My review of SotO so far

[Drarnor Kunoram.5180]

To preface this, I have completed the story and am working on masteries.  I have not started the Astral Ward mastery line, which may be relevant for some comments later.  I am a long time player who has enjoyed playing through this expansion on mostly legendary gear, albeit not doing any stat swapping, and was at 455 mastery before SotO.

I will be splitting this review into categories of exploration, features, and story (which will be spoiler free).  Nothing really changed on the moment-to-moment gameplay front with this expansion, but I do have to credit the additional use of "pulling" tech in the open world on regular mobs.

 

Exploration.

The maps are beautiful, but I cannot imagine how a new player is expected to traverse them, even with the skyscale mount rental, as that starts with 0 masteries.  I went into this with all prior masteries complete and thus had full access to the skyscale and griffon's capabilities plus all gliding masteries and was pleased  to find out that I could fully explore these maps without any new masteries, albeit requiring frequent swapping between the three airborne modes of travel.  But a player who didn't already have a skyscale is going to feel extremely limited in where they can go and will have a difficult time getting to story steps for mastery points.  And this is before getting into the complete and utter frustration that is hunting down the ONE skyscale nest that actually has an egg in it.  It's difficult with full pre-SotO masteries, as some of them take particular angles to notice.  I don't know how someone who didn't have an airborne mount pre-SotO will do it.

The map currencies also feel forgotten.  Maybe this is locked behind Astral Ward masteries, but I haven't found a single place to spend Static Charges (the Skywatch Archipelego map currency).  Why introduce a new currency if we have nowhere to spend it?  Pinches of Stardust (the second map currency) at least have a single use I was able to find in the expansion relic vendor, but both currencies feel like they were added in last minute with little to nothing to spend them on.

 

Features

Rift hunts are a nice version of player-initiated events and do feel like an upgrade to bounties overall in nature.  No real notes on these, especially as players can sort of choose their tier.  I like them.

Relics are a mixed bag.  I feel the overall system is better for the game, but the pieces aren't there yet to make it worthwhile.  I should note that I own 7 legendary runes and really don't like that legendary relics don't seem to have even been considered until the player outcry regarding the nerf to the runes, the first time that legendary items have ever lost functionality.  That said, I will absolutely say that the game system is an upgrade to what we have, even if the details of implementation were not.

The Wizard's Vault is likewise a mixed bag.  The biggest issues are that dailies no longer have options, just 3 assigned tasks with no option to avoid a bad one for you.  The removals of PvP/WvW potions is also not appreciated in the slightest as they were very useful to complete festival reward tracks or one-time reward tracks with no loss of points.  Then there's the fact the mistforged keys were removed from WvW dailies so shortly after their introduction.  In short, the daily portion needs significant work and return to closer to what we had pre-SotO.  I love the weeklies and special categories, though.

It's also a pain in the kitten to deal with accepting your rewards for the Vault.  What was wrong with the bouncy chests in the corner?  Why do we have to navigate this new UI just to get something that was automatically awarded to us before upon completing the task?

The Wizard's Vault shop, on the other hand, seems like a good change PROVIDED that the limited purchase items will refresh each quarter and not be "X times ever."  The flexibility plus some unique rewards is a nice change.

Story

It was all right.  I appreciate the new characters, had my eyebrows perk at some unexpectedly returning ones, and overall, it works.  Not wowing me at any point, but some of the info you can read as hidden away bits and bobs is nice.  Also appreciated the new Snargle novel.

What I didn't like was how nearly every other story step was rift hunts.  Sure, do a few of those at some point in the story, but you need to do them so often it feels like ANet just ran out of ideas.  Instead of investigations or exploration that most prior story has had, it's all replaced with rift hunts.

 

Conclusion

I would put this expansion as a 5/10.  Definitely the weakest one so far, and that's including giving it the benefit of the doubt being only the first half-to-2/3 of the expansion.  A number of the new changes feel like backslides because key pieces that made the prior versions enjoyable were just forgotten about in development.  I have no idea how this works as a standalone expansion because of how reliant it is on the skyscale masteries.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Drarnor Kunoram.5180

[nosleepdemon.1368]

The story alone not being teenage drama drivel elevates it above EoD, which I was unable to finish beyond the first hour or so. I've enjoyed it a lot so far, the new characters are interesting, the writing doesn't make me want to scream, the map design is neat. I think it's probably my favourite since Heart of Thorns.

[xDumplinx.7983]

Just finished the story today. Got to say I was pleasantly surprised with it. Was so much better then EoD and the Gyala Delves junk. Sadly though, they turned Zojja into a female Braham. She used to be my favorite no nonsense character, now she is a bad daytime soap opera extra.

[Luthan.5236]

Wizard's vault and the relics need a bit adjustments - but are the greatest part of the expansion. Story seems okay so far. Have not finished it yet. On the skyscale/exploration: I agree here. Felt like I already had to use a lot of movement skills and I have all previous stuff unlocked. (jade bot glide booster, season 4 masteries for extra skills for the skyscale from season 4.)

This might really be annoying for new players. I already found it slow to try to get up first (with waypoints unlocked easier though). New players might see all the other players being able to move faster - doing the events faster.

And it might even be possible to do masteries in the wrong order. When you go for all other stuff - skyscale stuff at the last - then you might end up having to get mastery points to do the remaining skyscale mastery line tiers ... when the only left over points are not reachable without the mastery. (Mesmer and/or port to friend required then.)

[Tere.4759]

I can't stand Zojja now.  I also can't find a story.  I've done several parts and so far, it's close these rifts, save this person, close these rifts, save this person.  That is not a story.