Worst MMO Ever? - Tree of Savior

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Tree of Savior is a gorgeous looking MMORPG, a graphical throwback to the classic JRPG's from the SNES era.
It's the spirit of Breath of Fire, Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, Legend of Mana, Lufia, Secret of Evermore, it looks, and plays, like a classic RPG.
Unfortunately, it's monetized... a lot.
Thanks to the Patreon supporters and Twitch subs for keeping the channel going :)
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NOT SPONSORED - Just legit think this is a good deal - Halo Multiplayer free:
store.steampowered.com/app/12...

[@hjalfi]

These game assets --- art, music, sound design, models --- are all so good that they deserve to be in a much better game. You could probably build a really good old-school single-player RPG out of this without having to draw a single sprite of your own.

[@AlesxSandri]

They did these with Ragnarok for NDS, they just took the asset of the game and made a single-player game. and kinda meh but for losing time it was ok.

[@thelastcondiut]

should've been a single player game tbh

[@FelisImpurrator]

MMOs like this mostly only add social features so they can monetize those features to hell and back, so it would just objectively be better.

[@lnsflare1]

Going by the character models, this might make for a great Action RPG spin-off of Final Fantasy Tactics, or a Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles sequel (which can also be a team multiplayer game).

[@lnsflare1]

@@AlesxSandri The Japanese-only Vita-exclusive Phantasy Star Nova did this with Phantasy Star Online 2, to some degree, and it was pretty fun.

[@masterbeeef]

I have over 9000 hours in ToS. This was just my favorite game of all time ever, the friends and enemies and fiancé I made. Thank you for tearing it apart, it deserved it for falling to greed.

[@TheDjubre]

Is that bad?

[@itsnallari]

​@@TheDjubre it is now, it was absolutely amazing before

[@zinc2zinc2]

Yeah, i used to play ToS a lot back in high school. The game was fun, but the pay to win and game problems were growing really rapidly. I stopped playing, but instill feel bad even today. The game is one of the most beautiful games out there,and a unique style. But it has so many problems.

[@TheDjubre]

@@zinc2zinc2 Tnx. Is there any similar or fun mmo besides wow,gw2 and ff?

[@Enforcer901]

@@TheDjubre mmo is pretty much dead right now sadly.

[@tHeWasTeDYouTh]

Tree of Savior was developed by Kim Hakkyu, creator of Ragnarok Online and published by Nexon. One thing really interesting I found out about this game is that it is based on traditional Lithuanian culture and mythology. I think we have never seen a game that takes inspiration from that. cool

[@yogi_gs]

Nexon is the answer to why this happened.

[@sandnewts]

No wonder. I was looking at all these login bonus popups thinking "gosh this sure looks like maplestory, just as overwhelming to start"

[@gerryw173ify]

Korean and other east Asian games can get into some lesser known mythology. Mabinogi which is a other Nexon title is based on Celtic mythology.

[@Chudpope]

@@gerryw173ify Heck the name of the game comes from Mabinogion, a book of welsh mythology.

[@ilyabykov2437]

No wonder this game is dying, Lithuania as a whole has less than 3 million population.

[@Killsaurus]

Jesus I would absolutely love to play an MMO that looks like this, has to be one of the most unique and beautiful artstyles I've ever seen, always a shame when these games fall short

[@planetdustbowl4825]

Ragnarok online?

[@juniisenpai3777]

@@planetdustbowl4825 ragnarork recycle online? god damn man, let the IP rest.

[@planetdustbowl4825]

@@juniisenpai3777 it was just because he said 'an MMO that looks like this" and this art style was clearly based on RO.

[@juniisenpai3777]

@@planetdustbowl4825 Sure but RO is old and monitize greatly so does ToS, whats the point of referring to dead game anyway?

[@mahuk.]

@@juniisenpai3777 I bet the call you the heart of the party, amirite?

[@BlueFlewFedUQueen]

It absolutely broke my heart to hear your comment about there being no reason to explore, nothing to find in maps besides monsters to kill and move on... because in the very, very early days, exploration was one of THE key selling points of this game, and those fun secrets and hidden puzzles should still exist in the early game. There are hidden chests in many of the early maps that give out exclusive cosmetics and helpful items, or hidden quests that don't have any kind of marker and can only be discovered by diligently exploring and interacting with NPCs and objects. There were time-based puzzles and minigames you could complete solo or with friends to get special rewards, and the only way to find and complete these was to discover them yourself or look it up online. The puzzles, the mystery, the fun little secrets... these were some of my favourite parts of the game. But I think it only took the first or second level cap bump of the game's lifespan before they stopped adding new puzzles and secrets, at least not anything near as interesting or complex as what they'd started with. And because new players are rushed through the early content now with events, they're far less likely to ever find out about these puzzles and secrets at all. For all I know they've been outright removed... and that really does break my heart, because it always felt rewarding to me to go off the beaten path and try to find all those secrets on my own. ToS is truly a shell of its former self. It used to be something that was really special, really unique. Now it's just another trash MMO with generic gear, bland classes, and a rush to endgame so they can goad players into paying money as quickly as possible. Hate to see it.

[@RenValhalla]

So i played this game like start of 2021+- just to correct, theres still a ton a hidden/secret content and puzzles in maps even in HL areas they never been removed and are being added new ones to the endgame as well with the new areas... He never tryied to seek anything so thats why he says that....

[@mercs7849]

"shell of it's former self" lmao, it was never good to begin with, just a ruse pulled over our eyes. PS. I was an early supporter of this game, Waited around 2k hrs for IMC to stop being idjets, saw all kinds of stupid decisions, regret time wasted.

[@bambangz1746]

i play alot this game grinding money in dg 130 for thousand times 9 times a day.. to clear solmiki 20th floor. the early game its easy. cos in end game the enemy is so damn hard..

[@oni2983]

When I played ToS my favorite part was exploring. I was trying to get all the accessories. I got the branch with flowers but I never got the black hat ;_; Sadly, I didn't know how to gear my character when I reached endgame. Everything was complex, some people tried to help but they did their dungeons alone and I couldn't so I left the game.

[@maxicornejo9675]

@@mercs7849 People think this game was once great, but TOS was and still is a linear grind fest with no visible goal and no interesting content to match its class system and gameplay. If you've played the first dungeons and instances, you have experienced what most of the game has to offer. Also, It surprises me how this guy didn't say anything about how fixated this game is in the solo experience and how little reasons it gives you to collaborate with other players when it is supposed to be an MMORPG. In my 150 hours of play time going from map to map doing the same repetive things, I didn't encounter any reason to make a cohesive party. TOS was always a shallow single player RO on a never ending railroad with good ornaments.

[@Dumitaz]

I downloaded it and been playing nonstop ever since. I first practiced with bots then with players, and it was an incredible experience. The modes are terrific, and it's the perfect blend of old Halo with modern graphics.

[@whynikkiwhy]

Had me in the first half, not gonna lie

[@lordastrea2765]

Well played

[@beat0n147]

The modes are terrific, and then you are forced to play ODDBALL

[@k-kayla]

@@whynikkiwhy You got me there

[@boitahaki]

lmao

[@dualwieldroxas358]

It breaks my MMO heart when i see such incredible potential ruined by horrific pay-to-win cash shops

[@laylaminrir]

As such is always the payment model for most MMOs even tho its such a terrible model for a game's long term longevity

[@armanborloza7981]

MMO is always pay to win. Broke people don't belong here.

[@forestlink6673]

Every mmo is a pay to win bro except for private servers that runs only for months

[@Synsane]

