How is it?
As an MMO there is a certain level of expectation(s). You might be expecting WoW-styled raids or overly complicated gearsets. In this MMO, however, you are looking more so at the Runescape-esque type gameplay. There are dungeons, but not as common nor as necessary as other MMOs.
In BitCraft you are as alone or as community-based as you want. Grinding for materials and levels is commonplace, but this game really puts emphasis on player interaction via trades and cities. The best way to describe something like this is to imagine this scenario:
You go to make a tier 4 item, and this item requires fish oil.
You are at a city that is in-land, and this makes fish incredibly expensive or hard to obtain.
You have three options:
1. Obtain that fish oil yourself, which can require more grinding or tasking.
2. You pay the higher price at the town you are established in.
3. You go to a fishing town and check their marketplace for cheaper fish oil.
Obviously most of us would opt for option one; obtaining it yourself. In Bitcraft it can be quite the involved process & can take a long time, and some are more impatient than others. This helps create a market that perpetuate this cycle of community involvement.
Some cool things about this game as I’m sure you, the reader, are aware of. Things like making your own town/city & being able to do whatever you want from the start. If you hop on and only want to fish? You can do that, but it’ll take a lot of marketplace manipulation to get the items to get the boats and equipment. Building a town is a hefty time and material investment but the payoff is huge. If you have a well placed settlement, you can attract all sorts of players to help bolster what you want to do and contribute towards.
The servers appear to be sort of meshed together, represented as different continents on the global map. A lot of the gameplay is similar to Runescape in essence, where you click on something and let it ride until the crafting/gathering is complete. Think RS3 combat as well, not too involved but certainly not AFK.
The grinding is personal preference, I love doing it to a certain extent but once you hit tier 3 it becomes quite intensive and requires a lot of dedication to progress. Up to that point it’s pretty easy and absolutely feels great, but that feeling starts to wane after about 30 hours. Having the community it has really helps with that though, they are insightful and helpful, and are more often than not ready to help newcomers understand the game & help them accomplish their goals.
I really enjoyed what I played of this, and the interactions I had with the community. Overall if you are reading this review you are showing some level of interest in it and it may very well be in your wheelhouse. It’s especially worth it on sale!