2021 New World & 2024 New World Review
Welcome to Dudley’s Hub website you have come into Dudley’s gaming Blog review my name is Daniel Dudley known as Unlucky Dudley. This is my official review blog for New world game from the old to the new.
NEW WORLD FROM 2021
What happens when you combine the shell of a hardcore fantasy MMORPG with the trappings of a hardcore survival game? I just spent the 3 year and a half finding out with New World, Amazon Games’ Colonial-themed MMO that plops you and other human survivors onto a cursed island where you must gather, craft, and fight for the dominion of one of three competing factions. It’s visually gorgeous and its ideas for a player-driven economy are bold, reaching the level cap and exploring the endgame content, it comes together as a thoroughly unremarkable game thanks to a needlessly drawn-out grind with not enough variety or swashbuckling to sustain it. The promise of New World is pretty simple: You’re a pirate shipwrecked on a mystical island called Aeternum, which is rumored to be full of treasures. This is all a thinly veiled excuse to go out and plunder everything you see, and New World wastes no time teaching you how to cut a direct swath through its breathtaking wilderness; you’ll soon find yourself chopping down every tree, skinning every animal, and mining every ore node in sight, then turning their raw resources in to the local Town Project board or just selling them to other players at the trading stall. And even after reaching the level cap of 60, you’ll still need to engage heavily in all this crafting and gathering business, even when you finally get to engage with the thoroughly enjoyable Outpost Rush PVP mode. There is action combat, of course, and it feels especially slick in the initial few battles. For instance, enemies are way more reactive than in other MMORPGs, often dodging and darting around you. It forces you to stay on your toes at all times. Since there’s no tab-targeting system, you need to aim each of your attacks, so the timing of a particular attack or dodge roll can make or break a fight. This would be exhilarating if it were built upon from there, but it drops the ball in that there isn’t all that much variation to how your character plays over time as you level up.
World War
At least the world PvP has almost no restrictions, and it's where the most fun can be had. My most memorable experience in New World was a 5-hour PvP session that saw me jumping all over the world trying to throw territories into conflict, accompanied by hordes of Syndicate pals. It's genuinely a thrill to see a quiet grove thrown into disarray as a murderous train of bloodthirsty players charge into it on a PvP quest. And you can even get a taste of the war mode's sieges. Every territory has a fort with dense fortifications and even some defensive structures for attackers to hide behind as they exchange musket fire.
But even during these large-scale scraps there are frustrations. The fights are an absolute clusterfuck with this many players, so you just jump in and hope for the best, but the game might decide that, actually, there are too many players trying to have fun right now. Half of my attempts to fight in forts have met with failure because there's a limit to the number of players not just inside a fort, but around it. If you charge in, you're given 10 seconds to leave the zone or you'll be unceremoniously teleported all the way back to the nearest settlement.
While reaching the endgame rewards you with some new dungeons and territories to quest in, I'm so tired of New World's half-hearted PvE that I'm only really interested in continuing the conflict between the factions. Unfortunately, even that's not currently enough to make me stick around. It's been fun to be an underdog for a while, but that enjoyment starts to wither when you realise there are so few opportunities to improve your faction's position. With fewer territories and new players not wanting to join the loosing side, all you get is a slow decline. There's just a sense of hopelessness, with the main companies now planning on jumping to another server.
New World's attempt to tick all the boxes has left it feeling scattershot and underbaked. The PvE is the main victim, which seems to exist purely out of obligation. But the sandbox, with its competing factions and hypnotic crafting loop, kept me logging back in, at least for a couple of hundred hours. There's still enjoyment to be had, then, and the busy servers make this the best time to experience what New World actually does well, but now that I've seen all it has to offer, I don't feel a compulsion to continue.