Omg watching this video actually hurt my soul. I remember how hype and long the buildup for this game was. It was during the decline of MMOs, RO2 came out, but wasn't the successor anyone wanted and it died. This game was trickled around kind of like a secret that kept growing. Finally the day it was here, everyone packed the servers, sooo many players it constantly crashed. All the content you completed in this 30 minute video took us weeks to get through. Slow progression, but it was fun and rewarding, and we had friends all beside us. End game was I think level 50 or 60, where things got bad. But before I go there, everything you were saying, the game had. I'm actually so fkn shocked, the fact that they removed the music and replayed it with club stuff in every area is crazy. People would spend hours in character builders, sharing different builds and combos on the forums. Then you'd have to do a long quest to get your classes which made achieving them feel even more rewarding. The fact you opened a menu, selected what you wanted and were done; that was horrifying. There were not even guides at that time, so you worked together to get the stronger classes because the quests were harder. The game first lost a substantial amount of the player base because of server issues. The server kept crashing, some menus froze your client for 5 minutes, the UI menus were obnoxious. Severs freezing, crashing, and rolling back was brutal; because as I said, max level was around 40-60 so the grind was intense. If you spent 2 hours on 10% at level 30, and the server crashed, and you log back on level 29. Maaaaaannnn people left in droves. They eventually got that fixed, and having so many people leave actually made the gameplay better, because before the maps were overflooded so it was hard to kill mobs. They also added more channels with the changes, as most maps before only had 2. They never made them dynamic to add channels based on how many people on maps (which really sucked because there were leveling spots better than others), but it was something, because the game was so fun and refreshing at this time. Now, when you made end game, you were around 40 or 50 I think, and your best bet at this point was to just do the daily challenges and instances. They were like party quests from Maple Story, they were a lot of fun, ngl; but obnoxious after doing the same thing every day. Also, they introduced Tokens at this time. This killed the game. Not only did you get bonus exp, move faster, you were able to do these instances more times than others. Everyone thought the game was going to be cosmetic cashshop only. People argued about P2W, because it was possible to buy these tokens off other players for in game gold. But you also make more gold if you have Tokens. Now, this alone wasn't enough to kill the game. But they also did this thing which basically punched the entire community in the face along with it. THEY BANNED PLAYERS FOR MODDING (add-ons). Now, as you showed in the video, the UI was CRAP. Even the text was difficult to read; and some menus you couldn't even open without freezing your client for over 60 seconds! Modders fixed it ALL! They made their own dynamic menus. They added explanations on skills and items. They corrected the translations. They fixed the menu freezing. They allowed you to change the entire UI display to different cool settings. They added Damage meters and stats. They BANNED EVERYONE. There was a damn Add-on manager given to us by the devs, and they banned everyone for using it. Of course they came back apologizing, saying they banned the wrong people, was only supposed to be the exploits banned. But it was too late. Many people used the auto-pot and auto-battle add-ons, and were banned for that; and ToS staff were against giving players at least that back. Nobody cares about the NPC interactions on different maps, but we needed that auto-battle, as the grind endgame was insane. People wanted to just chat to friends . Ragnarok Online literally had it's resurgence the next year with their mobile port with an auto-battler. That simple feature basically saved the game. Yet, ToS saw everyone wanted it, read the forums, like they were actually communicating with the international community, and said fuck you. Side-note: People hacked the game and had bot squads of 5 characters farming a map to sell gold. That was horrible, and the community gave a ton of ideas to remove them, but cuz we were always ignored, we wanted to at least join them. Cuz fk the grind was insane, when everyone was allowed to auto-battle; nobody cared about the bots doing it. But when nobody could, it was unfair. People who multi-cliented and botted and actually hacked didn't even get banned afterwards. So if you were a good boy, it was like being double punished. Can't join them, and have to watch KS you on every map, meanwhile you got banned for using the legal add-ons. In conclusion, P2W, banning players for making the game playable, then they kept littering the store with more P2W items. People wanted the exp rate raised a tiny bit, and what they did was add cash shop exp boosts. Making new characters and trying different builds was the whole purpose of the game. They cash shopped skill and class resets. I mean, everyone quit. Not even going to mention the flip-flopping they did on multi-classing and the drama that created. Now you got this game. It's so sad. I actually wanted to come back to this game many times, but the thought of re-learning all the complexity and the long grind to get to the cool multi-class builds was draining to think about. People wanted to be able to unlocked level checkpoints where you can make a new character at that starting level, because there were like 50 classes, and a billion skill and class combinations. They didn't even give us that. Eventually they begged players to come back by handing out max character boosts; but yeah, you saw the state of the game. Didn't work... this game could've been amazing. If they just made the game B2P, it would've been great. Honestly, they could've made a ton of money from cosmetic shops only. That's what people wanted to do the most. We wanted to sit, chat, emote, and dress up. Dye items and hair... but they didn't listen. Killed a fantastic game.

[@ArrantOde]

Thank you for such a detailed retelling of the game's history.

[@amewming]

felt this so much the memories came flooding back. Now I'm trying to get back by starting out in a different server cause I can't be bothered to relearn all that stuff with my level 360 characters. The UI also wasn't this bad back then if I remember right, it was less... crowded. It feels like a chore just to close all the pop ups

[@Asin24]

To clarify, those experience cards had always been there. They were actually VITAL early on to get levels due to how insanely grindy the game was at the launch. It was an awkward system particularly since you actually wanted to save those exp cards to use at certain points in order to push you past certain parts in the leveling process since you didn't have good spots to grind. Its not a thing anymore (at least as far as I know) but it was a wierd design decision early on and not something added later for catchup.

[@Nuvizzle]

I remember the omnipresence of leveling guides early on because there were stretches where you had really lucrative grinding spots but also huge level ranges where there was no good XP to be gained so if you didn't have cards to skip those levels you were screwed. It was such bizarre design. It was especially noticeable early because the game was released way too early so when the level cap was around 200 most of the zones above level 170 or so were clearly unfinished with no quests and very few mobs.

[@bruceluiz]

Much of the games systems nowadays are remnants of poor design choices early on. For example: you can choose any class to be right now, but some classes only have natively dropping weapons for them at certain lvl thresholds, such as Rapiers for fencers or Muskets. That's because most of the early-mid game weaponry still informally follow the lvl ranking system. In a way ToS is a faulty and discontinued fuse box, but instead of dismantling everything and starting over, they just replace a wire here or there and wait until the next piece short-circuit...

[@TenMoogles]

@@bruceluiz And this is why I eventually quit the game. I was a founder and played the game HEAVILY on release but after a while I realized their direction was lost and they were just kinda hoping to skid along with what they had.

[@ariezon]

I'm guessing that exp card is an idea that came from Granado Espada which is another game they made back in 2007. Anyway, it's as you said, the purpose was to push through a grind which if you play GE, you're going to need it.

[@greendevilertan]

As a lithuanian, it's weird to see a game based of its folklore. At least it was funny to hear Josh pronouncing Klaipėda

[@karolisn7956]

same xD

[@rikpant]

Ha nice to see some Lithuanian Folk here, hello guys! But I'm surprised to see this eastern game using yours folklore :D (I'm not Lithuanian, but I have many friends there )

[@Nuvizzle]

I loved it, honestly. Same reason I loved Mabinogi's world. It's so refreshing to see game settings take inspiration from something different instead of the usual generic fantasy tropes or well known greek/norse/etc. mythological settings.

[@tadasjankevicius640]

same! i was super confused to see lithuanian names too :D

[@DanieliusGoriunovas]

Yeah, but it absolutely botches all the folklore. It just uses names randomly and thats it.

[@kuvisit]

You're mistaken - the game was like that from the beginning. I'm one of the OG Ragnarok Online players who were beta testing Tree of Savior. It was never different from what you see besides all the free stuff you mentioned and the progression was slower (better). The funny thing I remember is that virtually none of the bugs reported by testers were fixed between closed beta updates. We were basically testing the same things over and over again and when the game went open beta all the bugs from the first closed beta were still there except for a selected few. None of the people who were testing with me (all of which were former Ragnarok players) have even played the final game, since the devs neglected it from the start. I'm wondering if anyone will even see this comment

[@oldyoutubeaccount]

ToS is the most disappointing game because it has some brilliant class design. Things like linker, most casters, etc. But then it throws away anything that is/was good about it for a full screen aoe spamfest where none of that good ability/combat design matters. It finishes the execution of anything redeeming with hard time gated resources combined with the most soul crushing raid/upgrading grind I've ever seen. And drills p2w through it with a sprinkling of "customer support will respond months later saying they won't resolve something like not receiving an item you paid for". Even the pvp was sort of as good as RO's but completely undermined by the gear system & terrible netcode. & yeah launch felt massively premature and like they had given up. Reminds me of renewal in RO, where renewal could have been a good idea if they actually took the time to do it right and not abandon what made the game good but instead they came up with a prototype and shipped it without iterating. The review touched on the rest of it.

[@kuvisit]

@@oldyoutubeaccount I feel you so bad it hurts. Especially the Renewal comparison, even though I played RO a lot after they introduced it.

[@prieston]

I remember only 2 major problems that pretty much killed the game: 1. That Open Source thingie that enabled bots and gold sellers to afk farm while teleporting and oneshotting things. 2. Devs who initially decided to go to war with bots, gold sellers and inflation. The game initially had absurd limitations on trading, you can't trade gold, you can trade only like 1 item per day, somewhere around 30% tax on auction house, somewhere around 70% tax on player-based repair services and enchanting. It was already bad and cash shop looked as if it literally created to fight against gold sellers (like you are still limited even after buying the subscription) ... but it hasn't stopped gold sellers from doing their thing - so devs decided to make things even more harsher (while completely ignoring fixing stuff). It looked great, the music was fine, the story was more or less interesting, the systems were kinda fun to research but it was unbearable to play. Devs were shooting themselves in the foot with this game.

[@brenobarbosa3489]

What are u playing nowadays as an old rag player? I was looking for pixel mmo w lifeskills :/

[@kuvisit]

@@brenobarbosa3489 Haven't played mmos in years. I'm too easily hooked

[@mad_samba]

I was a beta tester of this game. Oh boy, the early days of this game were beautiful, i used to spend hours and hours discussing and trying new builds with my friend using unconventional class combinations and stuff. Sadly, during the early days the security of the game was really bad. Bots used to completely fill every single channel and it was impossible to grind, grind was vital in the early days. You had some xp curves around certain levels and during those times you HAD to save and use your xp cards at the right time. It was a little unbalanced but it was fun to plan a build in advancement. With time, they tried to fix the bot issues and since some classes had total advantage while grinding, they tried to use a new system to make things more " fair" and the end result was a complete mess. But i still love this game nonetheless

[@Arch4321]

This video shows me one ultimate truth. Josh really likes Halo Infinite.

