Spoilers for every piece of content in full release.
TL;DR: Absolutely amazing update, had about everything i hoped for in it. There are still improvements that could be made but this update makes me excited for the game’s future.
About Expectations
Major game-changing updates in games or game releases normally have a level of hype around them especially when they take a very long time to come out. For example a game like Rell Seas is guaranteed to be poorly received by a large number of people no matter how good it is because of how much time it has taken to make. The same will likely happen to GTA 6 and has happened to other games like Starfield and Skull and Bones. This happens because hype builds and builds and people get an idea in their heads of how the game might turn out that if not met, leads to disappointment. Full Release avoids this problem basically entirely because Vetex is one of the most open devs when it comes to what he is working on and developing. There is an entire trello filled with every planned addition, feature and idea he has. The patch notes details every single thing added to the game by the developers in great detail so people waiting on the release cannot develop unrealistic expectations of what it will contain. Now without expectations about features in the way, my experience is only impacted by the execution of the features, and full release nails this for the most part.
The Story
The new story parts (8 and 9) are by far the most engaging parts of the story so far. Skyhall is an incredibly well built location that I went back to multiple times just to look at and explore. My only issues are that I wish it was longer with more excuses to explore other parts of skyhall during the story part and another issue that I will talk more in detail later. Chapter 9 was shorter but very well structured in how it played out, though i wish the scene in the inn was also longer and we went into more in detail about what the others were doing. The meeting and war plans with strategy makes it feel like this is actually a war with commanders thinking of how to move, Wotan predicting what Nilah would do and Nilah predicting his predictions. The storm covering the fenrir because of General Akeem is the best set piece in the game so far and I hope Vetex does more things like this in the future. The boss of chapter 8 was also pretty fun to fight and difficult even though i was a bit overleveled (apart from the performance drop from one of his moves). The boss of chapter 9 is the best made story boss fight in the game so far. More about the boss design in the next part.
Bosses
The bosses in full release are a step above those in early access. A very large step. Let’s start with the story bosses:
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Allanon as a fight is very fun to learn. The leadup to the fight as everything goes wrong in his life is good. As a very dodge focused boss, you don’t really need to learn parry timings to avoid damage, and all his moves have very large obvious tells. His pulsar is very good zonal control and his surge is essentially a “get off me” move, which counteracts how much easier it is to fight him up close. His beams that shoot down basically act as environmental hazards. His ray is easy to avoid by strafing, but misplacing your steps or not timing it right can make you take a lot of damage. His most dangerous attacks are the self nuke (frame killer) and the grab. The self nuke has a gigantic tell from the aura around him and the grab is very slow but deals a lot of damage if he lands it. He can also dash towards you while about to do the nuke, which is probably the cause of most of my deaths to him. He bugged out a few times while i was fighting him cause i got too far away but i just reset to restart the fight and not ruin my experience. His boss theme is also very good. Overall very good boss fight 8/10.
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The Jarl as i said before it the best story boss in the game. His introduction as the one in charge of the Fenrir and him coming out of the dark by lighting the candles with his intention was wonderful. Also his phase one form where he uses the metal armor is fantastic and i wish i could fight it again to remember all the moves. His second phase is incredibly difficult and makes him the most difficult boss in the entire game currently. He moves predictably and his moves all have tells but he does them extremely fast so they are very hard to react to. He makes up for the speed of his attacks by being less punishing for missing a parry and dealing less damage per hit than a boss like Allanon. Also unlike Allanon, he is more parry based than dodge based as his room is too small to dodge every attack. He also deals more damage with an energy that pulses from his body occasionally. I believe that is Arcane Apotheosis but I’m not sure, someone ask Vetex about that. Coupled with the environmental damage from the fire on the walls of the arena, he can seriously shred health despite not doing too much damage per hit. His grab (which can be parried like all his other moves) is very fast and as such isn’t a one shot move like Allanon, instead dealing around 400 or so and making you slower for a while after. He can also make a barrier around himself to nullify attacks, though i believe this move is visually bugged as the ending of the immunity is much shorter than the duration of the visual barrier. His metal pillars from the floor have a clear indication of where they will be to move out of the way, and they don’t do too much damage anyway. His travelling slash attack can be very punishing if you’re in a corner, but it is easily parriable and dodgeable. His dash attack involves him dashing to you, doing some combos and then crashing on the floor for heavy damage, leading him to a corner then dashing away usually puts you out of range of the crash. His “unfair” attack is the gigantic axe slam. It has a tell that is significantly longer than all of his other moves, and timing the parries on that move and the two moves that follow is make or break to beating the boss, missing those is basically a run ender. I don’t really mind a boss having one “unfair” move from a game design perspective as long as it is actually beatable. His boss music is also the best track in the game in my opinion, the choir makes the fight feel grander. Overall extremely challenging boss fight, 10/10.
On to the sentinel talent bosses:
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Hallbjorn is an alright fight, pretty eerie atmosphere. It isn’t too challenging though and i can’t really remember anything he can do except the jump and slam. It’s good for the atmosphere, but an average experience overall, 5/10.