NEW WORLD FROM 2024
After playing through the first 10-50 levels of New World: Aeternum I finally dug into the full game on the release date on my PS5. As someone who does their darndest to roll credits on a game before putting fingers to blog on a review, I’m finding it tough to know when to determine when I’ve seen enough of New World: Aeternum to render a verdict. MMOs are built to distract the player, pulling them in all directions with a bazillion fun things to do. It’s been difficult to focus up.
But focus, I have, pushing through many mainline story quests and an equal number of side quests. I’ve spent time exploring the beautiful world, grinding out crafting skills, bought and decorated a house, and run several instances. I even ventured into a PVP area, even though that is far from my jam.
Bottom line – if I don’t stop now, I’m never gonna stop. New World: Aeternum is very, very entertaining. You may have seen some recent articles decrying the fact that Amazon has been pushing Aeternum as an “action RPG” as opposed to an update of it’s existing MMO. There is some value in that take – this is not a new game - but I do think that it sells short the work that has been done on New World that makes it more approachable to new players. The new cut scenes are very engaging, the story is simple, fun, and easy to parse in a way that had me actually
a) knowing what was going on and
b) caring about what happened next. And the world itself has been retooled to make things more manageable to players that might not have 1000 hours to drop on a game. In its new form, you can drop into New World, have some fun, and drop back out.
But make no mistake, this is still very much an MMORPG. Though the action can now be handled with a controller in a much more dynamic way, you are still firing off skills on a cooldown and running quests all over a giant continent. And there are thousands of people doing it right along with you.
For folks new to the game, New World washes players up onto the shores of a fictional new continent in an alternate version of the 17th century (or maybe the 18th century; let’s not quibble over it). Along with muskets and swords, magic fully exists in this world in a very matter-of-fact way, along with ghosts, ghouls, and other monstrosities. The player is immediately plunged into a questline that defines them as the savior of the new civilization, putting them smack-dab in the middle of a lot of political squabbling and territorial gamesmanship against the backdrop of a supernatural invasion.
Of course, a lot of this takes place in the form of standard MMO questing; go over here, kill 10 of these dudes, and bring back their swords. But this is couched in an engaging story that propels the player steadily outward, slowly unlocking new distractions and mechanics. I was particularly taken with the crafting system, which took up approximately 1/3 of my time in New World. Crafting materials are pretty much everywhere in the game, and it takes quite a lot of stuff to over-encumber your character, which encourages my hoarding instincts. The game also opens a storage unit – and then a house - pretty early on, for those like me that can’t stand to let anything go. The nice thing about the crafting and gathering system in New World is that it is a “learn by doing” system, allowing players to level up and unlock new recipes and skills just by participating in the activity.
For example, I immediately started piling up hides and meat while clearing boars and wolves in early hours of the game. By the time I actually got around to crafting hours later, I had huge stacks of both materials. The game allows you to craft enormous amounts of stuff at once, which turbo rockets you through a ton of crafting levels in a very satisfying way, simultaneously unlocking new recipes.
Tanning my hides, for example, pushed me up to something like level 25 leatherworking, which then in turn opened a few new recipes for me to pursue. The new recipes just pop into the menu, and if you have the right ingredients, you can just keep right on crafting. It is a fun and satisfying system, which also gives a small jolt of general XP at the same time, which helps make it feel like it is contributing to your overall character development.
I should also mention that I was quickly able to craft much better gear than the stuff that I was picking up as quest rewards; once you get a feel for the system, you can start pushing out some seriously over-powered stuff both for yourself and to sell on the game’s easy-to-navigate in-game marketplace. I was a little shocked once the game was live at how much of my homemade stuff people were actually willing to buy, which quickly became a regular source of revenue for me.
Aeternum has streamlined New World’s more open-ended character development as well, allowing players to select an “Archetype” during character creation. Though you can still equip and advance your skills with any weapons or armor you please, the game does feed you archetype-appropriate gear during the early hours, which pretty much steers you in the right direction. Out of the seven archetypes (Soldier, Swordbearer, Ranger, Musketeer, Mystic, Occultist, and Destroyer), I chose to be a Mystic, feeling that the class’s healing skills would come in handy during early levelling.
