So I played a few hours of New World 0.5... err, I mean the Chrono Odyssey beta test. Here are some thoughts.
The tutorial starts out with a giant dragon flying in the near distance
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| A fast travel point... hmmm.. looks familiar |
First, for anyone who doubts the New World comparisons—especially coming from a player like myself who has spent thousands of hours in New World—I suggest taking a look at some of these discussions and videos:
The evidence is stark. There are areas in Chrono Odyssey that are exact copies of New World. And since New World is not built on a proprietary engine—nor on something common like Unreal Engine—it’s very, very unlikely that Chrono Odyssey just happened to use the same store-bought assets. Not only are the visuals strikingly similar, but the rest of the game—even the UI—is eerily familiar. I’m fine with games copying systems and features, but this feels like a whole new level of copying.
Is that a sandworm!?
New World comparisons aside: how was the actual game?
Chrono Odyssey was... OK.
Performance was the biggest issue during the test. Like many testers, I suffered from poor frame rates and desync. Walking in crowded areas felt more like skipping along. The developers have stated that this was an older build and that performance should improve in future tests, so we’ll see.
Graphically, the world is a bit wild. There are massive backdrops with all sorts of over-the-top visuals. The tutorial includes an amazing scene featuring a massive dragon flying overhead. The starting zone has a mix of giant, ominous beings floating in the sky.
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| Some of the bizarre backgrounds of the starting area |
Combat is mediocre. It uses action combat that lets players equip two weapons, each with up to four skills, plus a basic left-click attack and a special right-click move (e.g., blocking with a shield). There’s also a target lock-on feature—which is controversial in action combat games. Personally, I’m fine with it, but I ended up playing without it most of the time. It made me feel like I was losing control of my character, especially when the camera whipped around too much.
The biggest issue I had with combat was the lack of weight. It felt like I was floating just above the ground, sliding around—especially with target lock enabled. My character felt like they were getting whiplash from all the turning. Weapon abilities just felt like “bigger numbers” you cycled through before swapping weapons and doing it all over again. Overall, combat felt generic.
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| A familiar weapon skill tree screen |
That said, I still preferred this action combat over traditional tab-target systems. There’s potential here—if the devs can carve out something unique.
There were a few things I did like. The game gives you a mount early on, which is nice. PvE content poses a challenge early, requiring players to either gear up or get better to progress. There are also chrono abilities that seemed interesting—and were the biggest departure from its New World-inspired design—but I didn’t get far enough to comment deeply on them.
Overall, my impression was very much “this is New World 0.5,” meaning it’s a worse version of New World. It was another game that just made me wish I were back playing New World. As I’ve said before, New World has spoiled me on MMORPG combat. I’ll argue with anyone: New World has the best combat on the market.
The test topped out at a bit over 65,000 concurrent players, which is higher than similar points in New World's testing timeline. I can see Chrono Odyssey attracting a good audience—especially if they steer clear of shady pay-to-win systems (which the devs claim they will). If this test proved anything—both from the hype leading up to it and the actual player count—it’s that there’s still a strong demand for new MMORPGs.
Note: this post was edited with the help of AI (ChatGPT). The thoughts are my own. The grammatical correctness is the AI.
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