Game-A-Week

Game-A-Week Episode 25: Istaria

8:37 PM

I bet you've never heard of this game.

8:38 PM

Istaria, Chronicles of the Gifted is its full title and it advertises itself as "The best crafting MMO with playable Dragons"

8:39 PM

Best? Maybe try, ONLY

8:40 PM

I found out about this game when I was looking for inspiration for new and unique fantasy races so I was looking for games with the most interesting playable races.

8:41 PM

And one of those games that I discovered during that search was Istaria. A game where one of the playable races is a Dragon.

8:42 PM

A game that looked so bad, the fact you can play as a dragon was the only selling point.

8:43 PM

And not "dragon people", mind you. An actual western dragon. Four legs, wings, big ol' tail. The works.

8:44 PM

"Well, I have to do that for game-a-week" I thought

8:46 PM

Noe, this game actually has a pretty interesting selection of races to choose from. Giants, dryads, lizard people, furries, satyrs.... Tons of interesting stuff you don't see in a lot of other games. But why would you play as any of those when you can play as a dragon? That's the literal only reason anyone would ever play this game.

8:47 PM

Need I remind you of the game's advertisement slogan? "The best crafting MMO with playable Dragons"

8:48 PM

This is literally the game's ONLY selling point. That's not just me trying to trash on the game for having no other redeeming qualities, THIS IS LITERALLY HOW THE GAME IS ADVERTISED.

8:49 PM

In fact, I actually didn't totally hate this game. I didn't really like it, sure. But I didn't hate it.

8:52 PM

Well

8:52 PM

I might have hated it a little.

8:53 PM

There was actually only one part I liked.

8:55 PM

Just like TemTem. It really only had ONE good aspect and now that I've typed that out, I guess I do hate this game as much as I hated that one.

8:56 PM

I never made it out of the tutorial.

8:56 PM

So this is going to be a short Game-a-Week since I never actually got to play the actual game.

8:57 PM

And having your tutorial last longer than a week is a dealbreaker all on its own. I got a life, I don't have time for this shit.

8:58 PM

And its not that the tutorial is especially long either, it just throws you into the world and expects you to know how to advance with the tutorial. It tells you absolutely nothing.

8:59 PM

I spent like 3 days just trying to figure out WHAT I was supposed to do.

9:00 PM

The game puts you right in front of an NPC who, after you talk to it, guides you to another NPC who... says absolutely nothing and you're left thinking "Now what?"

9:00 PM

Apparently, you're supposed to click on the quest at the very bottom of the first NPC's dialogue box and THEN you have them guide you to the other NPC.

9:01 PM

It sounds like a stupid mistake to make but I didn't even notice the quest until day 3 after talking to this NPC for like the 30th time trying to figure out what I was supposed to do so I don't think its my fault.(edited)

9:03 PM

The game is just poorly designed. The U.I. is worse than City of Heroes and Dark Age of Camelot combined. It has no direction. You just feel like you can't do anything.

9:04 PM

After I reached the end of the tutorial yesterday, it teleports you to ANOTHER tutorial zone and hits you with A PART 2 of the tutorial.

9:05 PM

It was at that point that I said "Forget this, I'm out!"

9:06 PM

The are a ton of classes to choose from but those classes are only available to "biped" races. Which means everything that's not a dragon.

9:06 PM

Dragons only have access to one class: Dragon Adventurer

9:07 PM

I guess they had to give SOMETHING to idiots who gave up the opportunity to be a dragon.

9:07 PM

Dragons also don't take fall damage because they can use their wings to glide down from large falls.

9:08 PM

From what I can tell, "bipeds" needs tools to do gathering and crafting. Dragons don't.

9:08 PM

Although figuring out HOW to craft was like pulling teeth, gathering was actually quite fun.

9:09 PM

You just click on whatever rock you want to mine and your dragon goes at it, only stopping when you decide to move.

9:12 PM

Its a relaxing activity to do and you don't have to constantly click on the rock (Like Runescape), it doesn't run out either(Like Runescape) and from what I can tell, it stacks in your inventory so you don't have to constantly make bank runs (like Runescape). Its just really relaxing to just sit there and gather rocks. I liked it.

9:12 PM

And yep, you guessed it. Gathering is the ONE thing about this game that I enjoyed.

9:13 PM

I also found a hidden portal of darkness and that was pretty cool. I do like it when games hide stuff like that.

9:14 PM

Setup is absolute garbage. I had to update java in order to run the game. JAVA. Runescape doesn't even use Java anymore.

9:15 PM

And that's not all booting up the game takes FOREVER for it to lead and it constantly freezes and crashes. It just runs like total ass and keeps asking to to install ANOTHER program onto my computer. Like no, keep your aids. That's not even mentioning how all my other computer's functions slow to a complete halt when the game is running for some reason. Maybe I'll look up how to escape this goddamn tutorial while I'm loading into the game. But I can't because my browser is completely unresponsive and whoops, clicking on my browser crashed both my browser and then game so now I have to reboot.

9:16 PM

I went into this game-a-week thinking that I was going top give it an okay rating but after typing all this shit out, my opinion of it just keeps plummeting. Its like I didn't realize how much I hated this shit until I wrote about it.

9:19 PM

Istaria has a really small but passionate playerbase and they'll DESTROY you if you say anything bad about it. They're the same kind of sociopathic manchildren that still play Runescape nowadays.

9:23 PM

And sure, maybe if you're REALLY into making imaginary items, you'd like this game but guess what? The game installs like ass, the game plays like ass, the game runs like ass, the game looks like ass, the game turns my computer INTO ass while its running. The game is ass.

9:28 PM

I give Istaria a 2/10. Yes, it really is just as bad as TemTem. The game's only selling point is that you can play as a dragon and that's cool. I'm glad I got to play as a dragon but I think I've had my fill of that and I'm ready to put it all behind me. Once the novelty of playing a dragon wears off, there's nothing left to the game. I'm glad I was able to become my fursona but contrary to popular belief, when your biggest selling point is a novelty at best, you really need to have a good game behind that novelty to support having the desire to play the game beyond that novelty. I will NOT continue to play this game and its leaving my computer ASAP. With the way my computer slows down while running it, I'm a little scared it might have spyware attached to it. Gotta clean that shit up off my computer like yesterday.

9:29 PM

This is me as a dragon under my dragon name: Sexmaster HaremKing