Okay, so usually I will always take the developers side when it comes to gameplay mechanics because there are a lot of things I understand from developing that I can reason with, however there are also quite a few things I simply can’t defend because I also dislike it.
Alright, I’ve been progging a new build recently so just been going through the story and all that, and I have to say
After my Tenth or so progression, it honestly sucks.
You wake up face down in the beach on Dawn Island, Morden never once thought to at least have the decently to lay us on our back much less drag us to the grass? After we’re all he has left? Okay, whatever. We wake up, we walk around, we find Morden. We don’t know who Morden is because, well, dementia, and instead of helping us in any way, he just tells us to go to Redwake. Also, why the hell is he bringing us to the island with a permanent storm cloud above it? Why does Dawn Island even have this? Is it ever explained? Storm curse user hated this one island in particular? Also, Morden just so happens to have a second rowboat? Why? How? Did he take two when escaping the base so he could put Tucker’s corpse in one? Also isn’t it implied by dialogue that he sailed across multiple seas to get as far away from the testing facility as he could? How did he do this when he was no doubt being abused and underfed? How would he even row two rowboats?
That’s just Dawn Island too. Let’s go to Redwake. Okay, loving the vibe, cool ass scenery and a good village, attacked by pirates when the main force was away? Okay, I can see that I guess. Pirates just happen to be extremely fucking weak to where you can stand still with three of them stabbing you and never die (Except to hunger). I’m sure I remember the pirates doing way more damage before, why are they so weak now? Defeat five of them because apparently only five were present at the village (Despite there being more than 5 separate spawns I believe). Suddenly everybody just teleports to their pre-determined spots, no cutscene. I mean, surely it isn’t that hard to add a cutscene of Astrid coming out of hiding to thank you before leading you to the inn. Why are we cutting corners? Was it to release the game faster and then just left to be forgotten? Okay, she thanks us lets us sleep in one of rooms for free (But in no way helps us recover from wounds that we most definitely received when fighting dagger wielding thugs while having just woken up). We wake up, go back down, get some food from her, talk to the chief who thanks us. The chief then tells us that the fish are dying and boat’s hulls are being destroyed. Oh? Something Interesting? Then he tells you to go help out the town before you talk to the hermit (or something like that). This is just lazy game design because the entire purpose is to level you up but they don’t want to outright say that because obviously levels are simply a gameplay mechanic. So we go help them out blah blah blah we go to the hermit who we discover is throwing acid over the ocean, admits himself that it doesn’t sound good blah blah blah. Acid clears up IMMEDIATELY, not after a day or anything the second you defeat him it clears. Also, magic is supposed to.. yknow.. disappear by itself? But his acid doesn’t when Vetex wants to make it a plot device? Okay. At the very least he could have added a feature where sailing into the acid pools (it’s not all acid, just a few circles of acid for some reason, as if that makes any sense) will slowly damage your ship and you if you’re swimming. But no, only affects the story and nothing else.