[@SmellsVishy]

Cause it's a fucking good game. I haven't played Halo since Reach and downloaded Infinite because it's free. Never expected it to be this good

[@loomingdeath1758]

@@SmellsVishy i guess but what if you not a fps player XD i more RPG lol so in my eyes its meh but hey ;D its free and its HALO download that shit now fuckers or else RAID SHADOW LEGENDS GONNA FIND YOUR PHONE.

[@acuteavocado1962]

this video shows me one ultimate truth. josh used the wrong you're

[@BladeDevil]

@@acuteavocado1962 every party needs a pooper... and that's why they invited youuuuuu.... party pooper... party pooper... party pooper...

[@aegisofficial3819]

​@@loomingdeath1758 I mean it's fine that it's not a game for you, but No one cares

[@ribeiroWilliam]

6 first months of this game were awesome. parties for dungeons, simple game play, a city full of people selling stuff, a healthy grind. it was RO all over again. I did not know it was this bad after all these years. sad, the art is really good

[@Octokaizer]

I was a beta tester for this game, and it was fun but even then it had a lot of issues that we repeatedly told the developers about and they just didn't seem interested in fixing. Of course you weren't spammed with boost items back then so that part was better at least. I really wanted it to take off so it was really sad to see how quickly it died off. Now it's so bad I can't even get the game to launch.

[@macfire19]

Same, and by launch I ended up only putting in another 8 hours or so before dropping the game forever. Although, getting to use super busted abilities before they were balanced was hilarious.

[@EthelChamomile]

I think what happened was, the dev was making this amazing game with passion and care, then suddenly the investors who never even hold a controller in their lives was like "that's cool but what if money?" and started to act like they had a master degree in game design

[@bruceluiz]

Man, I remember being part of the beta. It was such a wonderfully different and quirky MMO, but was grindy as hell and needed a shitton of QoL. Unfortunately NCsoft happened, and instead of rebuilding the game from the ground up they had to stitch and make do with completely antagonistic systems and money-hungry microtransactions. This could've been the MMO to change them all but instead became a hollow receptacle. Honestly if they scrambled together a single player/coop campaign with all the fun and new exciting things that ToS tried, it would ROCK. PS: I'm such an early fan of ToS that I remember when the first rumors of it's existence were nothing more than gossip about new classes for Ragnarok Online. Most of the initial devs were from Gravity, reason why ToS resembles Ragnarok so much (specially artistically).

[@leatherDarkhorse]

Almost same reason when launch the game grindy as fuck, not even fun. Just endless grind.

[@captRhay]

i was there with you m8. i wanted this game to be good so badly...

[@Chronoic]

@@leatherDarkhorse What did you expect? they advetise it as the successor of Ragnaork? Ragnarok is a grindy as hell game. The 280 level max cap also didn't help too.

[@harryb12993]

CLASSIC NCSOFT!

[@carlosemiralonso7997]

I totally express this on my comment "grindy" it seem that all player base think the same!

[@kyoai]

As a correction : When you talked about "how many players" at 3:55, the "channel" is only for that certain map. To avoid having too many people on a map, the game has multiple "channels" per map. So what you saw with 0/100 and 4/100 was how many people are on the different channels of the starting map, not the entire server.

[@GamezDrakat]

Hope he sees that comment :)

[@TryHarderJ]

Another correction would be the 4,4% achievement thing. They've added the achievements later on. I played it when it came out for like 100h~ and I don't have any achievements for it.

[@Kirusion]

@@GamezDrakat Doubtful, it seems he rarely replies to comments, but they're a lot of inaccuracies in this video

[@MasDoeL]

@@Kirusion well i mean, he played only on surface level i've seen and play worse MMO and ToS definitely not one of them the only thing i agree is that ToS is definitely not for a new player

[@allthatishere]

@@MasDoeL "the only thing i agree is that ToS is definitely not for a new player" But isn't that pretty terrible in of itself? Like, all MMOs should be trying to draw in new players. Even Eve Online has revamped it's new player experience multiple times over the years, and this is a PvP focused sandbox, spaceship sim... it doesn't get anymore niche than that. That's such a fail in game design, especially for an MMO.

[@LiveLNXgaming]

if i was an art designer on this game i would be furious. This game looks incredible and way better than the mechanics it is tied to.

[@Evil_Chronic]

The exp cards were always there. It was a “key” to leveling. It’s best to save the exp cards and use each tier at a specific time. Mainly to avoid certain level ranges that were difficult to level at. You normally gained 5-10 levels when you used 500+ exp cards at once.

[@CrookGX]

As an old Ragnarok Online player, I was hyped for Tree of Savior before it's launch. Played it for a bit, but it never quite scratched the itch RO left behind. Didn't stick with it very long.

[@Zefar77]

So true, it just felt like a generic MMORPG. It could have been so good if it followed original Ragnarok Online stat and gear system from before the Renewal update. The update that butchered Ragnarok online stat, monster, level and card system.

[@Quast]

Ahhh, the good times, the music :)

[@Goreratten]

I was fresh off my Trickster Online addiction when i first saw and heard about this. Looked fair enough but being a psudo-sequel to Ragnarok sold me instantly as i was forced to sit it out as the game was much more taxing than one would have guessed. So envy as i was from seeing my friend having a good time... those bastards i found a similar game in Trickter Online or eTO and i played that game way more that i had any right to where my growing pain internet experience. All in all 1500hours in eTO was enough for me to give up ToS after around 5hours the first time and 2-3hours on the re-release. Jank-filled buisy-work....and that s it it... wll with a good skin ofc... gotta lure us in somehow :P

[@janickbergeron9129]

RO really was something different.

[@kyotheman69]

sad that RO did it better, the mobile version is actually good origins is probably only decent way to play RO again since most classic servers got closed

[@LukaRyuu]

I genuinely hope the artists have moved on to bigger and better things. I'm a big fan of the pixel art style of games like the Secret of Mana series, so this looks absolutely gorgeous, it's just a shame it's let down in other areas.

[@darknessknouva5921]

Ironically enough, the art style reminded me of Legend of Mana in many ways. I wish the Remake of Seiken Densetsu 3 carried this art style. Would have been more amazing. The art is almost of the calibre of Vanillaware works.

[@frenchalien9108]

Maggi became a tatoo artist

[@TenchiHawkwing]

@@frenchalien9108 I'm pretty sure she already was one even while working on ToS.

[@aukefif7329]

As a huge fan of Ragnarok Online, Tree of Savior was a punch to the gut.

[@v44n7]

and people still call it spiritual succesor of ragnarok online 1, but had nothing even similar to RO 1 lol

[@jyidorne8042]

Such a shame. By the looks of it, this game could be a successor to Ragnarok Online, but has fallen to greed and overt complexity. I think we could use a new Ragnarok Online, it had some interesting ideas I haven't seen repeated elsewhere. Like a dedicated merchant class or teleportation that was only available to a single class. Well, WoW kinda stole a couple of those oldschool ideas, but even they gave up on most of those long ago. There would definitely be room in the market for this kind of game, but nobody seems to be interested in making it. Instead, we get the endless copies of generic fantasy mmo with your generic fantasy classes and the three cardinal roles of tank, healer, dps. An asymmetric MMO with classes that can do unique things, all wrapped in a more animeish top down look. I would play that.

[@Pixie1001.]

Bit of a necro, but as someone who played this for a few months, there aren't actually that many classes or weird occupations in ToS - it's more like a build your own class system, where you pick a new class every couple levels to make a weird stitched together multi-class abomination. It was actually pretty cool, but also not very new player friendly since you cold totally fuck your build at 1st level by not taking an essential skill and not realise until endgame. Looking up community builds on the wiki and seeing them come together as you added new classes to your character was really fun though. However, the end result was that there was still only like 5-10 optimal final builds that people actually played, with maybe a class or ability swapped out here and there.

[@Assumptio]

i'll be honest with this one, because tree of savior is one of the games i love the most i waited for it since it was announced as "project R1" and was heavily advertised as "ragnarok's spiritual successor", and RO being, too, one of the games i love, i was SO excited for this i played on CBT, the game had it's day 1 problems (bugs, connection issues etc) but i loved it, i took it slowly and got i immersed in the game's storyline, visuals, bgm and gameplay but the game was sooo mistreated by it's own company that ppl just gave it up and quit, it was really sad right now the game is still fun (for me, i still like the gameplay), but it's not newbie friendly

[@janundsoo]

It is trash

[@Nuvizzle]

I couldn't do it anymore after the first class system rework that was supposed to save the game by making it more approachable. It didn't actually bring in any new players and just killed the depth of the class system forever - oh, and it completely ruined my favorite class, Corsair, by removing its unique looting mechanics that defined the class. Every class just felt boring and generic after that.

