Originally posted by Webbman:

From what i gather the black cores was a last minute addition and they ran out of time so i imagine that will be addressed in the new year as will the difficulty balance and a few other loose ends like equipment upgrades. That being said you can find any of the bosses before your ready to fight them so that's nothing new.

lets be objective here though. All the previous biomes had much simpler gameplay loops than mistlands. Mistlands has more weapons, more enemies and more enemy mechanics, and more options, more farmables, and more build pieces than any other biome they made.

my feeling is that no matter what they did, just because it took a long time, some players were never going to be happy with it no matter what they achieved, which if you look at the details was alot with this update.

Me and my bud had a blast playing through so my advice is to not let your expectations get the better of you.

I am objective - as far as possible, because game development is a kind of art.
My review is not a pent up rage of delivery delays or other happenings around the game. It is purely about the gaming experience.

Mistlands is so far the most beautiful biom with the most attention to detail, but at the same time the least enjoyable and the least motivating in terms of replayability.

You can clearly see that 80% of all resources were "wasted" on the visuals, but only a small part on logical consistency and how the biom should fit into the rest of the game. In germany you would say "not everything that glitters is gold".

That are facts with measurable values in reality. You just have to play it.

Look at the most objective reviews after the early access release and compare to the mistlands release. Limit your research to the reviews with arguments and subtract from trolls and flamers.

Speak to people who are honest to themselves.
Both flaming/trolling and defending developers or praising prodcuts which are just mediocore by any means necessary and additionally attacking people who try to improve things even more they love with arguments and real criticism, is the direct path to an autoimmune disease which the society already has.

"Close enough" is not good enough for me and should not be a benchmark to anyone. By far not.
Wasted potential is far worse on the long run than someone who really can't do it any better.

You clearly see what the Valheim devs were capable of if you look to the initial release of the game. For some reason that is gone and what 80%+ of the community does now doesn't motivate them to bring their passion back. Maybe the passion is gone after the initial success, nothing unusual these days. But in the event that it isn't, the behavior of the community doesn't help anyone.

Even worse, if this continues, they will drop the game after the xbox release. If not officially, then motivationally. Perhaps mistlands was already half a community troll instead of getting the maximum out of it.

So why does everyone keep doing things where everyone loses instead of aiming for a win-win situation? Honest criticism without malicious intent behind it harms no one. And if you are still willing to give your best, you have the necessary information first hand, the consumer to focus on - it doesn't get any better than this if you care about your product.