We go back chief is understandably confused blah blah blah yap yap go to Frostmill to talk to the scout. A scout, might I add, that appears not to have a ship. In fact, the only ship present at frostmill entirely is Ruby Roger’s (my goat) sailboat. Okay, you can make an argument that its because the islands are much much bigger in lore than in gameplay because convenience and everything or whatever, sure. Frostmill is a floating iceberg, okay that’s sorta cool, but it has a permanent snow cloud above it at all times? Alright, magic, sure, we’ll just say it tracks the iceberg as it moves or something. It’s being melted! Oh no! The entire island and all of its inhabitants are at stake! Do we know why? The Mayor sure doesn’t! In fact, the Mayors given up! Island is still doing completely fine and he’s just outright given up. “Hey, even though I’ve given up, go fight some brigands maybe they know whats happening” Blah blah blah we fight they talk about red haired woman, we tell mayor, mayor tells us to ask Enizor. Enizor tells us of this dumb woman is likely melting the whole island, Mayor never knew about her, the residents didn’t see at all threatened by the fact that their island was melting, nor did Ravenna. ”Remember that blacksmith we murdered for learning about our secrets? Well his daughter knows a lost heat-based magic at 20 years of age. Oh also on an unrelated note, Frostmill is melting!” Ravenna didn’t send any scouts to help Frostmill? The only exporter of ice in the entire sea? I mean, Iris mistakes us for one, so maybe we just got there before then. Fine. Oh, and have I mentioned this is still chapter 1? I feel like talking to the chief should’ve ended chapter 1 and started chapter 2 at Frostmill, but okay Frostmill is sort of a short storyline let’s just budge it in I guess. Anyway we beat up Iris she goes to the stepstones because.. Uh.. Why does she go there again? To hide maybe? Idk. Anyway, this is the first time there is a MAJOR issue in gameplay. You’re meant to be level 40 before reaching stepstones, they couldn’t of given us more exp previously to scale up properly (Shura and Iris are both close calls for newer players) and now we have to jump up an entire like 10-20 levels. Nobody wants to do that, lets just skip to stepstones! What’s the worst that could happen? (Elius). Anyway, ever since vetex removed the level lock newer players non-stop complain about how difficult the bosses are. What is the main issue 99% of the time? “I need help with calvus can someone help me :c” “What level are you?” “80, why?”. I think, the level lock should return, the exp should be boosted so it isn’t such a crazy jump in levels, and the lock only be optionable on your 2nd+ playthrough of the game. Okay back to story.
We finally reach chapter 2, yes all that yap from before is only chapter 1.
Reach stepstones, find sus man, talk with sus man (who threatens us), climb up hundreds of meters tall mountain with, find iris, iris talks about suspicious people, we investigate, we tell sus man, sus man is like “woah thats crazy go back up again”, other sus white haired man tips us off to an island, investigate, find bad people, kill bad people (quite easily), return, blah blah blah blah we go talk to a dude in a tree we get the name drop of the big bag organization then basically now its time to fight the first boss related to said organization. Honestly, I don’t mind chapter 2. I love the setting, the story is okay and we get a lot of important lore, and it has the first actually fun boss fight. (Scratch that, elius hopping around is sort of annoying).
We go to sailors lodge to investigate, just so happen to run into Morden, talk to some people, learn the guys we’re after went into fort talos, Morden, being an actual friend for once, helps us out in taking them down. (He doesn’t have a clue 
) We sneak in (Why does this secret entrance even exist? There’s no way the ravenna guards don’t notice the hole in their wall that leads to a secret sewage system that leads to LITERALLY NOTHING, why is this infrastructure here??? It isn’t even a bathroom nor does it make sense in any way for there to be a hidden tunnel here that the DIDN’T know about. At least make the wall crumbled a bit so we can destroy it.) We beat up guards, we sneak around (WITH MORE STRANGE INFRASTRUCTURE, WHY DO THESE RAFTERS EXIST, WE SEE STORAGE BUT NO OTHER WAY TO GET UP THERE AND THERES ALSO PLANKS CONVENIENTLY PLACED TO SNEAK AROUND). Also for some reason dashing can alert them as if walking on a plank right above them isn’t going to make significantly more noise. Sigh. Morden ditches us (as usual, deadbeat friend), we find Beringer, Beringer tells us that he sent Morden to get the death curse, hell of a lot of trust for someone who you just met, but better than Ravenna getting it I guess. Warren comes in, which might I go on another tangent. There is zero reason to explain how Warren is down there without being discovered. He doesn’t have a ship because he flies around with his curse, which is a very powerful curse, nobody knows he’s even in the bronze sea (Okay then again the whole map is smaller ingame thing can be brought up). But he couldn’t of gotten in through the same way we did because I’d be surprised if that water isn’t sea water with how close it is to the sea, he would’ve immediately died upon going into it. And the only other option is somehow this mf flew into Fort Talos and made his way to the dungeon from the roof without being spotted. Oh, how could I forget. The guards. There