[@KyokujiFGC]

ToS got a bunch of launch hype from former RO players, and then 90% of those players left when they realized it's nothing like RO outside of the visuals and music.

[@randomencounter8984]

@@KyokujiFGC I was one of those victims. finally new spiritual successor to RO! Grind and shit... after 30mins and I was done. It smelled more like those cheap Chinese MMO's that want to suck to daily bores and encourages you to use cash shop. Shame since game looks so pretty.

[@DisIngRaM]

I'm once the same with you, waiting for spiritual sucessor of RO. When the game was out, I played about 5 days in, and realized it's not the spiritual successor of RO. Where in the classic RO, the game design was more wild and intuitive, in TOS, it feels pragmatized. Let's talk about the monster in RO and TOS. For example, in RO, level 30 enemy, let's name it A have battle power 30 which is just right for level 30 player. But there also exist level 30 enemy called B that have battle power of 60, which is a high threat even for higher levelled players, and they wander the low level area. You see, no recent MMO design are like the above anymore. Recent design including TOS are more formula based approach. In TOS, lvl 50 mobs behave like most other level 50 mobs, such that I ever bother learning what monster I'm facing, I just see the level and grind away. None of the monster was impactful or something to remember because of the formula approach design. It lacks "human touch" to it. Kudo to the art team, but sadly all those monster asset are forgettable due to the gameplay. I realized this, and I'm glad I quit the game early. to quote my other comment: " I feel like they changed how the game is designed midway during the development, from the original ideas, towards more template like MMO, probably from hiring newly grads students with FAKE 4.0 GPA in game design. You can see vestiges of what the game supposed to be in many of the early maps. Many unused spaces, many paths that lead to dead-ends, Removed NPC that are bugging out, Jumping platforms that is now forever blocked, vestige of puzzle but now with no one able to progressor trigger it. Everything removed, to make it linear, and everpowercreeping design. I'm not surprised if the original team was fired midway and replaced. "

[@Omahdon]

Wow, Halo looks way different than what I remember!

[@augustoch.7341]

Still has the same funky music that belongs on a nightclub though

[@celticogre8360]

@@augustoch.7341 this comment is depressing

[@pixiedust5239]

@@celticogre8360 dont be rude. I thought it was kind of adorable

[@Rizzbulla]

Looks like you can sprint now

[@gamerindependente]

It sucks that a game with a good shell like this is dying because of predatory monetization.

[@ryanpratama5635]

IIRC, at early patch, there's a hidden quest to unlock the hidden classes. This hidden quest required you to explore the world to find some clues or hint to unlock the hidden class. But....few patch later, they butcher it, so the player had easier access to these hidden classes.

[@DJFluttershy07]

Josh really thought he could paste the Bee Movie script as a review score and get away with it.

[@straypaper]

You're right Josh, this is a husk of what was a great game. When the game launched, the stamina mechanics were actually significant, you don't get boosting item to railroad you to end game, and the progression was somewhat more streamlined. The core problem is how they balance the numbers. Instead of making the end game contents progressively slower in power level and making leveling and gearing a diminishing return experience with a logarithmic curve *like a normal game should,* they stay true to their Korean grinder root and make it *exponentially curved* instead like a dumbass. With a logarithmic progression, the early game will see the players getting stronger by leaps and bounds, giving them rewards and dopamine by the dozen. This is the hook every game need, not that "it gets good in the end" crap talk. Moreover, with logarithmic progression, the late game will be rather relaxed because there is no more sharp power spike that demands you to get significantly stronger to enjoy the contents. After a certain point you can relax and play casually and do every content reasonably. This is the recipe to good player turnover and great player retention. Sure it would make the gap between casual late game players and heavy grinder late game players minuscule, but grinding is the player's choice, and *should always be player's choice.* Being masochistic should be its own reward, and not be mandated. If you like grinding, great! Go fucking grind. Your grind is not rewarding you enough power to separate you from the casual players? Then don't grind! If you want to have your e-penis stroked for the time and effort you put into an MMORPG, then go somewhere else you sad git. But the company IMC is too greedy. They reward this late game heavy grinding by releasing ever powercreeped late game gears, because what population is more profitable than no-life grinders willing to pay for faster grinding? The more the player grind, the more powerful they are. Eventually players become too powerful and IMC is forced to release even harder contents to entertain them, and that new content will again be a heavy grind. You grind, get mad power, slam through new contents, and grind said content to dust. This horrible cycle provides ever rising power, ever rising grinding intensity, and naturally ever rising premium cash shop QoL item demands. This shit system and greedy company is what ruined the game. Those that do grind will be milked, and those that don't will be left behind because they get burned out trying to even access the latest content. Eventually this backfired to the company and casual players just start leaving one after another. It's to be expected right? If you cater to your cash cows then naturally only the cash cows will be left. Unfortunately the cash cows will not be sated only with the exponential power IMC can give them in-game. They also demand there be other players for them to beat in PvP so they can stroke their e-penis to it. And so after the casual players left, the cash cows follow shortly after. This is when they start doing the great rebalancing in 2018. But of course, IMC is a profit based company and profit based company is required by law to be stupid. So instead of flattening off the late game curve to balance the cash cow and casual player population, *they cut off the early game curve instead* to make it seems like the climb to late game is not going to burn casual players out. It doesn't. Their reasoning was that "if casual players get burned out trying to reach the latest content, then we should cut off the old content so they can invest their time more trying to grind our latest content instead of enjoying our streamlined early contents" which couldn't be more wrong. This is how we arrive to the present day with obsolete mechanics, boost items, and multiple classes shoved down your throat from the get go. IMC think that by cutting off the early game and just giving it to the players, it would expedite their conversion into long term cash cows. It doesn't. All it does is make the game a long ass non-streamlined tutorial until level 200, which is not enjoyable, with the actual game only starting at level 201 and the only thing left in the game is to grind, which is also not enjoyable.

[@SonicSlash51]

Damn. I was looking forward to this one too…

[@moruemourue9692]

I was do disapointed by the new rushy/skip maps leveling passing, and i remember playing this game on release :(

[@Theydas]

It never was a good Mmorpg. As it launched, it had multiple issues which with time got even worse. Poor performance, shit endgame, shit journey to the endgame (following theme park linear single path killing boring mindless easy kill mobs over and over again). Boring gameplay.

[@straypaper]

@@Theydas You clearly wasn't a launch player then. Sure the rubber banding and channel crashing were bad, but there were no endgame yet. IMC only made the shitty endgame into endless grind raids after level 200. Before that it was fun dailies with randos even if the classes were poorly balanced (it was Tree of Cleric for a year). Which part of the journey was linear? You literally were given 5 areas available to you at once with no set order of clearing them. If you don't know, don't speak.

[@planescaped]

The number of MMO's that farm cash from no-lifers too afraid to get a real drug addiction (or unaware of the parallel) is mind-blowing.

[@Nightmare-fe9hr]

when a game gives you free stuff, it is the game directly telling you "Please... just stay for an hour, that's all we want". They are taking a game about getting stuff, and giving you the stuff because "better stuff = reason to keep playing". But free stuff also completely strips your will to get more stuff.

[@archon5878]

I remember playing this when it first came out and exp cards were pretty much required to get through early game, but you were given so many you became overpowered. There weren't as many subclasses on launch, but there was still a hefty amount. I liked it as a game, but it got boring quickly.

[@Karma20XX]

I was playing TOS at launch. The game has changed entirely several times. The company has totally mismanaged it. I'm totally devastated this game turned out so badly. I went back to private RO. There are hidden quests and secrets, but they are pretty cryptic and will require a guide. The game does improve when you get to mix and match your class but... you're not wrong about the early game.

[@NinaFelwitch]

Yep, I was there too when it launched. Day 1. I was so excited to get a modern Ragnarok Online. And then they fucked it up.

[@zentyrant]

dumbfck devs just refuses to make the qol much more easier for players

[@MsTatakai]

@@zentyrant specially the wall drops and UI size scalling ... its everything so large ...

[@carlosemiralonso7997]

I dont participate in the golden ages of RO, instead i play it for a few weeks when was already on the past. So i regret not having a guild/pvp/etc on my never ending list of think that i would liked to do on RO.

[@grantsamson2384]

@@NinaFelwitch I was playing it pretty consitantly until I hit a grind wall on my spear-animal-riding character.

[@nguyenhoangkien6745]

Oh boy the game I fear most to be introduced on this series is finally here.

[@somederp8915]

Remember, Warframe is also in this series.

