Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Nov 3, 2014

  Life is indeed Feudal, but unfortunately this game is futile. At the time of purchase, this game was advertised as Life is Feudal, then they made a hard right turn and shut down their original servers used for testing the MMO of this game and repurposed it for "Your Own", a small 3kmx3km island that resembles RUST only that it is set to a medieval time scale. The game promised group oriented combat and large group vs large group sieges to claim land and castles of such grand scale that it truly did blow everything else out of the water, including the Persistent World mod for Mount and Blade. After the game's EA release here on steam it was clear that they were completely derailing from their original intent of the MMO, and sought to make some extra cash. That's wonderful and all, but the simple fact that they openly said, " We're looking to fund LiF:MMO with all the money we earn from LiF:YO..." makes this game dangle ever so slightly over the toilet that snaps at it with hungry jaws. The marketing idea is flawed, fine, maybe the game is good enough to overcompensate. Let's look at some of the keystones for the game: Built with Torque 3D ( HEAVILY modified)- While this engine looks decent enough, it's not even capable of handing a 16 player server with minimal terraforming, the rigging is so clunky that most of the hit boxes actually twist with the character's movement, which translates into mangled hitboxes that are impossible to land hits on when you can clearly see the head of your hammer or the blade of your sword going through the body of the other player. Bi Weekly Updates- While the updates seem frequent enough, the content that is updated is more of a "hotfix" nature and not an actual Update to the game or its content. Developer presence- The presence of the Devs is definetly felt, they seem to be making a good bit of appearances on the forums both in Steam and in their own bug tracker. This could be both bad and good, as the more time they spent scrolling through the forums.. the less time they spent fixing the heavily modified game engine that requires a lot of love due to the fact that the engine is not designed for such a game, even with modding... it's limitations are clearly visible. Terraforming- The trailer made it look sweet right? Well... unless you dig a tunnel in a straight line then you need to expect gapping holes in the world that will cause you to fall beneath the playerworld and into a vast underground sea. The other side of terraforming, which doesn't involve mining, is almost a death sentence to the server. Get a group of friends to terraform your lands so you can properly build your kingdom and you'll increase the time it takes to load into a server by 10-30 minutes. The more you change, the longer it takes for the server to give you the files as it seems to be replacing ALL the local files with modded files from the server. Building- You can't do it alone unless you crank up the skill cap and become the God of All Skills. The only way to enjoy the game is to do so with atleast 3+ friends on a server that has skillcap/harvesting/growthtime all cranked up, and even then it will take days to complete small projects. Online play- I can only consider this an option if I'm part of a private server, as the game does little to nothing to stop griefing. Between folks digging unrepairable tunnels throughout your village, to people deconstructing your homes and putting unremoveable campfires in their wake. This game's Troll factor reaches that of RUST, minus the hacking... they did a good job of preventing that by keeping ALL files server sided. Servers- So, this is the fun part. Even a high end server can barely run this game without hourly spikes of lag that have been dubbed, " Morning lag" due to the obsurb amount of trees and plant growth that all require 2-4 calls to the database before updating. Each time you change a value, the client requests information from the database and the database requests information from the client... multiple times for the same change. Inventory- If you have OCD, step away. The inventory bags are nothing more than visual vomit. You COULD take an hour to organize the herbalist bag of yours... but your friend will still see visual vomit when he opens it, due to all inventory placement being clientsided. There are countless other issues that arise when you talk about the keystone features of the game, and I understand it's an embryotic alpha, damn near a tech demo, BUT.... the icing on this wonderful cake is the fact that the game doesn't properly used your video drivers as NONE of the video display adapter profiles are implemented into the game yet... want some more sweetness? a 16gb rig still gets "Out of Memory" errors from playing the game for less than 5 minutes. Last but not least, the bug tracker for this game is a mile and a half long, and seems to be at a stand still. Overall, 2/10 but 7/10 when played with friends. Would not recommend. This is my first review, enjoy.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 1, 2014