are no prisoners in the dungeon for some reason and there’s also so little guards keeping watch, and nobody hears us fighting the guards especially in the first part where there’s an OPEN DOOR RIGHT NEXT TO WHERE WE FIGHT TWO GUARDS, THEY DON’T CALL FOR BACK-UP?? This is a lazy ass stealth mission. AND there is a guard on duty where morden no-doubt would of walked through. Why is he there? Did he just happen to walk there while Morden left? How has no guard noticed some of their men are incapacitated? How did Morden get past not only this guard, but also the 2 guarding the hallway Beringer is in? You could of at least placed a few unconscious bodies for us to discover and then not only would it not feel like weird forced fighting but it would also just make sense. No doubt it was because they were too lazy to have to position unconscious guards. Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but the guard we do defeat aren’t unconscious either. Like come on guys.. It isn’t THAT hard to position an entire 6 guards for consistency. God I hate Fort Talos the island and the story and the gameplay is just all trash there’s nothing redeeming about this part of the story. We eavesdrop, but this time we can’t eavesdrop through the door, so we go into the conference room (Which is very empty for whatever reason) and climb up a convenient barrel stack to look through a convenient hole in the wall. Argos doesn’t let that shit slide because for once he’s actually competent, he goes to beat our ass (we win because he’s old), only now is our fight alerting the entire fort so we need to escape, the fort is also apparently collapsing but it doesn’t really look like it, the guards are more focused on us than getting out of the fort to avoid the collapse. We escape and the fort.. looks the same.. Though, to be fair, if the Fort did actually collapse, we couldn’t fight Argos’ mirage. But at that point it’s just like you gotta pick something. Have the fort collapse and be repaired later in the story (maybe after fighting calvus) or just retcon the whole fort collapsing thing entirely. Because it doesn’t collapse. If I were in charge, what I’d do is make the fort collapse around you as you escape, and then have the island permanently destroyed, but to make Argos’ Mirage refightable, there will be an open area in the collapsed rubble where you can refight him, except this time the fort is destroyed and you can actually sail up to it. If you wanted to be extra fancy you could add ravenna soldiers trapped under the rubble.
Ravenna is okay I guess, we talk to revon we discover the mayors been kidnapped we go to the kidnappers learn that we’re wanted by Ravenna (uhoh) talk to the kidnappers “yo im the dude they’re looking for” “???” ← (Just now realizing you can only put 3 punctuation in a row but its easily bypassable, cool forums also I had no clue the arrow would format that way lol). We fight Carina in the plains which is kind of annoying because of these UGLY ASS grass models just strewn around the place that literally a kid could make that also happen to be really tall. No offense to the builders but like, you guy’s definitely could of done better. I hope some assets and islands get a touch up later to fix stuff like this because it’s actually so hideous. We beat her and maybe let her live if you spared Elius? I’m not sure it’s kind of vague. Are Elius and Carina still alive if you spare them? Alive but being hunted? Meh. We then decide to ditch the plains because.. Uh why are we doing that again? We were told to hide out here until things die down, and there’s no way people would of heard us fighting Carina all the way from the villages considering the whole map shrunk thing. Anyway we climb the mountain and get one shot by Julian, okay I like this scene and it definitely paints how weak we truly are. We get enslaved and put to work in the mines, learn more info about the order, get freed by our friends and despite being worked to exhaustion with nothing but a mistake to eat for food (even though vetex paused hunger while in the mines for some reason despite having an infinitely consumable meal right there), we escape and are able to beat Calvus singlehandedly (sort of bullshit but then again he’s a bum using Aether magic Ironleg high weapon invest savant with only 1 weapon). We are then randomly transported to the mountain-side, how did we get here? who knows maybe we bust through a window to escape. We run to the shore dodging soldiers and all that (bit lame for whats meant to be a chase/escape scene), then Revon, the prince, is unattended and confronts us at the beach alone. We make quick work of him, not dispatching him despite him possibly being a member of the order as well (i wouldve played it safe especially with the shit he was spouting at the end but you do you Silas). Then we sail to windrow to escape. There’s apparently a blockade (there really isn’t it just spawns a few ships despite it being extremely easy to copy paste a few random generated ships to create an actual blockade, this is beyond lazy, but it may save performance I guess). We have to sink a sailboat to break through the non-existant blockade, and the biggest threat here is the fact that the sailors ditch their boats the second they get close to you and instead start swimming after you in their full set of armor, what were we thinking? this part has been played a million times so surely it’s known that this happens so why isn’t it fixed yet? Please go back and touch up the story Vetex..