[@teyvatvillager136]

@@somederp8915 and still have their usual concurrent player as usual

[@inaberger6628]

i like it :/

[@hiddenbruh]

Same, this was my first genuine mmo game that I played. It had its issues but over it was an amazing experience

[@Nekromast]

@@somederp8915 I'm glad they are adding some QoL improvements for the new players, for example the small hint on the top what they should do next Of course that's not all what's needed and I'm sure it will still take them a long time to finally do a learning by doing tutorial about the mod system and similar things (basically everything Brozime suggested) but it's a step forward

[@broseph6032]

tried this game out a few years ago and came to the same conclusion, which is a shame cause the visuals are top tier and i could see myself dumping hours if the player experience was better :(

[@ShinjiTomi]

i played ALL closed betas, the exp was capped and really low, making you have to grind the same crowded spots for days and making you get acquainted to people around you and turning them into friends, i was so happy because i am a ragnarok early days kid . i gotta say, playing the closed betas and after the release was... sincerely a massive letdown. the game could have been a hit if they didn't neglect the game so bad and tried to get money fast.

[@Zombiesbum]

Btw, the paid-for classes use to be free. They were usually each unlocked via a very tedious chain of "quests" (wait in a zone for 3 hours was one part), but of course the corporate greed set in and they just couldn't help but sell us the solution. Another thing, the classes are unlocked per character. So if you play a different character and you want to use the class you purchased before, well too bad, you got to go buy it again.

[@SgtMurasa]

Regarding the absolute crapton of classes available to players: It was never really like this. Back when the game launched in 2016, every advancement class had tiers. For example: If you start as a Warrior, you could choose between Peltasta (shield) and Highlander (two-handed sword); Let's call them Rank 1 classes. The next time you can advance again, you can choose either Rank 1 classes again or Rank 2 classes (Barbarian or Hoplite), and the next advancement has you choosing between Rank 1, 2 and 3 classes, and so forth. Choosing the same class as before will advance its Circle from 1 to 2, then from 2 to 3. Each time you do so, you unlock more skills for that class and increase those skills' max level. This was what made the game seem so complicated when it launched. You could have a Swordsman build that goes Highlander 3, or maybe Highlander 2 and Barbarian 1, or maybe Peltasta into Hoplite to get some actual damaging skills for leveling, then back to Peltasta 2 and then Rodelero for more tanking skills... There were a lot of choices for the player to go with, and each advanced class had their own unique niche. Of course, after some time, the meta gets solved and people naturally gravitate to the best builds. Fast forward to 2018's class revamp. The new system essentially removes all those restrictions, allowing you to pick any advanced class at any point in time and also removing the Circle system altogether. That's why you see the mess at 8:23 now. The game just dumps every class at you now.

[@SgtMurasa]

@@tiropat393 The entire class system was redesigned and rebalanced, and IIRC every old account got a class reset potion.

[@RenValhalla]

i played pre and pos revamp, the new class system is much easier and friendly(with the con that u have to read to see wich class u want), almost all classes can be played in any time because of the ballance they had and soo much more and better builds where made because f it....

[@SmartyPoohBear]

I think the new class system is way better--a lot more friendly to new players. I remember trying to play it pre revamp cause I was immediately in love with the falconer class the moment I saw it on the website. However I hated how I had to be grind and lvl up only to advance to classes I didn't want to play. Played after the revamp and I really enjoyed the few months I spent on it. The whole game was such eye candy and I finally got to have my pet falcon and bounce around in my cute falconer outfit.

[@Da_maul]

I don't really have a horse in this race, but I'll say that ToS is a phenominal time waster for when you don't have a lot of thought to spare, it's my default "flip your sleep schedule back to normal" game. The way to have fun is to make a scout and then take the bullet marker subclass. then you just shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot some more until the sun goes down and you can finally go to bed. I forget what level I made it to but it was I like 1/4 of the way to level cap. Either way, it's obviously not high brow stuff, but for a particular use case, it's fantastic. (edit): Oh and you forgot to mention that when you level up you damage every enemy on screen so they all charge at you and give you a big dump of XP

[@aoffydosy1530]

I have still reminded the day I played musket cavalry using Schwartz Reiter's mounting, mustekteer's musket using and running shot, make my character ride - by musket shooting and it's so fun. It cannot do like this anymore from removing class star level and adding scout class, making archer class no mounting unless playing warrior or scout one.

[@pockystyx4087]

This one hurts; because you can tell there was some heart to this game, before it all went to hell. I feel bad for those who worked so hard on the game, the players put a lot of time into the game, and those who were looking to get a new Ragnarok Online experience. And for the 8,968 classes; not a one of them is a Spellsword. . . unforgivable.

[@janrendon465]

What I love in this game, although a bit overwhelming at first, is the class system. It somehow brings out the “role playing” aspect in MMORPG that majority of MMOs right now lacks. Although there are “optimum class combination” You can still mix and match classes and it will still be viable. If you want to be a full support you can do that. If you want to be more a single target sharshooter, you can, if you wanna be a “jack of all trades” you can. That’s the reason why i always go back to this game everytime they have a booster event where you can level up from 1 to max level in a single day because of that. Sadly every updates made the game too difficult to follow plus the micro-transactions made a enormous gap between the f2p from a p2w player. I really want this game to succeed but the devs really fucked it up.

[@Kiboune_YT]

I laughed so hard when I saw what priest can set donation booth, to get money from other players. I love non combat skills in MMORPG, which use theme of the job/class. I remember rogue in RO could draw graffiti on ground

[@phucanh108]

4:05 what do we call the "light dots" effect here, I want to search how to create a particle like that but dont know the keyword, please help me

[@gabrielvieira7890]

I played almost 2k hours of this game at launch, my favorite part was the exploration system, that gave ranking and even statues in town to those who explored the game the most. Not sure if it is there tho. Also, the steam achievements were added after I stopped playing, so the percentage is low mostly bc it was added much later after the playerbase had left, but even so, it is disapointing what they did to my son.

[@carloszuchowski1503]

Just a small correction at 4:00, you're actually joining a channel for your character current map and not a server. Each map get his own channels based on how many ppl are there. Still an awesome video! Waiting for a Ragnarok Online video in the future!!

[@LeoBeastmode]

Good catch. I tend not to worry about current player numbers much but this is a very bad sticking point for anyone who might be interested in dipping their toes in the game. I think that deserves a correction in the video.

[@gilfreitas9779]

Would love to see josh reviewing RO. Such a classic, killed by greed and mismanagement.

[@kuro9410_ilust]

@@gilfreitas9779 imo the "renewal" killed it

[@IamaPERSON]

@@kuro9410_ilust well is it called Ragnarok. It was bound to die anyway :P

[@zantanzuken]

i feel like the entire ragnarok online video can be summerized by 'what do I do... where do I go? what's going on?' and then 6 hours of beating up small cute monsters in the woods.

[@Subjagator]

19:08 Many of the older final fantasy games had that same problem. I lost count of how many times I went through a screen transition only to end up doing a 180 and immediately running back out because I was holding down a direction on the controller. If I recall the older resident evil games did it a lot too, half the rooms I went into it seemed the camera location was almost arbitrarily chosen for each individual room.

[@Nerobyrne]

oh yeah that was so annoying ^^

[@BknMoonStudios]

The early RE games had wonky fixed cameras because of hardware limitations. In order to create realistic, immersive backgrounds in underpowered systems (PSX and GameCube), they superimposed a pre-rendered image on the screen and had the characters move in a separate 3D room. The difference between these two elements could be seen in the 1.0 version of REmake HD, where a glitch caused the pre-rendered images to not match the 3D room and you could see your character "run on the walls". It is also why the early games had tank controls. With tank controls, your character will always move forward, regardless of where the camera is positioned.

[@Nerobyrne]

@@BknMoonStudios the problem with RE games is they kept the terrible camera and tank controls in later games

[@fadhelgartam6840]

The ONLY thing that makes me play ToS again after 7 years of not playing is the nostalgia factor. Back then when I'm still at uni, I got quite a bad depression (when I think about it now, it wasn't that big of a problem, just my general stupidity that makes me think so), I played this with my brother and one of my friend. We play, eat, sleep when we tired, and when we heard one of us opened Tree of savior (the BGM was banging), all of us woke up simultaneously and began playing again. This cycle continues for good 2-3 weeks, and those weeks are when I feel the "most alive" even when I spend 99% of my time in the game. One of my favorite class was Linker (remember when linker was still in the wizard tree? Yeah, good times). The sound effect when I use the Joint Penalty, and when I gather all the enemies linked with Hangman's knot is just chef's kiss. Right now, the story quest is just waay too fast. I remember, getting to Fedimian took us around 1 week (lv 100). Now, I can get to lv 300 in just 3-4 days even when I go to work from morning to evening. It just takes away the fun. I'm still playing it tho Edit: I just remembered one event back then. I played in Indonesian server, all 3 of us just arrived in Fedimian. I remember, we can only get 3 chance per day to do the dungeon (I forgot what it's called). When we finished all 3, we loved to just hang around the quest building, doing PVP, card battle, all those extra stuff. I don't know how, but at one point, almost everyone in that area start playing with us too. We wanted to create a guild, Fedimian Pirates (if you remember me, hello!) but the name had been taken by some random guy who we doesn't know (guild can only be founded by Templar and none of us were Templar back then), and it incurred a big wrath among my friends.