  There are some things about LiF that are really neat: the crafting, the graphics. Building your own medieval town is really such a wonderful idea and I was eyeing this game for ages. But as a single player (and this game is being marketed for single players as well as multiple), this game has been nothing but a disappointment. - For solo players, the grind is really the only thing there is. There's no danger and no purpose really to play: any wildlife that may attack you is easily avoidable. There are no other mobs. I had read before purchase of intentions to create quests and mobs, but it seems that those ideas have been abandoned in favour of keeping LiF:YO as a game that relies entirely on PvP for non-crafting content. - The grind is real. It took me over thirty RL hours to flatten the land and collect the mats I needed to build a small shack. This was after tweaking settings so I could have a chance in hell of creating anything on my own. As much as I love crafting, it's going to take absurd amount of time -- hundreds and hundreds of hours -- to build anything. But with no danger present in the world, there's no purpose to build other than aesthetics. - Some of the cool features in the LiF video are -only available for the MMO-. This is not the MMO. There are no crafting games here. The island you get is small and not likely to get bigger. No quests planned. The only thing in the world is you. And the tedious grind of creation. - Speaking of the MMO, that's where the devs are focused. Buying LiF: YO isn't giving you a version of the MMO: it's giving you the redheaded stepchild of the family. It's sickly, underdeveloped, and simply not getting any of the attention that they are lavishing on its brother. Reading the official forums makes it clear that this isn't likely to change. (Seriously. Go look at the list about the differences between YO and the MMO. You may find that the feature you're purchasing this for doesn't exist in the YO version.) Don't get me wrong. I really want to like this game. I'll keep my eyes on it and see if maybe the devs have a change of heart about the PVP-only content. But LiF is too much effort for very little pay off. Even if you are a solo player -- especially, even -- I'd highly suggest you wait for the MMO when it comes out. If it comes out.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 23, 2014

  This game is very time consuming. I thought I would attempt to play this 'Space Engineers/Minecraft' style and build for fun. I was not successful. After 16 Hours, I had managed to build some barrels... This game is so realistic that one cannot master all the crafting abilities, so you will need friends to work together in order to assign jobs and delegate work. I.e. Woodsman, miner, carpenter, farmer, and so-on. I think this game could be great with the right group of friends alas, most of mine are d-bags and aren't into sandbox/crafting games.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 28, 2014

