Emmerholt: Prologue Reviews

The acting is bad and dialog is even worst, but this game is a nice glimpse of what an MMO would be in VR. Riding a horse felt real but be careful it may cause a bit of motion sickness.

After being presented of a choice of teleportation vs trackpad, (where i chose teleport because i cant stand trackpad loco in VR) the first thing the game does is put me on a horse... with basically trackpad-motion. Thats just an epic fail right there.

This runs between 70-80 fps on a GTX 1080, the frame rate jumping around caused me some nausea. It's the first time a VR game has had this affect on me. Visuals are blurry at distance, so overall optimisation is an issue with this game as the graphics are not exactly cutting edge. There's some effort in the content, the horse riding in VR is neat. And there's a story and voice acted characters. But overall it's quite an amateurish prodction all around. I do still feel travel sickness queasy writing this review 5 minutes after quiting the game.

Pretty good for a demo. I like where this is heading. The magic was particularly innovative. The horse riding is also a novel idea - but it made me feel the most sick any VR game has (I found keeping in a straight line helped). Like others have said, this does need some work. The graphics are blurry at a distance and there is clipping around buildings. Teleporting also seemed hit and miss.

This game has some promise, but it needs a LOT of work. I, like many of us I'm sure are dying for a good story driven adventure free roaming RPG to save us from the endless wave shooters. This game seems to have a start in filling that void. I like the option of trackpad and teleport. I've really grown to like trackpad locomotion and have over come my motion sickness from it for the most part, but with this type of locomotion, where you move in the direction your head is pointing instead of where your hand is pointing,. I just would rather be able to point where I'm going and tilt the controler to slow down if I need to and look around while I'm walking. The graphics are terribly blurry. That really needs to be fixed. The horse back riding is a nice mechanic even though I found that it was pretty touchy especially when you were walking and not galloping and had a tendency to make me feel a bit sick. There were several bugs,.. walking into the town I must have dismounted my horse before I was supposed to and the controls for dismounting floated in front of me the whole time I was in the village. there were serveral loud voices that seem to yell at me from every direction and that was a bit odd since there was only one person I could see in the village besides the group I met up with before the horse race. The voice acting was a bit cheesy. Also,. this is just my own personal preference here and I know many disagree and that's cool,. but when I'm playing as a character in a VR game it really kills it for me when the game starts talking for me. That was my one complaint about Arizona Sunshine. I'm the character, it's my adventure, let me be the character and don't tell me what I think. The battle play was actually pretty cool. could definatily use some force feedback or something and I would probably make it so the giant boulders don't just roll away like a basket ball when you barely run into them. there was another strange bug when I walked into the fishery where a string of bright purple text that said hello over and over in a colum on the left side of my screen showed up and never went away the rest of the demo. obviously I wouldn't reccomend this game in it's current state but that doesn't mean with a lot of work it couldn't turn out to be something pretty great. but now it's just not

For being a short game and just a 'taste' of what may come, I must say I really enjoyed this game. That being said I'll start reviewing it. GRAPHICS: +I like the level design a lot. Very fantasy like and it really immerses you in the game. Keep it like that! .. That's about it really. STORY: +The story was decent. Of course you'll be left out with more questions than answers. But the story is good enough for you to play through the entire game. +I did like them adding side quests, although there are only 1 or 2 it's something that could make this VR game more unique. -It is very cliché and most of it was to be expected before it even happened. I like stories with suprises though this one did not give me one. +-CAN SOMEONE SHUT THAT B* UP WHEN I AM NOT IN THE MOOD TO CONTINUE THE STORY! Thanks in advance :) MUSIC: + It fits the environment and it is beautifully done! GAMEPLAY: Phew okay here comes the interesting one. +Horses. The horses were weird at first but I loved using it during my playthrough! Of course if you're sensitive about such movements then this game is really not for you. +-Your magical powers can sometimes be quite clunky. -The boss battle was terrible and confusing. It just doesn't make any sense. I even got him to glitch through a rock :O Overall it's a good start for a game. I look forward for the full version! 7/10 + 0.1 for being a free game.

First I see a ton of potenial for this game. The horse riding experiance was great. I see several areas for improvement but this is just a demo and the release could be aways out. I do like the experiance with the game and what is trying to do. If done right this could be a very good game.

I love the idea. Some mechanics need a lot of work. The horseback riding mechanic is a good start but stopping the horse feels unatural. It would be better if pulling straight back stopped the horse rather than raising hands up. Also there should proabably be an easier way of turning the horse around when it gets stuck against a tree. The magic was cool but when I hit someone with a large object it should look like I hit them rather than them clipping through it. Overall I love where the game is going but I wanted to leave some feedback because this is obviously a prototype intended for the developers to gather information.

Exploring a world, talking to people, interacting with objects, and acquiring weapons/magic is exactly what I want to be doing in VR. Although this game doesn't do it particularly well, at least it's doing it and that gives me some hope for the future. Check out this quick 25 minute demo and recommend it if you like it: that'll let developers know what we want, and hopefully put some polish on the barebones ideas like this to make real games.

My experience of Emerhalt was a fairly short and brutal one. After selecting my locomotion option (teleportation, I known the limits of my stomache) I was faced with a small group of slightly blurry characters talking around a fire. After an abortive attempt to find a menu I could use to make them a little less blurry, I listened to their short argument and was invited to head back to town with one of them. On horseback. Horses in Emerhalt are controlled by manipulating the reins, but turning ones head to look around also seems to alter thier directing in a disconcerting, and nausea inducing way. By the time we reached the first corner I was starting to feel quite nauseus and hoping the journey would be over soon, unfortunately the town wasn't even on the horizon yet. By the time we eventually reached the town (which seemed like an eternity, even discounting the short break I took to ensure I wouldn't be physically sick) and I finally recieved the instructions on how to dismount from the acursed beast, I had well and truely decided that that would be the last virtual horse of Emerhalt I ever mounted. After a short walk through the town I was reunited with my former compatriots from around the fire, who had aparently been having a drinking contest. Between them they drunkenly came to the conclusion that we should all participate in a horse race. And so my experiences in Emerhalt came to a close. My susceptibility to motion sickness isn't the least extreme, but nor is it the most, and I wouldn't ask developers to leave features others might enjoy out of a game just because they make me feel sick. But I would ask that they strongly consider not making those features a mandatory, unskippable, part of the game. (I think there are probably some things that could be done to make horse riding less unpleasant, but it may be something that is always going to make some people feel a bit queasy, it would be nice to be able to play the other parts of the game anyway).