[@XlovedDesign]

As a spiritual successor of Ragnarok Online, it feels pretty much on point. At least the current Brazilian server which i played when I was young and get back during pandemic is just a TON of griding imposing an invisible wall on your progress as you get 0.1% of experience for each mob you kill (that you tooked 1 minute and a LOT of expensive potions to kill as you don't have money to buy the good equips). It's so bad to level up that occasionally the game gives the players an Event which is just an instanced map where you can level up faster. And all this grinding and money farming (which have its own invisible walls to difficulty newer players to progress in the game as the good itens cost in milions or even bilions) it has a CRAP OF LOOTBOXES, it's like a casino which happens to have a game bounded to it. Remeber the good and expensive itens? A lot of then (and not just the core end game) are not just sold on the cash shop (and not farmabble AT ALL) but actually were available for during a week and don't come back to it in like a year to make it artificially rare (and the core end game ones came in as rare as this event in cash lootboxes with 0.1% of chance for you to get). I was playing in a new account and was told to get a hat that regens health as you deal damage in order to farm money to get the good cash itens without cash (as they are tradable), but it already came to the cash shop 1 month early i get back to the game so it will take a long time to be available again. So I needed to farm millions of money to buy a item that was needed in order to farm millions of money in the first place.

[@thomasm9876]

Oh man Tree of Savior. This game was absolutely hilarious early on - the first public beta test had 10% exp rate - we would spend a whole day farming the level 40 zones at level 25-30 just to get further, most people quit before even getting their 3rd circle, and the few dedicated ones who got to 4th could be counted on one hand. Second beta, we figured out you could enter commands in chat to send oversized bagels in world chat, but also complete quests over and over (you could get infinite skill points in all classes on one character by repeating the advancement quests). Then it launched, and was pretty good, but still had some big issues. Performance was awful, you'd commonly see it drop to 2fps when you had a Wizard in your group casting flashy stuff, and running 2-3 of them was meta. Meta quickly boiled down to few overperforming classes (Hahaman, CryoKino and Elementalists, and SorcNecro for afk farming when sleeping), but was surprisingly diverse and forgiving enough to see every class pop up here and there (even the worst classes like Rodelero and Hunter ended up having players who completely dominated with them). The PvP content divided community and caused many to quit, and then the PvE content was too little too late. The visuals and audio are phenomenal, class system was fantastic and had tons of potential, it's a shame it died.

[@Emreakca-]

this kind of game would be awesome to play in beta or in its start, its sad that I missed it

[@Tnscla]

Class balance is what killed it for me, they had awesome swordsman classes but they were all useless in the end game. You could go 2-3 wizard routes, 1-2 archer routes or plague doctor. They fixed most of it but now its too late =/

[@Nuvizzle]

What sucks is that they totally gutted the class system in order to "balance" it, but the game arguably became less balanced than it ever was before. They narrowed the relevant endgame content/progression grind down so much that if you bother to use a build that isn't specialized for that content your character basically does nothing, so 90% of people started using the same 3 builds. Instead of having interesting freeform character building with imbalanced results, you get rigid dull character building with even more imbalanced results. Amazing.

[@B1u35ky]

The exp rate was fine early on, now it's way too easy.

[@kohtas]

For all of it’s downfalls I still love going back to this game once in a while just for the art and music alone.

[@kohtas]

After watching the full video I'd have to say Josh, you're 100% correct on all of it's downfalls. The way I've enjoyed the game is just playing it casually and taking it in a little bit at a time, I wouldn't try to grind it out and rather kind of immerse and read quest text, etc. If you're new to the game or want to try it out just expect the worst but try to enjoy what it does well, and DO NOT spend any money on it because even if you get to end game you're not going to be competitive with any of the players who have spent thousands of hours. Just pick it up once in a while play it for a bit and put it down for a while. It's a good vacation game to poke at here and there when everything else is feeling a bit stale or when waiting for a new patch, etc. for your current favorite game.

[@WanderyenErin]

Exactly THIS. The art, the feeling of combat and the soundtrack are everything.

[@desubysnusnu]

Also returning gifts. They do gift a lot of end game shits that i have no idea whats for when i go back once in a while lol

[@kohtas]

@@desubysnusnu yea I boosted a Cleric to 460 last night with a return gift then realized I made a big mistake when I had no gear to support it 😆 but I did get a bunch of other end game stuff to use.

[@shurhaian]

@19:40 I'm curious - would there be an exception to this for cases where you can clearly see a change of direction implicit in the transition (a spiral/switchback staircase, for instance)? As long as it's used sparingly?

[@ElShogoso]

I remember getting into the hype of this game when it was announced as a spiritual sequel to Ragnarok online (anyone who has played RO or knows someone who played RO knows the incredible high levels of nostalgia people get for that game), and it was probably the single most disappointing game I've played in my life, despite tempering my expectations due to the fact that RO was a childhood game of mine and would probably never be something I'd experience again.

[@atleiya562]

Just wanted to say they added the Steam achievements about 1 year ago if I recall correctly, which is why the achievement percentage is absolutely abysmal. Regardless though, the points do stand. I tried playing for the story and the text walls are absolutely awful (also the translations are not necessarily good and sometimes key elements are introduced out of nowhere leading to whatttttt moments).

[@AlexisOnFiraa]

I had fun playing this game when it when out, it was quite nostalgic for my golden time playing Ragnarok Online

[@bender9740]

I really enjoyed playing this game when it first launched. Leveled up and unlocked Chronomancer as a class, which was so dang cool to play as... Now it's a very different game.

[@joshuaroefs9279]

You have to appreciate the many references to halo infinite when it was almost as dead as this game in less than a single year 😂

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Every time I see a game that has "too many" systems, it makes me feel like a game that got its features extended over the years it runs. That those features originally got introduced one at a time with months or even years inbetween, and are now dunked at once at a new player.

[@madnessoverload7824]

Hi Josh i wanted to recommend a severely underrated mmo called Spiral Knights. I played it as a kid and even today i think it's a ton of fun. Would love to see it highlighted on the channel :)

[@IamaPERSON]

I've heard of it, what's it like

[@madnessoverload7824]

@@IamaPERSON It's pretty unique in the mmo landscape. There are no classes or levels, your power and playstyle are entirely determined by your gear. You have 3 types of weapons: swords, guns and bombs, and you can have up to 4 weapon slots. Combat is simple, but engaging and quite challenging in the mid-late game.

[@IamaPERSON]

@@madnessoverload7824 interesting

[@alexandraalmagest]

If someone were to make an MMO out of old topdown Zelda Games, Spiral Knights is what you'll get.

[@SnivyTries]

@@IamaPERSON It also has a seriously "pay us money" upgrade system where to actually progress through the game, you need higher tier equipment...but to get to that tier, you need three things at that tier. Weapon, Armor, and Shield. Three different things that take Heat, currency, and materials. (Heat and money drop from enemies, mats...well.) 3 star equipment is where you start to notice the pain, trying to get a 5 star item is hell.

[@clara_cross]

I was there from the beginning with this game. I went HARD into this game. I was foaming at the mouth to play this game from as soon as it was announced. At the end of the beta, I was the #7 top ranked player on the server. After the beta, I lead a successful guild. I was one of the best healers you could've grouped with. THIS GAME IS THE REASON I *GOT* A STEAM ACCOUNT! And you know what? Every. Single. Word. Of this. Review. Is true. All of it (well, except one detail I'll address at the end). As someone who put literally many thousands of hours into this game, I can DEFINITIVELY say that this review is SPOT ON. But you know what else? You didn't even play long enough to get the worst of it. Now, granted, I haven't played this game in over three years at this point, so I can't speak for what it's like today, but, at least at the time, the endgame content progression was *INSANELY* RNG dependent (and I imagine it probably still is). There is a FIENDISHLY complicated gear upgrading system that requires HUNDREDS UPON HUNDREDS of hours and THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS of re-rolls in order to accomplish. And the mechanics surrounding the nature of these re-rolls and the sorts of upgrades you want to get are DEVILISHLY complicated. In my guild's Discord server (which still exists), I have an entire channel dedicated JUST to a guide that I wrote up for explaining this ridiculous, convoluted mess. And, like... it's long... It's got charts, and graphs, and oodles and oodles of text. And you have to STUDY it. Like... A LOT. You need to do HOMEWORK to progress in this game. Tragically, many of the problems you discuss in this review (as well as that FUCKING RNG ichoring system) were not a thing in the beta. The beta was SO much better. Nothing was pay-to-win. Or pay-to-anything, really. Mobs and bosses weren't made of wet paper. There was no automatic dungeon queue nonsense (I honestly feel like dungeon finders are the single worst thing that EVER happened to MMOs). The post-beta launch did everything in its power to ensure that players never needed to actually TALK to each other anymore, like, for instance, the aforementioned dungeon queue. One issue you didn't mention that drives me batshit about this game is the fact that every single map in the entire game consists of "room, hallway, room, hallway, room, hallway, room, hallway, room, hallway". Gone are the wide open, mob-packed spaces and interesting mazes of Ragnarok Online. And that one Steam reviewer was right about the Ragnarok Online thing. I *WAS* a diehard Ragnarok Online player, which is why I WANTED SO BADLY to love this game. And a part of me did. But the part of me that cries for this game's squandered potential, and the part of me that just got fed the hell up with its legion of glaring flaws, in the end, are the parts of me that won out. But I can't even go back to RO because the main servers are absolutely RIDDLED with bots that ruin the experience and the new Russian server that opened up on 4Game a couple years ago that isn't riddled with bots renders healers obsolete (I play a healer) because everyone just runs their own personal bot healer on there. Or at least that was the way it was when I last logged into it. I truly believe that Tree of Savior had and still has in its possession all of the necessary ingredients to be the greatest MMO ever made. But it's just... not... It's, like, literally the holy grail with a turd in the chalice. PS: One thing I think you actually got wrong, though... if I remember correctly, that "4 players" thing when you were logging in from your lodge did not mean "4 players logged into the server", it meant "4 players currently on the SPECIFIC ZONE MAP that you'll be logging into". So there were 4 people in the starting zone, not online in totality.

