The best

When you first start playing this game, it seems to be really fun. You think, why are there mixed reviews on Steam? If you keep playing for a few hours after that, you start to understand.

I would make a pros and cons list, but I can't actually think of that many pros. For what it is, it's a really fun game that you can grind for hours (if you're into that kind of game). The cons seem to far outweigh the pros, though.

Cons:

"Press Z to win" - This is a problem that a lot of people have, but I never found to be a huge concern since the main class I chose was the wizard. The general majority of classes level up strength religiously due to the constant need to basic attack. Some people complain that the lack of spell-combos and reliance on basic attacks leads to a boring game experience, which I feel is completely valid.

The next three are general restrictions in Tree of Savior and my main reasons for not recommending it.


"Free" Game - The game in itself is free to play, and there's no absolute need to buy in-game currency. However, leading into the next point, it seems like it would be very difficult to play this way.

Punishing creativity/new players - I'll admit, when I started playing this game I didn't look at any guides at first and that may have been rather foolish, as I leveled up many wrong things along the way. Come to find out, there is no way to reset your skills for free with leveling up, like other mmo's, instead you have to exchange real currency (about 6 USD) to do so. This makes no sense, and couples with a few other restrictions (coming up next) that make me unable to recommend the game.

The "Marketplace" - I don't think I have ever seen a trade system as broken as this one in an mmo. I was relatively excited to learn that the game had this feature, since I had used it heftily on other games, only to find out that there are huge drawbacks that go along with this. The first time you are able to use this system is when you arrive in the first city, but upon further inspection you cannot list any items for sale until (two or three, I can't recall) days after your character is made. This seems alright, a relatively effective approach at postponing any trade scandals that allegedly plagued this game, but then it gets worse. Without a token (bought either using massive amounts of silver, or with real life currency exchange, amounting to 12-13 USD) you can only list one item at a time for sale. This makes listing materials or equipment wildly impractical, as selling 5 things could take you literally 5 days.


Of course, they take even this a few steps further. You cannot list anything for more than a maximum price given, or lower than a minimum price given - and it must be rounded (cannot list something for 4536, you would have to list it for 4600). This means that competitive pricing is nonexistent for a lot of the earlier items, so listing materials and equipment is essentially a crapshoot, hoping your item is chosen among dozens of others listed at the same price. It doesn't stop here, though - along with a 1% listing fee (reasonable), if and when the item sells there is a 30% service charge on the total price of the item. As if only getting 69% of the intended selling price for an item isn't a big enough kick in the balls, you also have to wait an additional 48 hours after the item sells to be able to receive the silver for it. This is one of the most broken and dysfunctional marketplace systems I have ever personally -tried- to use.
*This doesn't really go with marketplace, but I figured I'd add it somewhere. You cannot transfer items between characters (you have four initial character slots when creating your account), nor can you trade with other players without having a token. Even with a token, you are limited to making 30 player trades per month.

Marketplace tl;dr: Restricts to the point of almost unusability.

Aside from the restrictions and debatably boring gameplay, I enjoy this game. There are other complications that I have had, like FPS issues and my character not turning precisely when I want him to in order to land a skillshot, but ultimately those are due to my computer being -less than great- and weren't factored into my recommendation. It makes me sad to see the game ruined (for me) by restrictions placed on gameplay because of problems in the past. Tree of Savior has a lot of the fun elements seen in other mmos, and a lot of ones that were new to me and perhaps unique to the game, but overall I can't recommend this game in its current state.


Edits: Changed wording on a couple of things, added tl;dr, fixed previous statement that you pay a 10% listing fee, this was intended to be 1%.