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New World: Rise of the Angry Earth is and will remain a polarising expansion to Amazon Game Studios' MMO for multiple reasons but the top of the list belongs to deprecating the value of the base game, which is not free.
Furthermore, the base game did not become cheaper after the expansion's release even though it was stripped of the endgame and the owners now have just a glorified demo on their hands as they don't have access to most endgame content and no chance to reach parity in PvP.
On the bright side, Rise of the Angry Earth added multiple systems that made the game much more fun for everyone who owns the DLC, which is somewhat rare in this day and age when "expansions" sometimes actually reduce the volume of available content.
Story
Unfortunately, the story in Rise of the Angry Earth just isn't on par with that of Brimstone Sands, which actually came as a free update back in the day. The attempt to use the same mould is highly noticeable as this story also took mythic creatures and lost civilisations from real life and tried to integrate them into the main story quest.
Unlike the story of Brimstone Sands, this one failed to get any interest out of me as it kept feeling like a soulless pile of exposition and not much else. This is kind of impressive but not in a good way, since the story deals with mythic creatures such as Artemis, Minotaur and Medusa. Minotaur and Medusa are both underutilized while the main villain is just not present until the final showdown which is mindblowing when it comes to storytelling. You need that antagonistic presence to drive the plot but it just isn't there.
On top of that, the allies we meet along the way are there but just don't feel like they are and dialogue only managed to get me to doze off without anything interesting to latch onto. The whole Romans and Egyptians saga in Brimstone may not have been the pinnacle of storytelling but it certainly had interesting parts and characters, so it is still much better than what we got in Rise of the Angry Earth.
Gameplay
In stark contrast to the weak storytelling, the gameplay was improved with the Rise of the Angry Earth, as long as you buy the DLC. The Savage Divide expedition is fun and has engaging loot, reaching maximum Gear Score is no longer tedious and it doesn't take long to hit the new level cap.
First and foremost, I would like to sing praises to whoever decided to get rid of the horrendous Expertise system. It was the cruise control for enjoying New World and now it is simply gone. You don't want to farm daily mundane tasks for months on end? Granted! Just get 700 GS items and you're good to go. This can be done by getting lucky with loot, crafting items yourself or simply buying them on the trading post.
The only complaint I have on the road to improved loot is that there are too many items with the new Magnify mechanic. Essentially, this is a variable attribute that will apply itself to whichever attribute you boost the most in your character panel. On paper, it sounds great and eliminates mismatched attributes and gear types but when you get too many items with Magnify, it becomes impossible to have a proper build. Want 350 Strength and 200 Constitution? Nope, you can only have 382 of one and 168 of the other. This negative is needed to balance the items with Magnify out but it would be nice if more sources of fixed attribute gear were available.
This problem is somewhat baked into the Artefacts as well since they all come with Magnify but their pros far outweigh the cons. Artefacts let players craft a build around a certain playstyle. For example, you could be running Serenity greatsword which relies on heavy attacks, making your damage output immense but hard to land in PvP. If you want a quicker character with more crowd control, you will opt to get the Scorpion's Sting which lets you pluck enemy players from their group and land a quick burst, potentially killing them before the healer can react.
There is a ton of Artefacts to play with and craft different builds for, which makes them a fantastic addition. It is further enhanced by the fact that all the Ward and Bane gear is gone. You no longer need to keep a million gear sets in storage just to be able to counter every enemy type in PvE. On top of that, the difficulty and tedium of getting the Artefacts seem to be weighed just right as there is some effort that is required to obtain them, giving you a sense of pride and accomplishment which wouldn't be there if you were able to get them easily or outright buy them with microtransactions.
Influence Races are another fantastic addition as they give players a reason to do open-world PvP once again, although they are mostly decided by which side has the most players present. Unfortunately, this is also one of the ways it becomes apparent that the base game has been eroded for those who didn't buy the expansion.
In the open world, your gear will not scale to 675 GS which puts you at a severe disadvantage against players who are walking around in 700 GS sets. As such, Influence Races are pretty much reserved for the owners of Rise of the Angry Earth and masochists without it.
