I think his review makes a lot of good points, even if some of them are misinformed.
The combat is bland. Attacks don't feel impactful, the fights are boring and uninspired, every enemy is almost exactly the same thing. Bonk them on the head till you or they die. Most of my hesitation about continuing to play VIllagers and Heroes comes from this aspect. Why should I craft cool weapons and armor if I know the fights they'll be used will bore me to tears? I dread having to do the next story quest—it'll just be traversing more giant maps, killing bounties, and spam-clicking through dialogue.
And don't get me started on the current event map. Circling the map for hours trying to complete my bounties is absolutely horrible. Why? Why are the bounty respawn timers so long? When I see other players on the map, rather than feel joy for having their company, I am annoyed that they are killing my bounties and that I'll have to stand there, waiting for them to respawn.
However, Villager and Heroes' problems reach far beyond just the combat. The gardening and animal husbandry are mind-numbing chores you should be doing every 2-4 hours. There is no depth. There is no need for planning. You just do the thing, and then come back 2 hours later to do it on all of your alts (because one account will never produce enough crops or level enough animals to sustain itself and the variety of consumables it needs). To worsen matters, almost every product in gardening is one-note. You never unlock new types of potions, just slightly better versions. It's unexciting. Formulaic.
The one thing I do enjoy about this game is the gathering and crafting. Gnogmenting runes on armor is pretty fun, as is having skills attached to gear. However, though I started playing 10 days ago, that won't hold me long. I frequently find myself bored while grinding combat. I often wonder if it's time to uninstall, move on to a game that actually feels worth the grind, and I think that day will come soon. I love crafting, but that and the 100 dollars I spent isn't enough sunk cost to keep me here. On the topic of micro-transactions, the lack of inventory to hold all the intermediate materials you gather and craft is just a middle finger to even the fattest whale. I can't enjoy gathering when I know I can't store most of the loot for future use, but I'd feel like an abosolute tool if I spent 200 dollars to unlock inventory space. Inventory space. Two hundred dollars (maybe more!) worth of vaults are possible, yet you're only given one page. Really, that's your ace in the hole to keep new players? No sane person will spend 3 years logging in daily to unlock them for free.
I apologize if this post was harsh. Hopefully, the devs listen to the feedback and make improvements. This game has lots of potential, but there is a lot of work to be done before it gets there.
P.S. This game has the best customer service I've seen so far, so that's a big plus from my perspective.
Edit: After reading the earlier posts on this thread, and learning that the developers have redone the tutorial many times, I do have to say I respect the hustle of constantly improving their craft. I don't know how useful the following suggestions will be, but I hope the developers give them some consideration.
Problem 1: All fights feel the same.
The issue here is the tedium, the repetitive combat action where you bonk the enemy and they bonk you, only the numbers increasing as you reach higher level zones. There need to be some 'oh sh*t' moments. There need to be times where you use a dodge or block skill instead of piling on more dps. I can think of many ways to implement this change, but the easiest one to give all mobs an array of skills they can employ in combat.
For example, spider mobs will be given 8 skills. The higher their zone, the more (or different) skills the spiders will have access to. So, in the first zone, a spider might only have the web root that they currently have. In the next zone, they gain an additional aoe poison ability that the player might dodge with a well-timed backflip counter ability to deal bonus damage.
See? Suddenly, you have player interaction instead of just spamming dps abilities. This is mastery. It is fun. The player has to feel like they're challenged, like they have to react, and as they learn and get better at fighting, their enjoyment goes up too. This feeds back into the crafting-gathering loop cause suddenly players want to unlock armors with cool skills for new combat strategies instead of simply upping their numbers to out-bonk a npc.
Problem 2: The gardening and animal ranching.
There is so much missed potential here. 2 skills are limited to 5x5 plots of land. There is no fun in the skills themselves, but rather the anticipation of a usable product after months of grinding. And that's fine... for a few days before the player dreads having to do it again and quits the game.
How can you improve this? There are many ways. One is to introduce a large barn for animal breeding. For example, the player might accrue many pigs for breeding, hoping that two tier one pigs mate to produce a tier 2 pig. Village facilities, husbandry levels, and how well taken care of the animals are can be used to influence the rate that a new-born pig will be a tier above his parents. Then the player has to decide whether to keep the tier 2 pig for further breeding purposes or slaughter it for meat.
Of course, there are problems with this. End game animal tiers comes too soon. This can be fixed by limiting the maximum tier produced by the player's husbandry level, or simply by limiting how many high-level animals a low-level player might have at once. There is a learning curve here—and it is fun.
A similar solution can be implemented for hybrid crops. No more repetitive seed buying and planting. Let there be player interaction and decision-making involved! Hell, allow players to breed animals and plants for certain properties like when crafting armor. How cool would it be to breed a verda sprout with a 20% supply chance and 0% supply increase rate? Or blueberries that prioritize mana regen over instant mana recovery? Maybe even add runes by nurturing produce and animals with a specific gatherable item! I'll say it again—so much potential here.
Problem 3: Bounties.
Really, just make them respawn faster. Especially on event maps. Unless the developers planned to turn the tedious exercise of circumnavigating the map into a time-sink, just make there enough bounties for everyone. This one is just common sense.
Alright, I probably wrote too much as is. You get my point. A little bit of depth will go a long way for this game.