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Jorund is an underrated fight, the ship battle portion is actually difficult as his ship has high health and deals good damage with the mortar and ram. The ice attacks from Jorund while on the ship are also an added layer of challenge. My brig was actually sunk three times in a row the first time i tried to fight him, though i think that was the full release turning speed making him harder. The fight on the ship is also fantastic, he continually uses different constructs to gain height advantage over the player, makes ice barriers to block your attacks and spawns in an ice arena with one of his moves. Visually very cool fight. 7/10.
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Leviathan is probably the worst boss fight in the full release. She isn’t terrible she just isn’t very mechanically interesting at all, her attacks are just three different surges and a shark barrage that deals heavy damage. If i remember right from the Trello she is a recurring boss that gets stronger and stronger throughout the seas, so it makes sense she isn’t all that powerful at the moment. I’ll still fight her if she’s in between point a and b while I’m travelling, but it’s not very exciting. 4/10.
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King Caesar is the best boss in the game in my opinion slightly beating out the Jarl. The lore about the battle of Cassia Town leading to it makes it feel more impactful. Everything about the fight just feels grand, the arena on blasted rock after the tornado clears gives enough room for his moves to be dodgeable. The best way to describe it is “well choreographed”, he hits very hard with some attacks but getting hit always feels like your fault for not following the cues and dodging appropriately. His gigantic sword attack is very well done, a lot of games forget about the importance of spectacle in a fight and that attack is spectacular even if you don’t die to it after maybe 1 or 2 times. His gimmick of coming back from the dead with his attacks getting stronger is also well done though i see how it could make the fight tedious for farming because of his gigantic health pool. His boss music also feels like a final boss. He’s not the hardest of bosses, but the fight is a spectacle, and I like spectacle fights. 10/10.
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Ormolu is actually great. I know some people believe that being able to cheese the boss makes it unfun but i completely disagree. For example, one of my favourite bosses in one of my favourite games is Genichiro from Sekiro, here is a video of cheesing Genichiro:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bsnVzcnxJg8
The fact that he can be cheesed does not make the fight worse because i can simply choose to not cheese him. Genichiro is still one of the best video game bosses ever despite cheesing him being that easy. Vetex isn’t holding my hand forcing me to ruin my own experience by cheesing the boss.
With that out of the way, Ormolu has a few moves in his arsenal, there is his main damage dealer, the tracking pillar slam. The tell is him raising one hand and slamming, in his purple phase, you can avoid it by waiting for it then dodging three times to a free side. In the red phase, it needs to be dodged 4 times. It does a lot of damage if it lands and in the red phase him landing it might be instant death. Another attack is the double slam, he raises both hands and slams, dealing damage initially, and then more damage when the spikes come out, in the red phase, there is a third pulse after the spikes that deals even more damage, the best method is to just parry all the hits as the timing isn’t too hard. If he hunches over, he can do one of two different attacks, one to summon his minions or one that summons spikes to shoot out in multiple directions. you don’t know which is which till you see the crystals on the ground for the minions or the crystals around the body for the spikes. Either way its a chance for free damage, and killing the little warriors makes it so they don’t chase you for the final attack. The final attack is the big attack where he continuously launches spikes from all over, it’s a get away attack and forces you into one of the corners to avoid it, and it punishes you for not killing the little warriors because they can just chase you and deal damage to you while you are hiding. His boss room is spacious enough for him to show off his moves. I like the boss model alot, his animations feel very natural except the few times he T-poses, and his boss music feels eerie. Overall great fight. 9/10. However, with the new update to his boss arena, there seems to be randomly spawning undodgeable debris that constantly falls on his arena. If this isn’t a bug, that takes the fight from a 9 to a 7/10, I don’t really like too much rng in boss fights, and 300 is too high for random undodgeable environmental damage.
Overall the bosses were fun to fight and figure out.
Talents and Professions
Talents are a good addition, the questlines (especially sentinel) are alright to complete, though some quests, like darkness and shipbuilder kind of suffer from an issue i will talk about later. All of them feel unique and useful in their own way and I’ve seen people pull off some cool builds with them. Like people using vanishing fist with the stealth dash and the nocturne accessory to hide their hp. Overall well done to Vetex and Moochezz. Professions feel worth it to level and get better the more you do a task so they benefit what you already do a lot. Cooking brewing and jewelcrafting are the ones that feel mandatory, but the others just make you better at what you probably already enjoy doing.