[@Irisfantasies]

as someone who played during beta and then forgot about the game until very recently... yeah most of the stuff you see now was added when the game became a flop this game actually had a good pace in its earlier stages

[@Bloomkyaaa]

*I can't believe I read the Bee Movie script for 1 minute before realizing what I was reading.*

[@elmanhux]

Retired Veteran here. Some stuff was wrong (4/100 at the start is only the player on the current map you log in NOT the server [EU should have 80-120 active players, I still write with some people] and the achievement System got implemented like 3 years after the launch hence most players never saw it e.g. I don't think I have that one despite over 10k hours xD) But the general idea is right: P2W Shop Great music and Art Overwhelming amount of upgrade systems The first hours or first 330 levels or so are tutorial and got no challenge anymore, sadly Combat is getting more thrilling once you reach close to the current max level and do party stuff One thing is odd to me: Considering you are playing games around 8 hours before reviewing you only showed footage even the freshest of noobs see during the first 3 hours or so and miss some of the really pretty maps haha

[@miavelvet]

Im pretty sure it has more than 80-120 on eu. I mean even now this game still peaks at 2k people online in steam from time to time. I rarely play Tree of Savior nowadays and the game is really disappointing but i was still annoyed by the fact that he called this game "completely dead with 4 people online"

[@The88shrimp]

Would I enjoy the game if I were to go through it like it was single player? Is all the content doable solo and all the achievements obtainable like that? Also is it possible to go through the entire game solo without touching MTX or any P2W systems?

[@takodachi1239]

@@The88shrimp in theory yes, in practice you would need to interact with people and go ask some guild discord or forum because there are multiple power up system and class interaction that make or break a character. It's nigh impossible to brute force experimenting. Also several EU players still do all content without touching any TP stuff.

[@elmanhux]

@@miavelvet it could be more, always hard to say considering bots / multis. But you got point, it is actually one of the lesser dead games he showed so far. This video shows that you cannot take everything he says at face value which is fine for since I mostly watch him for entertainment

[@elmanhux]

@@The88shrimp You could enjoy it. One thing he does not show is that TOS has, while MOSTLY standard fetch / kill stuff, really good side stories in its quest lines imo good enough to just play the game for those stories and go through every map even if it lacks challenge during hundreds of levels Except you restrain yourself by NOT using boost and even some quest rewards

[@liquidsleepgames3661]

The way you explained this was my experience playing wow with a friend who played for years. He ran me through the early levels up to level 90-100 by following and him knowing and doing pretty much everything and by the time we were on "equal" footing I had no idea what we were doing and he expected me to know what to do.

[@simonliu2008]

The real WOW died after the patch Wrath of Lich King. WOW was the only true God in MMORPG till WLK :( You started it on the wrong time, the WOW now is shit as

[@liquidsleepgames3661]

@@simonliu2008 yeah I started on warlord's

[@ramvicious8057]

All the shilling for Halo Infinite in this video did not age well

[@wideboi5179]

Long time ToS player here: Everything melts in early game. even when it was first released, you could basically one-shot everything. Later, around level 150 or so, that stops. It stops dead in it tracks. So much so that they had to buff the swordsman and subsequent classes for it because they literally could not complete content as the mobs and bosses had so much HP and did so much damage if you weren't playing mage or ranger class, you were the one getting one-shot. And those XP cards you get? You are supposed to save them. because at later levels, the grind is so intense you'll go insane without boosts to get you through certain level thresholds.

[@kyoai]

"Everything melts in early game. even when it was first released, you could basically one-shot everything" No, that is not true. When the game was new and one only had weak equipment enemies in early game actually took more than just a few hits, especially bosses.

[@AlexGorskov]

@@kyoai Yup, agree. I played on release. It got pretty hard at lvl ~45 or so.

[@MefoWho]

@@AlexGorskov i remembered playing a cryomancer, create an icewall so swordmans can hit my icewall and shoot ice stone thingy. Was pretty fun until i ran out of swordman to hit my icewall

[@saitoXamaterasu]

@@kyoai yup i can confirm that i was a beta player and in the begging the game was a little more hard

[@oscarvinicios]

@@AlexGorskov it got grindy, not hard, things had so much hp, but it wasnt difficult, beta player here.

[@zerocubeiserlohn4791]

Nice video, you got alot of things right with just a few hours of playing. fun fact: lv1 - lv460 are just the tutorial of this game. BTW, that [number/100] is players on the map, not players in the game

[@blazewagon5677]

aside from minor things like systems either not being there entirely or diffrent completely this video describes the feeling of dissapointment so early on is very fitting. as someone who played the game way back when as it came out in the west having followed content creators who played the korean version of the game before it was a thing in the west. many many thousand hours of playtime and good times later watching the game just fall apart over the years was very heartbreaking to see when it had such potential to begin with. things that made the game good were either changed or removed alltogether and eventually one change was one change to many and I as many others too, left the game for good. sometimes I wish I could go back to the earlier days of ToS like only a year or two into the game kinda deal. you win some you lose some, game truly was a gem and it's a right shame what became of it. maybe next time. I could go on for days and talk about the game and my feelings for it but who has the time for that.

[@OtakuWrath]

I was actually really excited for Tree of Savior when I saw trailers for it back in the day and then I got on it and never even made it to combat. I was spammed to hell with gold selling messages and when I attempted to disable chat I found absolutely no way to disable it. Couldn't report the spam, couldn't even filter it. I just had to deal with it so instead of dealing with it I just uninstalled.

[@IamKino1]

Imagine a remaster of this game... with optimized tutorials etc, this would be incredible

[@Onebie]

Now i want him to play Ragnarok Online...

[@cummiedummie8196]

Back when the game first released in SEA, TOS was quite the huge deal especially for old RO players. Personally it was grind heavy, very tedious, but fun and rewarding. Secrets (like quest & collectibles), are also a nice addition. But the endgame was lackluster. No endgame pve (besides world bosses & earth tower being released soon after), pvp really needs overhaul, lots of bugs, and the worst of it all, bots. The economy becomes a mess, a hard to find mats or recipes becomes easily accessible, and when these bots got banned, a lot new ones just sprung after. People lost motivation to play. The only saving grace for it was the class building/theorycrafting. I actually want to download the game again after watching your vids, but that size really makes me think otherwise lol...

[@DarkFrozenDepths]

You mentioned the megaphones and that reminded me... No mention of the megaphones in the Elsword video huh? That has them too. Along with dances (the closest thing to gestures) and a few other things you mentioned.

[@saidaestrategica]

I played it on beta then for almost 900 hours and i must say: yep, had the potential to be one of the most amazing MMOs ever but the content draught and basically no end game except guild wars, it falls flat... But the "adventure" to the max lvl is pretty fun, if you like grinding (i mean, the good grind).

[@SCHMOBEX]

you could post this exact comment under a new world video lmao

[@lucastzp]

Era bem daora a progressão de classe me lembro o quanto era demorado virar Shinobi (era sub classe do Warrior na época), e tinha a Earth Tower e as armas de Practonio, eu sempre sonhava com a Sarkmis e era super difícil crafta ela...

[@KaoruMzk]

“[Tree of savior] is 28GBs , that’s massive” PSO2: *nervously sweating*

[@theowlmancometh]

ESO: He can only see movement, right?

[@undercoverbreadbug2723]

Are steam achievement numbers accurate? I sweat 99% of games have below 40% on every achievement, which would mean like 60% of people barely go beyond booting the game up.

[@TheMrFishnDucks]

This looks beautiful. It could have been a fantastic JRPG however it is dying now. Nice video. Keep up the good work.

[@BeruleAdierant]

I really loved the videos about this game during its beta stages. I still remember it biggest selling point neing the ability to combine each class with whatever other you wanted; making it one of the most free form class System I had ever seen in this genre.

