Pine Reviews

great rpg takes time to get going but awsome:)

This game is pretty good. The game places you, one of the few surviving humans, on an island populated by anthropomorphic animals, and you have to make a home for your species. The story is a bit weak, but those who complain that you can't make friends with everyone are forgetting the point of it: everyone on the island is in a zero-sum battle for resources, so you can't help anyone without hurting others. The combat is pretty fun, and enemies encourage a good variety of different tactics. For instance, Caribin are good at teaching you to use your movement to avoid attacks, Gobbledew are good at teaching you to block, and litters are good at teaching you that you can't win every fight and you should probably run away. Some of the puzzles can be a bit annoying, and it's not always clear if you have the tools you need to solve them. Most of the puzzles require at least one vault relic, but on your first playthrough you won't know that and can waste a lot of time trying to figure it out without a necessary tool. Overall, it's worth a play through, but probably not one I'll come back to for a while.

not the best combat experience, and its a decent game that gets brought down by one lack of polish here and there. like how things spawn/move, saving system, inventory system, to picking up resources for the grind. its fine in some aspects, but gets brought down overall by the small things that adds up. if it removed some of the pain points, it could ease up some of the issues with it. some just becomes a waste of time. its either or with a negative or positive review, should be mixed. I'm fine with some of the story for where I'm now, although it could have brought things together a bit smoother.

100%'ed at less than 30hrs, so there's some decent amount of content I suppose, but you spend most of that time running back and forth across a map that is too big imo since most of the game is played around camps/territory; you can fast travel by crafting the gear to do it, but considering you have to run across the map to get the parts, why bother... Story is practically non-existent outside a few moments here and there where you learn lore; the game is mostly a sandbox to play around in, such as building armor/gear whenever you get the blueprints, collect resources to trade back and forth to tribes to become allies and to boost their tier, and then you can get exclusive gear from them based on their tier. Combat is Fable-like: dodge/roll + attack/heavy attack + block/parry; there is also a bow and slingshot, with bow having differing arrow types. The taming system sounds great on paper, but it's literally 'hold a button' to tame, so it sucks, but the idea is there, and can definitely be improved upon; I like the way that each creature has a specialness about it, so maybe more creatures with increased depth to the taming system, such as level trees. Underwater biomes / treasure hunting would have been great for extra content, let us dive underwater ruins, or whatever - new creatures could even be factored in, such as a dolphin that you can glide around with, and sharks that will attack on sight. The tribe system seems cool at first, then you find out that it's superficial: the diplomacy is held together by thread and changes constantly, especially since the story does the changes; so unless you have a favorite tribe, then there's no reason to try and be buddies, unless of course, you want the achievements / exclusive gear they have, but it's tier 3, so by the time you get it, it's going to suck compared to what you have. I love the art-style, probably my favorite thing about Pine other than the idea of it, I just wish there was more depth: be it story, environment such as weather/storms + gear for certain biomes: hot/cold, etc, but what I've seen in the loading screen, this game was built with only seven people, so kudos to y'all for that. Problems: Upgrading seems easy enough, such as level 1 gear to level 2 gear, but the story gave me a level 4 shield when I still had a level 1; never found a level 2 or 3 at the time, but that doesn't matter now, so why craft it now? Save/Load resets health/stamina + respawns material, which was a boon for me when hunting down resources so I didn't have to chase my tail around the map a hundred times. But did anyway: for the Amphiscus orbs achievements, and the Key fragments achievement, and the resources to make allies with each tribe, and the resources spent to level them to tier 3, and the resources to buy their exclusive blueprints, and the resources to build all their exclusive gear... Whoever thought it was cool to make key fragments black on the map, I love you bro, really... but someone should check on you. Scout balloon should have been upgradable to expand search diameter, because searching the entire map was terrible... If you are going to go for those achievements, then I recommend a map guide instead of doing it yourself, for it really does suck - especially once you round the map three times due to still missing something. Can't move inventory around, no storage; inventory management should be a thing, or at least a filter. When selecting consumable, it should auto select once you hover over it - I shouldn't have to hover over it, then click it, instead of just hover over it, and auto selects once I let go. Having to adjust game resolution each time I play, since it maxes out to the highest resolution and only keeps the settings for that playtime. Moving objects still move when game is paused, causing the character to phase through them: elevators for example. Once game hitches, it begins to do it every 5-10 seconds, sometimes worse than that, until you quit to main menu - but there were a few moments where that didn't work, so I killed the game: this was my biggest headache playing this game, and there was a time I felt like uninstalling due to the anger I got from constantly reloading the game to fix it. Also the reason I'd give it a neutral over recommending it. If all those problems were fixed, things improved, more depth, better story, etc, this game could be as good as Fable if done right. Like, we're missing fishing as a mechanic - so much water too... Give us air traversal, or ziplines, or something to get across the map faster than the Alpaphant.