  I absolutely love this game. I am on a non PVP server and we are usually close to full every evening. I was unsure about the game the first hour or so. I'm used to Rpg's where you wander around killing stuff to level up and craft when you get tired of leveling. This game is completely different. It's all about building and crafting. It'a about wandering around a beautiful country looking for the things you need to make food, tools, armor, houses, keeps, weapons...basically anything and everything. On our server we have like three separate communities or villages. Since PVP isn't an option on this server, we are friendly to one another. On my second day of playing I had made a crapload of mortar and pestles so I shouted out that if anyone wanted some of them for free, just come to my village at the base of the smallest mountain in the northeast by the sea. (There are no roads yet, although they can be built with certain skills so we use landmarks like lakes and mountains to guide people to where we are). So some stranger shouts back asking me why don't I put my stuff in a chest and I respond that i don't have one or the skills to make one. So he yells back that he'll make me one and he lugs this huge chest on his back all the way to my village just to be neighborly! This is the kind of community I like to play in and the majority of the players on my server are like this! Then the guy sticks around a bit and gives me tips on crafting and makes me a blacksmith hammer when I ask him what skill is needed to make one. The crafting is what makes this game fun for me. Gathering my materials and skilling up to make better items is simply a blast once you figure out the mechanics which aren't very hard. Right now, I'm enjoying making tools. Yesterday I tried out hunting. Low level hunting was fun as heck. You're too weak to kill big game, but the game makes it enjoyable in a very unique way for newbies. A noob hunter has a couple od fun skills One is a crafting option to make small animal snares and the other is called small animal tracking. When you activate tracking, an animal's footprints appear and you can see where he likes to travel. Follow his trail and place the snares you make out of materials along the way ( plant fiber, a tree branch and an apple) which are all easy to find, then come back in an hour or so and empty your traps. I got chickens and hares and I put them in a coop in my village and they laid eggs and had babies...totally awesome. You can also track aggressive animals once you learn to defend yourself. I've seen bears and wolves. There are no monsters yet and I'm okay with that...it feels real. Supposedly they will be added in the future. Bear in mind this is alpha. There are PVP servers if that is your thing, but I can't comment on that aspect of the game because I don't like pvp. If you choose non pvp, the game is about building a community. In my village everyone chats, they ask other for items and sometimes we trade stuff or even just give it away. Today a new person logged on and asked us how to get a house, so we told him to join our village and everyone helped to build him one. Since I was too low to actually help build, I helped gather wood. I felt good about it and it was fun to see everyone helping a complete stranger. I've played MMO's for many years and frankly outside of guilds, you meet so many rude obnoxious people in MMO's anymore but so far it hasn't been like that here. I'm really excited. I found it difficult to even take time away from the game to write this post, but I wanted to get the word out. I've got big plans. I'm raising my healing skills and making my own plate mail so i can kill bears, and I'm learning to fish. I'm even going to build a keep which takes 15000x rocks and 4000 shaped stone among other things. It will take months and it will be so much fun to watch it grow into a fortress for me and my friends. Let me be clear on one thing. if you're looking for action packed adventure, the non pvp server aspect of this game is NOT for you. This is laid back...serene music in the background, birds twittering in the trees, the sound of your neighbor chopping wood, a hike up the biggest mountain on the island to watch the sunset and get back home before the wolves come out. It's about meeting people who don't yell, "I PWNED YOU!", but instead say things like, "Hey, we just killed a bear and we're cooking it up in our new village...everyone's invited!" or "Hey, I'm a prospector and I have a ton of copper...wanna trade me some of your logs for some of it?" or "Hi everyone...I'm new here...can anyone help me?" and hearing 6 people shouting back for him to come join their village. There are a few bugs...this is alpha after all. In the morning, chicks are born, trees blossom, and everything updates and there's usually a few minutes lag. Once my targetting button wouldnt work and I logged out and then back on and it solved that glitch. This is early alpha after all, so glitches happen, but so far nothing game breaking. What I really like is it doesn't feel like some madcap rush to endgame...like omg I have to level up to keep up with everyone. It's not like that at all. Even the lowliest noob can help on stuff because gathering is a HUGE part of this game. It's slow paced, but entertaining as hell. There's such a satisfaction when you gain a skill where you can make a new tool or piece of furniture or armor and actually use it and see a big difference. And since each village is essnetially a guild with houses, there's sense of community, of being neighbors. It's not some strange guy ridng up on his horse, hurrying to unload the gear he got in a dungeon and racing off without a backward glance or a hello. It's about your neigbor looking over at you and saying, "I feel like mining today. What are you going to do?" I look off in the distance at some mountain and reply," I'm going to go over to that mountain over there and terraform the top so I can build me a little shack at the top with a view of the ocean on one side and this village on the other." My neighbor looks at me and says, "It's going to take you awhile to flatten the land on the top of that mountain. That's a lot of digging!" I smile and reply, "That's okay! I like the view and I've got lots of time!" I love this game! More impressions! New impressions after a week. I'm so tired....last night I did not go to bed because I simply cannot quit playing. So much has happened. The lag comtinues to glitch the game at times and kicks you occasionally but I'm willing to tolerate that due to early access...it's expected. My first server grew unstable in no small part due to my older computer so I've switched twice since then. A FANTASTIC experience both times! My first was another PVE server since I'm terrible at PVP and I met the most wonderful group 2 minutes into getting their and joined their village. Had a wonderful time helping them build and getting to know them. we decided to go for a village surrounded by castle walls and it was cool. Now here's the thing...a lot of these guys had experience by now like me and the town was already coming along great without me, so I decided to take up herbalism because none of them seemed to like the grind of this skill. They make this skill like a mini game. Evetry herb has three hidden qualities and there are 66 herbs. Your challenge is to find them (easy and quick), mix them with a mortar and pestle (Easy again), and finally try to match them up to find which ones share familiar traits (not so easy). Heres the thing...you're looking for one particualar item in these herbs...flux. You cannot mix two of the same with similar traits or it creates an item and your herb disappears. You don't want that to happen on 99% of the items...however, if you get two items with flux characteristics, you DEFINITELY want to mix them because this is the most needed item for
• gamedeal user

  Jan 1, 2015

  Upon returning to our base, my friends and I discovered a man wearing a royal helmet rummaging through our things. He claimed to be friendly. We claimed to be friendly. Now we have a cool helmet.
• gamedeal user

