me. I’ve enjoyed Mixed review games, I’ve loved Mostly Negative games, and I’ve disliked Overwhelmingly Positive games. Fact of the matter is I’m much more likely to look at actual gameplay videos and make a decision rather than read a written review.
But, that’s just my anecdotal experience. I personally find it hard to believe the reviews play that big of a role here. I think that success or failure comes down to a hundred different factors, and the unfortunate reality is that some really awesome gems aren’t successful for no real fair reasons, sometimes.
For what it’s worth, the second Ori game is miles better than the first one. I didn’t finish the first one because it started to feel tedious, whereas I couldn’t put the second one down. I’m not sure if it’s because it had better pacing or just a better design approach, but I really loved it.
As I said, I do plan to play it! I might be metroidvania’d out at the moment, my partner and I have played a crap ton of Blasphemous 1 & 2 over the past few months. (highly recommend!)
I was a mega-fan of both Ori 1 and 2. I’ve got a mug based on the first game, but when I first saw the trailer for this game, nothing about it interested me. Kind of like the Xbox 360 era of “brown and gray cover shooters” I’ve never understood the appeal for grim, depressing medieval worlds. I like having some vibrancy and inventiveness, as well as some motivation behind the violence used to achieve some end.
One of the only Soulslike games I’ve finished is Another Crab’s Treasure. The story/setting in that game ends up being pretty depressing, but it at least maintains a lot of humor and colorful design.
What’s more, I looked through the negative reviews, and a lot of them touch on incomplete or over-punishing systems, rather than seeming motivated by external factors.
Anyone play it? I generally don’t buy early access, but the Ori games were great and I’ll probably like this too.
I have a love/hate relationship with ARPGs. I love games like Ys, Zelda, and Dark Souls, but I don’t like loot based games like Diablo II, and it seems like ARPGs either go hard on loot or largely avoid it. This looks like the second case, but I’d hate to get a few hours in and realize I need to manage loot for decent progression.
I’ve played it and really enjoyed it. Despite getting advertised as an ARPG, it’s really not. It’s more like dark souls but with random loot. The gameplay is very slow and methodical, and it’s very difficult. Managing loot isn’t that bad, I just went with whatever I found and didn’t have to worry too much about finding the perfect weapons/armor.
Awesome. If it’s more combat focused than stats focused, I’ll probably like it.
I really don’t understand the ARPG genre, it’s almost less helpful than having no genre marker at all.
Loot is a part of it but you can upgrade whatever to whatever item level and change stats (randomly) so finding the perfect item is not needed. Just get whatever works for you.
I’ve played it. Artwork is beautiful, but controls are wonky, hard to get used to on PC, and the gameplay unnecessarily punishing. It doesn’t feel good to play.
Do you think it would feel better w/ controller? I’d probably play on the Steam Deck.
It does feel better on the SteamDeck.
This is advertising manipulation at it’s finest. Publishers are parasites, and should never be negotiated with.
The game is self-published. They used to be published by Private Division but went indie when that company got sold. The game had legitimately troubled development.
Still doesn’t legitimize demands for positive reviews. Take honest feedback, or don’t.
I wouldn’t see it SO negatively. If they were paying people for reviews, then yes, that’s corruption; but every YouTuber uses phrases like “Drop a like” and it’s considered normal. When you worked hard on something, I think it’s common to ask for a positive review. People are sentient enough to choose whether to do so.
“Drop honest feedback please!” is a much better response than “positive bomb this game please!”
The article states it got review bombed (but not what for). Dishonest negative score kinda throws out legitimacy of the whole thing, making it a bit less bad. I feel for the desperate dev, but I guess I still agree with you.
Except they did not get review bombed and the article is blindly using the studio head as a source. Go look at the reviews, there actually is a ton of valuable feedback there.
They kinda did. They pushed out a sizable update that fixed a bunch of issues, but also upped the difficulty. People liked the improvements, but not the difficulty change, and my understanding is that they fixed that issue quickly but not before a bunch of people complained about it.
I get where they’re coming from, but I also don’t like them sking for positive reviews.
Depends the heuristics used. Bombing reviews most times do not cite their contentions, which can be dismissed.
Review bombing requires
- A scandal, and there’s no indication Half Moon was involved in any such.
- Coordination, which is easy enough to find on Google or elsewhere. Again, no indication of such.
- Most of the time, at least some reviews in the bomb will state why they are downvoting the game. No indication of such.
Sometimes bad reviews are just bad reviews.
But the Studio wants 🌈positive reviews🌈 bombing.
How is the game coming along? I bought it a while ago to support the team, but don’t really want to jam it until it is at least close to complete. Can’t really leave a review for something I haven’t played.
Big ori fan, bought no rest for the wicked at launch day. Its sadly just solid as far as i can remember, bad mouse&keyboard controls wich is why i dropped it, and not insanely good like Ori. Mby they shouldve stuck with SideScrollers.
Maybe they should take the feedback from reviews and incorporate that into their updates. It’s not just that you are being review bombed by unreasonable people, it’s that people feel the game has problems that aren’t being addressed. I agree it is difficult to recover from a bad release because first impressions are everything. Companies can recover and have, take No Man’s Sky for an example.
My understanding is they had a big update that fixed a bunch of issues people complained about, but also made the game more difficult, and people didn’t like that.
I think another good example would be Cyberpunk 2077. Its release was insanely horrible but it seems they managed to solve it somehow.
Haven’t really followed the gaming news regards this game though. However, I hope they manage to find a solution. The Ori games were truly masterpieces (in my opinion).
CDPR had a massive cushion of cash from the Witcher games to bounce them back up. Ori studio obviously doesn’t. In this case, without enough sales, the solution is layoffs or selling to a bigger publisher, which will also result in layoffs.
Hm… while I’d love to buy the game to support them, 40€ is a very high asking price for an early access title, especially if they possibly won’t be around to finish it.
28 eur right now
Fair, though still more than I’m willing to pay if the future is uncertain.
Yeah. I have it wishlisted for a likely later purchase but getting this message public seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. People might be more cautious buying into it now. I know I am