The problem is further compounded by Artefacts requiring level 65, meaning people without the expansion are completely locked out of them. Since these items are extremely powerful, it also means you will get outclassed in Outpost Rush and Arenas, the PvP parts that are supposed to give everyone a fighting chance. In short, PvP is only technically not locked behind the expansion but if you don't have it, you will always be at a severe disadvantage.
Mounts are another well-executed system as they drastically reduce the time-wasting while travelling between places and their stamina management will keep you engaged without snoozing while moving between two points. The mounts are also faster on paved paths, which will let you keep planning your journey every step of the way to get there more efficiently. On the flip side, the mount quest becomes pretty tedious in the later stages as it keeps sending you from one corner of the map to the opposite, leading to 15+ minute rides for almost no purpose.
On the darker side of things regarding gameplay, there is the already-mentioned PvP gating but this spills into PvE as well. Without the additional levels from the expansion, players can no longer join Mutated expeditions. They are left with just the story mode, which is terribly easy, meaning they lost PvE endgame as well.
Bugs
Amazon Game Studios should keep pest exterminators on a retainer because they don't have a bug problem, it is a bona fide infestation. If you were to create a new character in the first couple of weeks after the release of Rise of the Angry Earth, you wouldn't be able to get to the endgame.
In the first days after the expansion, almost everything was bugged - season pass progression, main quest progression, NPCs, draw distance, you name it. Anywhere you looked, there was a bug. I waited for a couple of weeks before writing the review to see how the devs would respond to the issues and I've seen both commendable sides and some that are less so.
Amazon Game Studios folks are definitely hard at work to fix all these bugs, as evidenced by updates that were deployed during weekends, one even on a Sunday, obviously showing the team is working overtime and with basically no rest. On the other hand, all these massive patches, usually 20 to 30 GB in size, still didn't manage to fix the main quest progression, more than two weeks after release.
This left many characters stranded in the limbo between levelling and endgame, unable to access parts of the experience, even though the players purchased both the base game and the expansion. On top of that, the amount and severity of the bugs showed a lack of testing and the expansion being shoved into stores way before it was ready.
Monetisation
New World's base game will set you back $40 / €38 / £33, which is not worth it at this point. On the other hand, the price tag of $70 / €67 / £58 for the base game bundled with the expansion would feel right if not for the additional monetisation costs via cosmetics and season pass, which has a price tag of roughly €15 / $16 / £13. Just like with all the modern monetisation shenanigans, you can't pay the exact price of the season pass as the in-game currency is sold in packs that push you to pay more.
You also get only a few basic-looking mounts through gameplay while literally every single one that looks cool is locked behind microtransactions. New World players are probably used to this because it was the same with new armour sets for a while but that doesn't make it right.
Performance
Despite the bugs and weak writing, performance is probably the worst part of New World. The game will run fine on higher settings as long as you don't engage in the first two letters of an "MMORPG". Doing content without large groups of players should let you have stable frame rates but as soon as you get into a raid, Outpost Rush, populated city or an open-world event, New World turns into a slideshow.
As a result, you have to play with the lowest graphics settings possible, even if your PC exceeds the listed recommended specs for the game.
Even then, you will run into frame drops which is very descriptive when it comes to the poor optimisation - at a point where the game looks worse than an MMO from the mid-2000s but still has much lower and unstable frame rates, there is just no excuse for the performance.
Should you buy it?
If you've read all the points above, you are probably having mixed feelings about the game as a whole and the expansion itself. From my own experience, the choice is quite easy.
Purchasing the base game is not worth it until at least a 50 per cent off sale but purchasing it with the expansion from the get-go will be very worth it, as soon as the main story quest issues are fixed. Given the cadence of bug fixes and patches in the past two weeks, it is safe to assume AGS will produce an update fairly soon, especially because the issue blocks a potential influx of new players.
New World, coupled with the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion, turns into an exhilarating gear chase through both PvE and PvP facets, which shine very brightly when they are at their best but grind to a halt at their worst. A few weeks from now, the full package will definitely be a good buy for any MMO lover, just give the devs some time to work the less-than-stellar parts out.
The Good
Mount system is well-executed- Artefacts are double fun
- Open-world PvP is back with Influence Races
- Fun new expedition
- Expansion makes full product much better
The Bad
Overmonetised- Endgame locked behind expansion
- Too many bugs
- Degraded base game without price drop
- Bland Main Story Quest
