First Impressions: The ArcheAge Chronicles Demo

 I spent some time checking out the ArcheAge Chronicles demo recently, and walking away from it left me with a pretty mixed bag of thoughts.

Here we go again...

 On the bright side, the world is genuinely beautiful, and I did enjoy exploring it. But the world design runs into a bizarre pacing issue where it feels far too cramped. You run a few feet, and there's a camp. You run a few more feet, and there's another camp. You take a couple more steps, and suddenly you're stumbling into a giant point of interest. It robs the world of a natural sense of scale when major landmarks are practically stacked on top of each other.

Entering the final story instanced area; the game does look great!

 There has been a lot of debate in the community over whether ArcheAge Chronicles is actually an MMORPG or just an online action RPG, especially given how developers have talked about steering away from traditional massive faction wars of the original ArcheAge. Coming into the demo, I half-expected a stripped-down, session-based MMO-lite experience. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised to find it feels much more like a normal, living MMO with plenty of other players running around you out in the open world rather than being bottlenecked into specific instanced hubs.

MMO-lite?  Plenty of players are around you in the open world.

 The UI design needs work, starting with how disconnected the menus feel from the actual gameplay. Inventory and character management screens pop up in a way that takes you entirely out of the experience, breaking the immersion. I much prefer the style New World used, where menus open up as overlays or transparent windows while you can still see your character active and moving around in the world. It keeps you anchored in the environment rather than staring at a static, isolated menu screen.

 Quest design is equally frustrating because missions tend to randomly appear out of nowhere without any clear indication of where you are supposed to go or why the quest triggered in the first place. It undercuts your sense of direction and purpose. On top of that, it is far too easy to accidentally pick up a quest item without realizing it, meaning you stumble into objectives entirely by accident rather than through intentional exploration or narrative progression.

The classic random chance at an upgrade system; can we please move on from this exact UI being in every single game that comes out of the east?

 Then there are the fundamental mechanics. First off, get rid of having to hold shift to sprint and just make sprinting automatic. The combat itself feels too floaty and lacks grounded weight, especially considering the massive size of the enemies and their attacks.  The combat works but doesn't have a sense of impact.  Combat doesn't detract from the experience but could use some continual improvement through the early access life of the game.

 Character building and classes also left a lot to be desired. Even accounting for the demo being limited, everything felt kind of samey. While there are big skill trees, melee weapon types lacked distinct styles and every two handed melee weapon seemed to share the exact same sprint-up leap attack followed by the same basic left-click combo, and magic and ranged didn't offer enough unique flavor either.

 On top of that, the lack of character clothing options combined with rigid class and gender locks made everyone in the game feel and look samey. While I don't hate an outfit-versus-armor system in theory, seeing a character in a dress apparently wearing super heavy armor underneath is misleading. Outfits really need to match their underlying stats in some way. And I would love to see a human using a shield and axe instead of being forced into that big, bulky male character model whenever you pick up heavy frontline weapons.

A cut scene of sailing into the end of demo area; unclear if in the future we'd get to navigate with ships ourselves like the original ArcheAge.

 Overall, the gorgeous world and exploration made it fun to check out for a bit, but the combat weight, cramped world pacing, and messy UI mean the full game has plenty of kinks to work out if it wants to keep my attention.

 Some more screenshots to enjoy:

A useful "what are the chances of something dropping from this loot bag" message but annoying when you have twenty bags to open and have to see this every time.  Also these are loot drops and not purchased bags so why do I need to see this message?

A cool looking statue

Lots of ruins packed into this area and classic random NPCs just living out their eternity at the top of them

Underwater areas are well detailed.  A nice addition but not sure how necessary as it's unclear how much underwater content we'll see.

The game has gliding.  I used it a couple times but didn't find it all that interesting.  I think the game would have been fine without it.  I am sure they will go out of their way now to give places/reasons to glide.

Fishing!?  Alas you cannot complete the quest for the fishing rod in the demo so we'll have to wait and see if they add it later on.

A New World outcast and I am right at home gathering a bush of berries.

The world map slowly uncovers as you explore; about 1/3 of the explorable area from the demo is in this screenshot.

Oddly while you get to pick out an outfit at character creation like the one I chose here you don't get to keep it and reset to the default outfit when you start out.  Unclear if that was a bug or not in character creation.

You can chop down most trees in the game but it is nowhere near as satisfying as chopping down a tree in New World Aeternum.

Yarrr! A pirate's hat outfit reward from the last boss of the demo.

Somewhat final drip at the end of the demo; minus my pirate hat.

Crafting at the cauldron.  These are placed everywhere along with berry bushes right next to them to harvest and make potions.  Felt out of place but the crafting process was fine.