Fractured Online Review
Fractured Online Review – Covered by Medieval Marty:
Fractured Online is a top down hardcore PvP MMORPG with no classes, a full karma system of good and evil and one of the most interesting progression systems of the MMORPG genre, where you learn your abilities and spells by defeating the monsters that have them from all over the world.
The game re-released last week into early access to really positive reviews on steam. But it has had a rough development cycle and still has some of its main features in development. So here is the good, the bad and and overall review of Fractured Online. And we do have a full video review if you’d rather watch or listen along.
New Player Experience:
How much does Fractured Online cost?
Fractured Online is a single purchase game available on steam and on the Fractured MMO website. The game is currently £20 or around $25 on Steam as a one time purchase, with no DLC, expansion or subscription model at the time of this review.
This is a game in early access, but for the low price there is an extremely large amount of well developed content that can keep you playing for 50+ hours.
Fractured Online Races:
The game is split between 3 races that each live on different worlds, connected by portals. There are humans and wildfolk and demons are being added soon. Each have their own world, and their own mortality. Wild folk are good and can’t go red and hunt good players, demons are evil and can never be good, and the humans have free will to be either good or evil.
Fractured Online Tutorial:
Once you’ve picked your race you just pick some skills and pick a starting background, and you get a bunch of starting skills, you are just dropped into the world.
If you’ve never played a sandbox game before, this is one of the most daunting ones out there. There is no story, no path, or goal or explanation. There are some basic quests in a quest log, that teach you what you can do in the game, and you can just go do whatever you want. Its important to cover in this Fractured Online review, just how open and unguided this MMO is.
While you’re on this journey of adventure and discovery you also have a “young player bonus”. Where you are unable to be pvp’d for your first 40 hours, or until you hit 80,000 knowledge. This can really help keep you protected while you explore and build out your character, but it can also be turned off, if you want to just get straight into pvp.
Spells and Abilities:
The most exciting part of this game is how you level up. There are no classes in Fractured Online, but you get stronger and develop in 2 ways, from gaining new talent points and building out your talent tree. And collecting new abilities and spells. Both of these are gained from just fighting enemies.
There are zones all around the world that have different camps, goblins, bandits, elementals and more and each of these camps have different enemies. And as you defeat them you gain experience and fill up your book of knowledge, and start to unlock their spells. This has to be the single best part about the game and if you get nothing from this Fractured Online review, hopefully this interests you enough to give this game a try.
Crafting and Economy of Fractured Online
Fractured Online’s economy is entirely player driven, there are no shopkeepers or ways to sell goods to NPCs. Most towns are player owned and managed, and are where you will go to buy and sell your items. Some towns are rich in crystals and metals, others in certain animal parts or upgrade materials. And banks are locked to encourage the risk of travel.
You can build houses, build wagons, and go out and mine, harvest and build all the cool buildings that let you craft weapons and armour in your house. And then you can join a guild, and take over one of the cities, this lets you build houses, buildings and farms inside the city walls.
Of course, the only worry with a player made economy is if the player count drops and you have nobody to sell stuff to, there isn’t much you can do with all the items you find or make.
And the crafting itself is really really in depth, it reminds me a lot of old school grindy MMO’s. You craft something, the better you get it can be. And then once you get proficient you can move on to tier 2 gear, which has a tier set bonus, this stuff is a long grind to craft. And then it can be imbued with special stats, and can be enchanted to +1, +2 +3 etc.
The crafting system is very in depth and gear also has durability, and when it runs out, that gear is gone. So the gear grind never stops, and you’re always have something to work on. And it keeps the economy rolling, as you keep needing metal, cloth, leather, imbument materials.
Fractured Online Karma System:
Unlike some MMO’s being an evil player that kills people on sight is incredibly punishing. There is a karma system from good, neutral and evil, and your karma will change based on your actions.
And your karma affects how punishing death is in the game. A neutral or good player will loose their inventory, but an evil player will loose their inventory and start loosing their gear. On top of this, if a good aligned sheriff kills a red player, they can send them to jail where they either have to wait out their sentence up to 24 hours OR pay a bounty of thousands of gold to the town.
And here is probably one the main issues with the game. As right now, it is just too punishing to be a red player. Unless you’ve got thousands of gold and you’re running around with loads of friends who are all red. You’re going to have a bad time.
Is Fractured Online Worth Playing?
So lets give an Overall Fractured Online review. Overall, this is a game that looks and plays a lot like Albion Online, with old school systems straight out of the 90s, and a progression system that is incredibly rewarding and addicting to work through.
Honestly I’d say your first 50 hours of this game will be incredible, learning all the spells, travelling around all the new zones, building your first house and leveling your crafting. Where it starts to fall off, is once you’ve done that. Once you have tier 2 gear, have all the best abilities or spells, its all about PvP.
And right now, PvP is not balanced or working as intended. There are not enough people willing to risk flagging as evil red characters, and without the Demon race, we don’t have a completely balance of open world PvP.
Overall thought, for the low price and no sub model, the attitude of the developers and the enjoyment you can get here, it is 100% worth trying if you like these style of progressive, grinding games.
For more reviews check out our MMORPG Reviews or if your considering getting the game, check out our Fractured Online guides page.
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