The first time I played World of Warcraft, something I undertook despite a friend’s warning, I spent 333 hours on it during a single summer. I have also returned to it on occasion over the years, eventually breaking the 1,000 hour mark. It served as the blueprint for what I grew to expect from MMORPGs. It was far from the only one, though, with the likes of Lineage II, Dofus, and MapleStory also leaving a mark in my memory and expectations.
Over the years, I’ve always been interested in seeing how other developers tackle the genre. Final Fantasy XIV is a daunting commitment; its narrative focus still stands out to this day. Smaller studios have always been of particular interest, as it’s intriguing to see exactly how they iterate on the genre, especially, to not overscope. When they’re promising, these games present subversions and tweaks to existing foundations. A hook, if you will. Yet, securing longevity via a committed player base is hard. WildStar, for example, is an MMO I adored, and one of the many I wish were still around.
Now, a mere week before the launch of World of Warcraft: Forever, another studio joins the fray to try and capture our attention and take us into a new world. Developer InSpades is launching Everlast: Undying Tale in Early Access, introducing it as an MMO-lite action RPG adventure. This mouthful of a genre mashup is less of an online Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning and more of the modern staple of a crafting/survival game with a more robust central structure. As much promise as the universe presents, though, the current state is quite uneven, especially if you want to try and play on your own.
My expectations for Everlast: Undying Tale going in weren’t the highest. The verbs gather, explore, and craft are everywhere in games, and this has been the case for several years now. It is exhausting, and developers are rarely trying to either streamline or find interesting ways to circumvent the overexposition to these mechanics. Yet, the introductory cutscene caught me by surprise.
The introduction to the world is nicely narrated, and it features hand-drawn illustrations with a strong style. The story being presented isn’t anything out of the ordinary, and largely covers beats you’ve already heard of before in other media. But it’s a great way of setting the tone, which makes for a subtle but crucial difference, especially after expecting to find way too many familiar mechanics. At the same time, the juxtaposition between the tone of the cutscene and the actual game is so big that it almost doesn’t do the experience any favors.
The cartoon-inspired art style doesn’t do much to stand out, and the character creation screen makes for a rough first contact, with hair options looking as if they were wigs or fake beards glued on your character’s face, and variety not being as diverse as it could be. Once you’re done, you’re thrown into the world to read conversations that I started skipping through more often than not due to the writing not being the game’s strongest suit.
Telling a good story can be hard when attempting to wrangle what is presented as a massive, interconnected world that can be experienced in 100-player servers. At the same time, an uneven yet solid enough story can provide a good entryway. Everlast: Undying Tale doesn’t have this, an absence that makes getting through the tutorial missions quite tough. This is due to said missions being exactly what you’d expect: gather wood, kill chickens to craft food, mine ore to create a sword, and so on. Sure, all MMOs need to start somewhere, but in almost every possible turn I was hoping for something different, and that never came.
Everlast: Undying Tale, however, has an ace up its sleeve. As the name implies, there’s a strong focus on the undead. They’re the first real enemies that show up to the village your character has lived in their whole life and proceed to tear it to pieces. As it turns out, you, as the protagonist, are also one. Presented as a curse, your zombie state is shown as a meter on your HUD. It fills when you attack and take hits, and whenever you gather items or craft gear. Spend too long without watching it and your character will gain curse side effects. It makes for a promising change of pace. The problem is, if your experience is anything like mine, you’ll have other matters to be concerned about, such as combat.
The combat mechanics in Everlast: Undying Tale are close to what you’ve come to expect from modern action RPGs. You have a stamina bar to contend with, blocking enemy attacks is paramount, and you can juggle multiple abilities, each with its specific uses and, of course, cooldowns. In its current state in early access, however, combat is unbalanced and doesn’t feel as satisfactory as it could be.
The hours I spent with the game were severely punishing, and for no reason whatsoever. There’s a hint of this in the very beginning when you’re asked which difficulty you’d like to play in, selecting from six different options. In standard, whenever you die, you lose the items in your inventory. All the while, your equipped gear, ichor, and quest items stay with you. It’s possible to recover a few of those lost items, but if you want the rest, you’ll have to buy it.
This can feel quite hostile to the whole experience, and makes it feel more like a roguelite or a very old school MMO. To add to it, unless you’re lucky with the players in your server, you’re bound to die quite often, even from seemingly simple enemies. Everything hits twice as hard as it should, if not more. The whole introductory phase with the game was unnecessarily tough, and even after upgrading my gear and obtaining my abilities, this predicament was still present.
One of the features that Everlast: Undying Tale offers is the option to tackle the experience in single-player. This, too, can be quite uneven. Some of the quests that you stumble upon trigger what are called events, which are time-gated tasks that require you to hit certain milestones, such as crafting and delivering 45 shortbows in 15 minutes. If you’re in the early game and you don’t have the materials for this, it’s basically impossible. Chopping and delivering 70 logs, defeating 45 enemies. The list goes on. These quests are intended to be completed with other players also contributing to the goal, but the fact that they aren’t adjusted for single-player is a massive misstep that I hope is addressed.
The studio anticipates the game to be in early access for around a year, hoping to add features that didn’t make it into early access, as well as expanding the ones present and fleshing out the world. As it stands, the rough spots are aplenty. Something as crucial as the character’s movement feels off, striking a balance between feeling as if you’re both dragging your feet and feeling floaty simultaneously. Combat animations also feel like they are very much in an early state to properly engage in fights with enthusiasm, especially when the aforementioned lack of balance exacerbates everything.
I have no shortage of qualms with Everlast: Undying Tale, but I also recognize its promise, as well as the care and craft behind it from people who clearly have a soft spot for MMOs. With the game being in early access, I can see some of these complaints being ironed out over time. It may not become the next MMO I spend an entire summer engulfed by, but I’m excited to see how the project continues to evolve from here. If the introductory cutscenes are any indication, that initial promise might be fulfilled over time.