Gameplay Loop
The most important part of how the update hooked me is how the gameplay loop and things to do in the game feel. I like to think of Arcane Odyssey as a “stuff to do” game, meaning there is always something to accomplish. I’ll use a lost treasure chart in the bronze sea to give an example. You start out looking for a rival so you can get a mystical or legendary treasure chart, while travelling on the water you do the diving spots on the way because they are free sources of good reagents and chests with a higher chance of giving sunkens and do the shipwrecks in the way for some free money from cargo and free treasure charts that always point to nearby island. You fight the rival and get a legendary chart to begin solving it, you go island to island continuously doing the diving spots on the way until you get to the final spot, on one of the islands you go to for the chart you see an enemy tower there, so you take the leaders bounty poster and conquer the tower and you get one of the new weapons from the boss and a rare spell from one of the chests at the bottom. You get a lost chart after the final spot and begin solving that, that takes you from island to island, getting modified gear cause they give more chests, after the second spot the special pirate faction starts sending high tier ships like brigs and ketches after you that you can sink to get more followers and add them to your fleet. The chart takes you to cassia bay so you do the Caesar boss fight there as well cause why not. After the final spot you get a lost knowledge that you can either sell for a really good price or modify one of your own abilities so you have an actual tangible change to your build from your effort. Then after you go to Ravenna or some island with a port and sell the sealed chests you have for some more cannon balls and maybe another rare spell or technique.
This entire process took like 2 or 3 hours of just playing the game and interacting with the systems in it, and at the end of it you have something that tangibly changes your build or sells for a high price and a bunch of modified gear that you can use or sell, plus gems and maybe some rare or lost spells and techniques. This gameplay loop is just about exactly what I want in a game, especially an rpg. Every system connected to every other system and being able to have a goal for a play session that i can mess around while completing. Kind of like skyrim if you’ve played that. This loop is what i like the most about pve in arcane odyssey and why i can play for so long, and this update makes it 10x better.
PVP
I am also a pvp player but i know not a lot of people are so I’ll make this brief, with the new spells, techniques and weapon skills in the game i really never know what people are going to pull out in a fight. Pvp is incredibly fun right now because of how different everyone plays. Eventually it will settle into a meta (it almost already did with savant but that got shot in the knees) and people will all flock to that, but for now i like the state of combat.
The Issues
Of course an update can’t be entirely problem free, there are two main issues i had.
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Issue one is of course bugs, lag and softlocks. I was softlocked twice during skyhall because i read the dialogue too fast, i had to leave and rejoin to fix it and thankfully it didn’t cause me to miss any dialogue. Full release on day 1 and 2 was the laggiest AO has ever been for me. It was dampening my excitement a little bit because of how my frames kept dropping, though after that and until now, i haven’t really experienced any of that lag and the performance has returned to pre full release levels, I’m not sure what caused that, maybe the underwater volcanoes. As for bugs, I’ve run into a lot, sometimes boss ai on bosses like Allanon would break and i would have to reset to start again. This also happened once on King Caesar. Here is a list of some other annoying bugs or issues that have no fix yet and i cant make a ticket for:
Inventory loadout gamepass is broken for me and my builds do not save.
I defeated Jorund before I sunk a pirate ship, so the order tab says he is a baron but its stuck on 1 clue.
Spawning my ship now requires me to swim much further out than before.
Tornadoes spawning on islands instead of at sea making you just have to stand there and wait if you have something to do there.
Some bounty NPCs are just not where the game says there are.
Deckhands and crew follow commands are just really buggy to the point i don’t use them anymore, they always get stuck on something or cant get back on the ship and if they do, when i start driving they don’t go to back to positions, just really buggy. -
Issue two is that AO lacks something i think it really needs, and that is a talented dedicated animator. I don’t mean a modeler or a builder who happens to be alright at animating on the side, I mean someone whose job it is just to animate cutscenes for story and side quests and bosses and animals. That is the issue i was talking about earlier in the review. In a story game, the visuals and visual direction are as important as what is being said by the characters. Imagine how much better the cutscenes in chapter 8 and throughout the entire story would be if they were full screen and had more movement than just characters rotating and nodding and moving their mouths. Imagine if in the skyhall throne room, you could see Allanon and Lucian fist fighting, or before the Fenrir assault, you could see Nilah tracing the plans over a physical map of the nimbus sea. For the darkness talent, imagine after you got the 3 castaways to sacrifice there was a cutscene where you were in the sacrifice chamber of makrinaos with the 3 castaways blindfolded and Cazal hands you a knife and tells you to do it. Then you walk towards them and it fades to black. Instead of that you get a popup that says “Castaway Sacrificed” and that’s it. Or in the shipbuilder quest, you get an action cutscene in the final part of you and the navy commander tag teaming the pirates, fully animated with impact frames and everything, instead, all you get is him at the end saying that the fight was cool. These kinds of scenes stick with a player more and makes the quests memorable. Animals also suffer from this animation issue. The animal models look amazing, but their movement doesn’t feel smooth at all. Take a bear for example, imagine if instead of standing still after rushing past you, you saw it clawing at the ground and then jumping at you again. That kind of animation would match the quality of the models. Voice acting isn’t feasible for a roblox game with this much dialogue, but a person whose job it is to just animate definitely is. Vetex please hire an animator.
Conclusion and Final Score
In conclusion, I really like this update. I like the ideas and i mostly like the execution. This is the best state AO has ever been in gameplay wise. I’ll give this update a 9/10. The 1 missing is due to bugs and the animations of the game. I hope more bug fixes are done before the dragons are added, and that the animations for the dragons are worked on extremely heavily, because it doesn’t matter how good the models look if they fly jankily and have no idle animations. I am still looking forward to it.