  Jan 16, 2015

  After 400 hours of playtime, I think i can inform others about the game. First of it all: It's still an alpha, but the most developed one I've ever played. Combine Minecraft with War of the Roses, and you got your game. The game is, although some mechanics are highly repetetive, very addicting. It's not a game for a few hours a month and without the necessary endurance you will give up soon. If you like crafting, fighting and role-playing with other human beings, then get it and check it out. Otherwise: Don't. On the positive side you got very good graphics, a great variety of armor and weapons you can choose from and a crafting system that highly supports team gaming. You got a lot of different building, the map is large enough for 64 players and every 2-3 weeks comes an update. The sound is ok, as long as you don't put tanning tubs aside your house.. The skill system is fair and interesting, because on most servers you can only skill 1-2 skilltrees to the max, and it is possible to deskill every time. It is like in Skyrim: With doing certain things, you get better at doing so and with rising skill level there are some other options you unlock. The fighting system is a bit sloppy, but also very detailed. For example: The damage you get from an opponent is the result of the weapon you use, the skill of your weapon, the armorskill of your enemy, the location of the hitbox where you hit and if your enemy is defending with a shield or not. Conclusion: Good mechanics, very high potential overall. On the bad side you have no game-goals, quests or whatever. Your experience with the game will highly depend on the server you play on, considering if your serveradmins are fair or not and how other players fashion their role on the server. The first time, of course, you will be motivated by building your town with others and learn how to work, but after your village or castle is built, you have no other option then to fight and roleplay. Considering this, there are also some broken mechanics that must be fixed soon: Since every digged tunnel on the server delays the login time of the players, it is impossible to run a 64 player server over a long time without getting a slow server. Some players on my server have login times beyond 6 or 7 minutes, and when you come to that point it will be extremly hard to get new players to join your server. Others may quit due to this and.. you get the idea, over a longer time your server will get more and more abandoned. There are some fixes to this, but nothing official is implemented yet, a server wipe is in most cases the only solution to get a fresh and playable server. Another problem is the erasing of buildings: Once built, you cannot deconstruct anything without admin help. This is also highly annoying, because you have to plan really good before building your own town. So, my conclusion: Don't start this game alone, pick one or two of your friends, start an own server to test things until you feel ready to play on a bigger server. Try to get to a server with active and friendly admins. You may wait until the tunnel-digging is fixed, but if you like crafting & boxing bears, then give it a try.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 2, 2015

  I did not have the option of clicking the "Maybe" option. A very interesting game but... Keeping in mind that it is just a pre Alpha and very buggy I will limit my comments to gameplay and not stability and such. The world is detailed and beautiful. The crafting system is deep and satisfying. As many others have said it can be a bit grindy but not in a bad way. I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I built my first shack and began setting up my first base of operations. Just as I felt I was getting somewhere a 12 year old punk ran up to me, called my mother a bad name and smacked me with a shovel knocking me out and taking all of my hard won stuff. I tried three different servers over a few weeks and the results were the same. Just when you feel you are getting somewhere some rag wearing peasants show up, kill you for sport and take all your stuff, over and over. Currently, there is no way to protect yourself from being completed looted until you can build a warehouse which takes a significant amount of skill accumulation and materials. If you don't log in to the server for a few days even those locked items can be freely looted by anyone. The mantra is "Life is Feudal it is supposed to be tough." Well, feudal life was not full of phsycopathic 12 year olds that kill and loot you for sport with no repercussions. At the moment the 'penalties' for kiling players are largely ineffective and once you acquire something worth having you can expect to be killed/robbed every few hours of gameplay. If you can get on a server when it first starts you will have a huge technology advantage over anyone that comes later and if you can make friends and work together you will be alright. If you are a latecomer then God help you. You will be farmed over and over. The player turnover on every server I have played is very high and the servers quickly become full of empty shacks and half built structures. No wonder most the servers are dead or go through frequent wipes. I really want to love this game. There is a ton going for it but the constant ganking/zerging/ glitching (its in alpha, lots of glitches) make the game very frustrating. I give the game a MAYBE because it could be great but it is not at the moment. And $40 to play test an unfinished game is more than a little too pricey.
• Tumblefluff

  Sep 17, 2023

  Okay, I've played over 400 hours of this game. I'm comfortable giving it an initial review. It's a little slow and grindy, with an exceptionally complex crafting system, and requires a relatively beefy computer to run it with a playable frame-rate. But in spite of those things, there's something oddly addictive about the game. I like that I can host a private server of my own and invite friends to play (I even bought a spare copy for a friend to test this). Honestly, it's a game that I feel many people would either love or hate. If you like the idea of minecraft with upgraded graphics, and far fewer hostile mobs, you might like it. Some of the game mechanics take a while to get used to. I was surprised to find that mine-shafts that have been reinforced will still cave in (eventually), combat isn't very intuitive (you have to be mindful of the "dangerous" part of the weapon and what part of your weapon that strikes your target), though these are elements added for realism and immersion, so they're not "bugs".
• The_Gabz