It turns out that this was a wise choice. Though I sometimes found myself in a bit of a tight squeeze, I still haven’t died during my time in-game. The Mystic can attack quite nicely from a distance, and my natural inclination to power level myself above any content I’m currently pursuing ensured that I was laying waste to most enemies before they ever reached me. And for stronger boss types, I was able to kite them quite nicely.
Which leads me to one major point. Though the New World: Aeternum website describes the game as an “action RPG”, fans of Diablo-likes and Souls games should come in with their eyes wide open. Though a lot of work has gone into streamlining the experience for solo players, this is still very much an MMO. You are definitely min/maxing your gear here, and though you have a dodge button, you will not be getting into Black Myth: Wukong style boss battles. Combat is very much in line with what you would expect from an MMO, with enemies making a beeline straight towards your character, and you firing off a series of skills that are on a cooldown timer in a war of attrition. Battles are a matter of damage/heal if needed/see who falls down first/rinse/repeat/watch the numbers go up. If you aren’t into that sort of combat loop, you will not find what you are looking for with New World: Aeternum.
It is also important to note that while New World: Aeternum is specially tuned for solo players, all of the MMORPG stuff is still in the game. You can still group up (tank, heal, DPS is still the order of the day), run instances, raid, and all the other good social stuff you want to do. It’s just that, in this new version, you can either do that content by yourself if you want, or skip it without repercussion. The game never forces you into a corner where you must find friends or be stopped cold.
I played New World: Aeternum on a PS5 and found that the game worked quite nicely with the DualSense controller. Yes, there is some “use the left stick for your mouse” menu stuff in here, but Amazon Games seems to have found the perfect speed for the cursor; I never felt like it was moving too slow, nor did it zip across the screen like lightning. The rest of the controls are laid out nicely, and I never had any trouble accomplishing what I set out to do. Porting a PC game to a controller is never easy; the developers have done an admirable job here. Combat is as smooth as it could possibly be (the limited number of skills you can equip at a time is a huge help), and the interaction prompts work great to keep the player moving in the right direction. Hey, you have some points to level up. Hey, you advanced your weapon. Hey, you sold some stuff. This is a game that likes to keep you informed.
One other major point that deserves some praise – for the most part, I found the New World community to be friendly and open to newcomers. There was a lot of excitement in the global chat when the console players joined the fray, and though there was a bit of the usual PC vs console nonsense floating around, it wasn’t overly abrasive. Players seemed to be encouraging to newcomers, and happy that their game of choice was getting a shot in the arm.
I did find that, while the experience is welcoming overall, there are still some pieces that could use some fine tuning. For example, leveling up your crafting allows you to filter certain materials on your map, but I’ll be damned if I could figure out how to do it. I also had a heck of a time figuring out how to claim my regional faction prizes (hover over the prize, click X. Duh.) However, some of these issues can be resolved with a quick shout into the void of global chat. It should also be noted that this game has been floating around for several years; there are a ton of online maps and guides that are still (mostly) relevant.
So no, New World: Aeternum isn’t a brand-new game set in the world of the pre-existing MMO. It is instead a rework of that game, which grinds down a lot of the sharp edges that had caused players to peel off. This is a fresh take on an existing title, one that comes with a lot of history and documentation, and a fairly welcoming community. If you enjoy MMOs, or you liked New World in the past, I can’t think of any reason not to check this out. It’s not too often a AAA MMORPG pops up on console. There’s a lot of fun to be had here, and the deeper I go, the more I like it. I can’t think of a better recommendation than that.
Not a remake, not an action RPG, but definitely a very refined MMO experienced tailored to be inclusive to solo and console players, New World has received a major shot of accessibility with the release of Aeternum. With a welcoming community, a refined story, and some very fun crafting mechanics, there is a lot of material here to dig into and enjoy. If you are looking for a new title to sink 1000 hours into, you could do far worse than this one.