Shroud of the Avatar: Forsaken Virtues [Steam, Official Site] made big promises, but sadly it has failed to deliver overall. The official release is now here. With the release, the in-game map still doesn't work on Linux and the performance of the Linux version is quite terrible.
Considering Shroud comes from Richard “Lord British” Garriott and Starr “Darkstarr” Long, you would expect some level of quality and direction in what they're doing, but it's a painful experience.
I do like the fact that you can choose to play it either online or offline and that some of the quests can be somewhat interesting to do, but it doesn't make up for all the other issues present in the game.
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Even on the most basic graphical setting, the game struggles to hit 30FPS, often dipping below and it makes it a pretty awful experience honestly. It's stuttering, it actually feels sluggish to control and to play as well.
It's not just the fact that performance is shocking, there's also the issue of the real-money shop, which for a pay to play game that isn't cheap to buy at £30.99 and one that recieved Kickstarter funding of $1.9 million that rubs me the wrong way a bit. I mean come on, they're selling a single sword for $15 (currently reduced from $30!).
The conversation system with you being able to type your questions or just click the shortcuts is interesting, but it feels so watered down it becomes nothing more than a gimmick. Can't find someone? Try asking "where is *name*" and get a gibberish response. With such a conversation system, you would think something so simple as asking the location of someone they should know, would actually do something. The Quest system is also a bit of a nuisance, some quests have bugs where the indicator doesn't update back to the NPC once you've finished it. I'm on a quest right now, where not only has the indicator not updated once I've done the required tasks (checked many times to be sure), the NPC has literally vanished that I'm supposed to talk to as well—not a good state to be in at release.
I could get interested in it in future, if they fix the glaring performance problems, test their quests and get the in-game map working for Linux users. It's incredibly difficult to enjoy something, when it's as sluggish as this and when such a basic feature doesn't work it feels like we've been left out in the cold.
I know the die-hard Shroud fans will argue against my thoughts on this, but the experience really just isn't good right now.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
They all complaining about sluggish performance.
Your review seems so spot on , including transaction part.
Quoting: BeamboomThe gameplay videos found on youtube after this video shows a remarkably much better graphics than we saw earlier - do this mean they've ramped up the visuals considerably compared to earlier videos shown here on GOL, or are the video clips just remarkably selective in what they show?I can't really compare, since I have to run it on lowest and even then it's garbage in terms of performance. Not Linux specific either, plenty of Windows gamers saying the same thing.
Depends what videos you mean.
Edit: I misread you, edited.
Last edited by Liam Dawe on 28 March 2018 at 1:01 pm UTC
Having played it, I personally dislike the combat system. I know that others enjoy it though.
The performance is simply crap (I tested in Linux and Windows).
Quests are broken (and not just some)
It is pay2win and has the ingame shop being incredibly expensive
Loading times are still ridiculous.
Quoting: STiATI had backed this game back in the day, and it became pretty clear during the development process what it is: a ripoff.
There goes another old hero... :-(
To hear that after all that work it still runs like garbage makes me ignore it completely.
stretch611 Mar 28, 2018
While the previous comments did not mention grind, the amount of negativity here does push me on to the "don't bother" side of things. (Its not that they are extreme at all, but the number of people disliking the game for various reasons is a big turn off to the game.)
Quoting: liamdaweQuoting: BeamboomThe gameplay videos found on youtube after this video shows a remarkably much better graphics than we saw earlier - do this mean they've ramped up the visuals considerably compared to earlier videos shown here on GOL, or are the video clips just remarkably selective in what they show?I can't really compare, since I have to run it on lowest and even then it's garbage in terms of performance. Not Linux specific either, plenty of Windows gamers saying the same thing.
Depends what videos you mean.
Edit: I misread you, edited.
I don't see any performance difference between low and high graphical settings(with he exception of shadow distance) so make yourself a favor and crank the settings all the way up when you play this game.
Last edited by nitroflow on 28 March 2018 at 11:58 pm UTC
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