So we sink the sailboat head to windrow fight off bandits warren comes we awaken learn about our godly heritage, this parts a fun part that I really have no quarrels with, I don’t rush the story so the insane level jump isn’t a problem for me but it is still a problem for a lot of players especially newer ones so it should definitely be remedied by something cough cough, better exp gain and level locks for first progressions, cough cough. We awaken get really cool power ups, return and learn about a war that may happen, and we go to nimbus sea to help Sameria because we’re good boys and girl. we get dragged in by the pirates and so far so good this story is fine we have cool cutscenes (albeit a bit buggy, if you enter the cutscene from the side your ship will sail right into the island rather than past it lol which i learned on my navy file when it spawned me at shieldguard, which definitely should be fixed). Other than the wake up part (its a bit weird that we’re the last person to stand up) this entire story is fine I really like it tbh and there’s no bad gameplay mechanics other than maybe the difficulty jump and kind of BS boss fight. Maria’s dodge phase feels more like a weird inexplainable gimmick with her Iframes than something that makes sense, and the arena is very awkward. Not to mention I believe the ship they are in is like definitely stuck and can’t sail out of the forest of masts. I can’t say anything for sure because we don’t know yet but I feel like if you killed elius (and thus kill Maria) the entire crew should fight you (just a bunch of low level npcs so it doesn’t matter) and the corsairs would deem you more of a threat than if you had spared Maria (who may somewhat vouch for us not ending her life hopefully maybe). Anyway we save samerian men our crew repairs our ship (despite it being possible that a person intentionally removes their crew making this part kind of silly but there’s really no way to fix that so this is just useless yap), we sail to sameria tell the queen.
Only part here that is kind of “ehhhh?” is the whole “I was under the assumption not many people knew about Calvus’ death.” (Morden had some quick thinking with the mercenaries line, and I really do appreciate that line because its a realistic lie you would tell in that scenario) You mean the King that all of Ravenna knew about, and we took a detour after killing him there’s no way not a single journalist or member of juraserva had this on the news. SPEAKING OF WHICH, the news is such a cool idea with a lot of potential like it can be personalized towards people to reflect story progression (Have articles that can reference things like Ruby Roger or talk about things like the fort collapsing and stuff like this, imagine how coooool that’d be.. 
). One two skip a few words we head to mistral fight some vikings blah blah nothing too crazy nothing to really complain about, i have heard of a few newbies getting stuck at mistral with a sunken ship and not being able to outsail the vikings which I feel is more of a skill issue considering leaving mistral repairs your ship to full but I can definitely see why this is an issue. Another issue around here is when sailing back to Sameria it infinitely spawns keraxe ships and Iris/Morden repeat the same dialogue which hopefully gets fixed because obviously thats a very immersion-ruining bug that’s existed for more than a year at this point. We return to sameria go into the war meeting room and learn about the generals and stuff we all get split up and okay that’s it for the story. Yap over, just for some closing remarks now.
I’m going to say this with the utmost seriousness, for a game developer who wants to become an author, Vetex isn’t really that good at writing stories. I’ve found grammar mistakes in journals before that were eventually fixed, the story is overall just kind of bland and cliched with the most interesting part about it being the worldbuilding. And the story isn’t even the worst of it, sometimes the gameplay mechanics are just bad from a game design perspective. AO as a whole is a really promising game with tons of potential, but it’s just being wasted by poor forethought and management. Can someone count how many times things have been retconned in the universe? The only ones I can remember is a few sea curses being removed from AA (which honestly there’s no reason to remove them, Vetex could’ve easily said they simply still existed in the Seven Seas and thus they play no part in the current story). It’s very tragic.
Bronze Sea Story/Gameplay: 4/10
Nimbus Sea Story/Gameplay: 9/10
