From the moment you are begotten into the world of Karagon, you are immersed in the atmosphere; for about 30 seconds. After that moment, all kinds of chaos breaks out. From being chased by level-doubling robot dinosaurs when you haven’t figured out how to make them yet, to accidentally bumping into them because you can’t see them hiding behind a rock.
Now, let’s get something straight up front here; The game isn’t bad, it just has quirks that could be fixed to make the experience more enjoyable. While there may be quite a few of those negatives to discuss, let’s start by discussing some of the by karagon strong suits. First of all, let’s go directly to the graphic quality. The game is impressive from the moment you open your eyes, and the landscapes are very nice to look at. While they might not be the craziest details of 4k, they still make the game more fun.
On the other side of that coin, the glare and random splashes of bright light on your retinas can be unsettling at first. The only time this seems to happen is when you’re moving in the shadows or inside trees, so it’s not something that just happens out of the blue. However, it is quite amazing the first time you witness it.
Mechanically speaking, the game has quite a few great features that you would see in Ark either Frost Flame. Let’s take the “taming a robot dinosaur” feature as an example. This was awesome! They fight alongside you, you can ride them as brave steeds, and they make fighting monsters and creatures much easier than attacking them alone. To build a friend of your own, you need to collect different materials by killing the different species of creatures that roam the grounds or simply by shooting these little green orbs out of the back to collect the scrap that falls in various sizes. Once one of the monstrosities is defeated, you can use a pickaxe to extract the metal shell which gives you scrap.
These materials from other dinosaurs are used to craft your own companions in these different colored beacons scattered throughout the different biomes. The color of the beacon seems to match the level and type of dino-friend you’re trying to create, but like many things in this game, it’s confusing.
Let me give a very good example of both a good partner trait and a bad one. The dinosaurs can be ridden once you create them, and their stamina outlasts yours! This is nice and makes traversing the huge world much easier. Also, they help you in battle and honestly that made the game so much better for me. The bad side of these companions is that they bump into you while climbing a mountain and throw you 100 feet in the air almost to your death.
I don’t mean occasionally nipping at your heels, I mean constantly, and if they’re not caught in your Achilles tendon, they’re stuck on a rock, tree, bush, log, or other in-game creature. They get stuck so often that I almost want another dino to kill them so I don’t have to keep running to get them unstuck. Now again, they are extremely useful in battle, as they can almost conquer monsters that triple their level. I had a level 19 dino called Roboar that was an absolute tank and almost killed a level 59 on his own. But for him to meet me dead twice was enough to make my blood boil.
Speaking of death, prepare your brain to accept the fact that you’re going to die about 100 times in the span of an hour. The balance in this game has room for improvement as level one dinos were able to shoot me 2 times when I was level ten. The scale seems nonexistent because even when I was sure I could kill a level five monster, they slapped me like it was their job. It looks like they have a set number of hits to kill their prey, rather than a set amount of damage, but that’s unclear.
There is much to do in the world of Karagon, as you can collect various different materials from bushes, trees, rocks, crystals and minerals. The crafting system is a bit weird, but it’s easy to understand and use. Most things need to be crafted from a tools menu, rather than a crafting table. There are different types of crafting tables that you can create as you level up your “age”. When I say age, I don’t mean your level or the age of your character, I mean Stone Age, Metal Age, etc., etc. You level up this era by scanning the different mechanical monsters with your scanner. This mechanic is a beast in itself, as the only way I was able to successfully scan a dino without dying in a matter of seconds was by jumping onto a tall rock and then throwing them where they can’t hit me. Now, I don’t know if this was a personal mistake, or if this is how you have to do it, but I did it.
Weapons are really cool in this game and they are not too difficult to craft. This in itself made the game much more fun to play as adding an FPS element to any survival game keeps things interesting. Crafting your own weapons also feels satisfying compared to looting them from a chest or finding them out in the open. Some weapons even come with an elemental ability, like the shock shotgun that stuns enemies and knocks them back when fired. The weapons are also quite powerful, so from the very beginning you have the opportunity to fight.
One of the mechanics that I still can’t figure out is talent points and knowledge points. The game’s tutorial says that you get “energy cores” from enemies residing inside buildings, and these are what you would use to improve your stamina, health, etc. I’ve killed multiple enemies inside about 15 different buildings and never got one of these sneaky ones. cores Maybe I didn’t go to the right buildings or I wasn’t killing the right enemies, but it was something that frustrated me because I had nine talent points to use to make myself stronger or even give me more resistance, and I didn’t know how to use them. This could also be why I died so many times during my game, but I may never know.
One more thing I would love to mention is the build feature. Accessing the Build menu is simple, and materials are easy to come by, but the actual building is very clumsy. Trying to get my walls to line up, face the right direction, or even just trying to fit the ceiling is absolutely impossible. Trying to make your walls two heights doesn’t seem to be possible at all, since you can’t stand on something high enough, like your workbench or storage chests (yes, I tried) to put the walls on top of each other. other. I tried to build a basic house for about 45 minutes, got stuck inside my foundation twice and had to use the unstuck feature to get free. Not to mention the number of times I’ve had to take apart something I just built because it ended up facing the wrong direction or at the wrong height. This is a major bug that needs to be fixed as it could run so much better.
General, karagon it’s a good game with some little things that could be fixed and changed to make it even better. Yes, there are bugs and there are mechanics that made my brain melt a bit, but it’s not a bad survival game. The ideas are there, perfecting them would make playing extremely fun, especially with friends. In its current state, I’d say it does have some fun elements, but personally I’m not a big fan of various mechanics that feel unfinished, buggy, and a bit hard to understand.
TechRaptor Preview karagon on PC with a copy provided by the publisher/developer. It will be released for PC on February 14, 2023.