[@iHaveGrudgeAgainstUT]

If you think this is overwhelming, you should try the classical version where each class can upgrade 3 times :( They already simplified it once, but yes, it was even more overwhelming. I dropped out after 4 months of playing because its jst endlessly beating up monsters and the quest story is SOOOOO boring. Not to mention the early boost force you to skip all of the early game zones

[@rolfs2165]

If displayed and communicated well, I think having a class tree (even three or four layers deep) can be a lot better and easier balanced than just shoving 20 specialisations into the player's face when they reach level 10 and demanding they pick one. Like, you start with the fighter, and your first choice would be whether you want to be tank, dual-wielding, or all-rounder. And then a while later, you can further specialise in those, with the tank becoming even tankier and able to draw aggro, or group protector (making everyone else able to withstand more), or some kind of paladin, and so on. Just show people the whole tree so they can see what they need to pick to get a certain end class. And you can even have paths cross at some points (where it makes sense), like both tank and all-rounder being able to become a paladin. Heck, you can even have different classes share specializations if you want, like fighter dual-wielder and barbarian having a cross-over. That way you get an impressive looking, but still relatively easy to balance class tree.

[@sebastian192]

i tried to get into the game earlier this week, was going to go cleric, and then miko for one of the subclasses, after looking through the very scarce and dated online resources, i found a word document with the quest required to unlock miko, after working on the quest for hours i came to a post from last year that said quest is still bugged, and only way to unlock class is to buy an unlock voucher. that was my cue to uninstall

[@Ieowo]

My god, 3:35 the music is BEAUTIFUL 9:18 i actually like the "Insert" to sit and recover. It reminds me of old Tales of Pirates game

[@jdubz8173]

I recently started this game with my wife cause it seemed like it'd be a fun co-op experience. Same as you, it felt pretty neat at first with the music, art-style and controls. But then after the cosmetic thing ... my wife and I got this item that boosted us all the way to 460... After we did it we just kind of blankly stared at each other. I asked in chat what we do now that we're 460. Got recommended to just do the story quests. .... Imagine just going through all the episode quests just one-shotting everything you run into. It was so god-damn boring that we just started over without the boosts on new characters. What ended up happening was I didn't like one of the sub classes I chose and learned that I needed to figure out this stupid overcomplicated class reset system in order to change it. You're asked to pick a class without knowing if you'll like it, then you're punished for wanting to change your mind. It's such a 180 from expectations to reality. Super disappointing.

[@maayu8108]

I remember playing it when it came out. And it was a fun couple of weeks, but it became boring, since nobody else was playing it with me. Sadge

[@FrogTonic]

Yeah, this game definitely has some weird choices but I just pushed through and figured out most of the mechanics and what’s important and not. Found a pretty helpful and active guild. I played close to max level and can say I enjoyed it up until this point. It’s not a bad game, but figuring out how to play, like you said, is the hard part. It’s pretty enjoyable once you understand what’s going on.

[@Feljo]

This game was actually a Spiritual Successor to Ragnarok Online when it first launched, you had a lot of maps, old style grinding leveling, unique weapons with effects, MvP like bosses, class quests, useful crafting and other things. Then it all went to trash because of greedy developer/publisher, started to impose restriction to players under the excuse of "stopping the bots" those who only affected actual players. And then they flooded the in game Store with end game gear, you could actually buy the best and latest items needed to do raids. New maps didn't drop anything, they were mostly sand bags that dropped a couple things when they dropped. Also the leveling experience turned to garbage because they have so little people playing the game that they accelerated the leveling by a fk ton and they give you the gear for every level so you could get to end game and do nothing because raid groups were formed around the people still playing. The only good point of ToS at this point is as Josh said, the Art of the game, Npc Illustrations class models, music is on point with what Ragnarok online had and classes are actually nice and fun to play and you have a lot of variety, to bad the game turned into a pay 2 win crapfest.

[@Feljo]

One thing to mention is Josh didn't even took any skills other than swrodsman's xDD, don't remember if they game tells you to get skills but you unlock different skills with each class you pick and then you have to choose were to allocate your points so it doesnt feel like an Auto attack spam only.

[@jimothyjoe]

I'd love to see Mabinogi featured in this series! I played it a lot throughout middle school, it definitely has its share of issues lol but it had some unique systems that I have not seen in any other MMO, not to mention it has one of the only MMO stories I actually became invested in. It'd be great to know your thoughts on how it holds up

[@NotMeButAnother]

I only tried Mabinogi for a bit, but I found its task-based levelling system really interesting, so I second this request!

[@taipolar333]

yeah, the game is kinda janky and the monetization is... rough, but I see myself going back to it every few months for the past 16 or so years, because there really isn't any other game out there that scratches that itch.

[@grim566]

I still go back every so often amd just fall in love again. Something about how the characters look, the music, juat the story. It all feels so fun. God I love how the newer skills all have a storyline to follow

[@taipolar333]

@cutetinyzombie ay sure he can matey.

[@allefsilva3532]

Yesterday I was looking if you covered Tree of Savior on this series.I played alot since release on Stream, and watched while it becomes the mess of a game that it is now.

[@frtzkng]

Fun side note: Klaipėda, Šiauliai, Gytis are places in Lithuania, and the names in the tutoral level, like Titas, Laimonas, Srautas, Solilunis, are common Lithuanian names. Also someone in Google Translate has a grudge against Šiauliai, because in GT it translates to "shit" lol

[@Sebastianmaz615]

Love these "Worst MMO Games" videos! Love the way you describe what you believe/think is wrong. Hilarious 🤣😊. 5:27, "aggressive vegetables." Funny. Sure there's quite a bit more to come in this video. Just discovered these about 3 days ago.

[@steel5897]

"Completely neglect pacing" There it is. This is by far the biggest reason the game is bad.

[@LastierX]

The game is fun casually. I'm going back to it every 6 months or so. You're right that the systems upon systems are overwhelming and off putting. Do not under any circumstances get involved with end game gear grinding. It's an absolute hell that will make your life miserable. If you want a game with a lot class variety, fluid combat, nice graphics and a breathtaking soundtrack, then you might as well try it out until the main story quest ends.

[@favoritemustard3542]

**in Guru Larry voice** _Halo, you!_ This is/was a pretty cash displacement vehicle!

[@DarkSoulsGaming]

I've been watching all of these videos as I grind out Grand Chase Classic, an MMO you should definitely do a video on. This Wednesday (May 24th, 2023) they will be releasing an update making the new player experience much quicker, easier, and with more loot making it the perfect time to check it out! Elsword was technically a sequel to Grand Chase, but I never personally got into it. It would blow my mind to see this game get some attention! I even named my son after one of the main characters! Art and music are phenomenal in this one. To where I almost want to try it. but fortunately I know from this video how bad it is.

[@Fleshdolls]

As a long-time veteran of this game who also eventually quit, I have to compliment on how accurately you managed to hit the nail on the head with ToS. I had been playing ever since it's closed betas, and yes: very many completely new upgrade systems and mechanics overtook the majority of the older ones. It would turn itself on it's head every couple months with some new upgrade system, instead of working with what was already there. This game reinvented it's own wheels soooo many times over. Those older systems were what made the experience far more immersive for me. Back when I started, we would have to stop mid-instance dungeon multiple times to place bonfires so the party can heal if there were no clerics. As slow as it was, I think I enjoyed the coziness that provided.

[@mhb0496]

ah the good times, having a random party sitting at the bonfire chatting random stuff

[@fadhelgartam6840]

THE BONFIRE, how could I forget it! That was one of the greatest feature of ToS in my opinion. Not because of the mechanic, but because how we chat with strangers in our party, getting new friends, and getting fired up before a boss-fight

[@monkeyafc]

Ah yes. The Bee Movie script is the ultimate review score

[@NaudVanDalen]

17:13 They really had to show each Mercenary Badge separately instead of just showing the total number. It both looks way too overwhelming and there's no way to figure out how many you actually got.

[@jaxsonbateman]

I am amazed the review score wasn't something like "not Halo Infinite out of 10". Seemed like you were gearing up for that the whole episode.

[@Zombemi]

This reminded me so much of the first Final Fantasy Tactics. They're both gorgeous, lots of classes, only difference is FFT had an AMAZING storyline and (iirc) good tutorials. It is so sad, I spent this entire video either overwhelmed with nostalgic awe as I saw the art, saddened by how badly they dropped this gorgeous ball or annoyed by that goddamn small black line that pops up randomly. Thought it was a smudge.

[@smward87]

Tactics had a tutorial, but it was an optional option on the start menu so most players probably didn't use it. The thing is, the game was intuitive so you didn't need to.

[@xionication]

I remember being incredibly excited about Tree of Savior when I first set eyes on it, largely due to its parallels with Ragnarok Online. How unfortunate that it turned out to be exactly like you say. On another note, this video served as an excellent Halo Infinite ad. Installing it now!

[@Sammy102093]

If they ever make an MMO based on the Mana series, it needs to look like this

[@seiver5353]

I remember playing this back in the day. I jumped to it once ragnarok got old for me. I never got too far but the early game was amazing with how it really forced you into groups early on. Level 10 and onward was group stuff and it was fun.