  Jun 5, 2015

  Lots of potential and i mean A LOT of potential. For now it's all it is though. I just wish there was a middle thumb for "Buy at your own risk." But there isn't. For now I wouldn't recommend it it's still in early access and even if it's supposed to come out this year... I doubt it. there's really too much work to be done in optimization and content. Depending on the server you choose, you will be able to top your level in either a day or a month. Same goes for construction, some servers make it easy and fast, on other you will definetly feel the grind. Personally, i prefer the later it makes it more realistic, you're actually gonna need workers to build a basic town. Combat is... Well hard to explain. Skill based ? Compared to other similar titles it fairs pretty well but you're probably just gonna get an arrow between your eyes before you even know you're in a fight. Crafting is mediocre just grind grind grind and manage your stuff in a very messy inventory. Stuff just goes everywhere in there, if you're gathering for a while you open your inventory and it looks like someone took your bag and just smashed it against a couple of rocks before giving it back. So... If you're looking for a medieval fighting melee arena look elsewhere because this game is SLOW and the fighting is a really small part unless you're a thief (And usually you have a lot of rules to follow or else you will get kicked from the server) If you're looking for an historical medieval life simulator... With all the work and hardships, you're probably at the right place. I wouldn't recommend to buy it for now. I know devs need money to develop the game but at this state it's not worth 1/2 the asking price...
• gamedeal user

  Jun 7, 2015

  ********************** Edit After the developer response i thought i'd give the game another run through. I tried to keep an open mind, especially (and surprisingly) now the game has left Early Access; and visually i thought it was much better. However - after spending 15 minutes fine tuning myself in the updated character creator while joining a server, i received the message "you cannot use this name". This happened twice, until i went with the default character with the name "ILBAsdbasd askdjsjjs" of which the game was much happier to allow. Anyway; I walked around, there were several frame rate drops that were temporary but nothing bad. A lot of effort has indeed been put into the aesthetic with a much more streamlined UI. I managed to squeeze in another 5 minutes before: "Life is Feudal encountered an error and needs to close down" My breif edit and response to Saxxon is as follows. I was highly surprised before even starting the game that you made the decision to leave Early Access. The game runs smoother, i did notice.. However i was able to play even LESS of your game than i was back in June. Regarding the comment about my issues being with the servers and "not the game itself". I can't understand how that salvages anything. The game is only accessible through these servers, especially for new players. However you are correct and many of the issues i originally encountered have been fixed. But if i bought this game now, in "release version" and was unable to play due to the crash i wouldn't really give a flying **** about mining a tunnel. ************************************ Original Review: After spending nearly 40 hours trying to get myself started on this game (over the course of 2015) i've just had to give up! Here's one example. To build a warehouse to store anything, you need a ton of metal ingots. To get ingots, you need to mine. However, after joining many servers hoping to find a stable playing environment (some servers don't load, others you get kicked for not speaking their native language) i was banned for simply mining. Turns out mining for metal causes lag for the rest of the server, who knew? So after finally finding another stable server, speaking my native language, i asked what the 'work-around' was for gathering metal. The response was "An admin needs to build an 'infinite pile' for you". However, the admin of this server was sick and wouldn't be on for a month, poor guy. You won't be able to continue with your mining skill progression either, unless an admin cheats this for you. Eventually, i got my "infinite pile" of resources and my mining skill was boosted for me. At this point, i felt like i had cheated the game. The last few hours of my time with Life is Feudal felt cheap, cheesed.. And upon rejoining the server after a little over a day, everything i'd built was on fire. This was due to the decay system that's been introduced to remove trash. I had spent hours trying to build my house and a warehouse, which was now defined by the game as 'trash'. All in all, if you are very lucky and find a stable server and don't mind cheating the game for resources, then you'll probably enjoy it. Just be aware about inviting a friend to purchase the game too, as they might not even be able to join the same servers as you. For me, i won't be revisiting Life is Feudal until these game breaking flaws are resolved. ---------------- On a side note "This Early Access game is not complete and " Shouldn't this be illegal? I mean, everyone knows early access is a big cash cow for most devs, as well as Steam.. Yet a good analogy would be to pay for a 3 course meal at a restaurant, sit down & receive your starter but nothing else. Maybe i'm just hungry.