Game is really cool, and gets a huge plus plus for being playable on Linux from launch, unlike it's HoYo comparison, Star Rail, that doesn't work at all. Great art, cool gameplay loop, scifi setting is top notch, but the game is VERY stingy. As in, you will get to level 12 and then you'll be grinding yourself nonstop.

My one gripe is that you absolutely should not be grinding yourself to death before level 30 at the very least. I'm missing core gameplay components because I have to run challenges nonstop to level up. This could be mitigated by doing what other gachas do and allowing an instant "auto" completion once you've done it manually once.

But as of right now, it's a 7/10. Great concept, has potential, but the grind is in the wrong place.

As a Linux user, having tossed Windows in the trash from the moment they announced the abandonment of Windows 10 and new spyware apps, I haven't really had a chance to play many shooters in the past couple years. Extraction shooters especially (looking at you, Tarkov). To my surprise, ARC Raiders *is not* using intrusive anti-consumer kernel level anti-cheat, which means! I can play it!

And it's good.

It's so good.

Most of the time I'm running solo and hanging out with random strangers. Sometimes we team up and shoot at aggressive PVPers, other times we loot and exfil. On the flipside, whenever I run random squads, it's blood. Nothing but blood. Everyone wants you dead, aside from maybe a few people here and there.

But the thing is, no matter how much you lose, you can always jump right back in with these unlimited free loadouts, and in less than an hour you can be back to where you were before you lost your stuff.

The one big thing that makes this game so unique though, are the times when people *do* choose to be cool and chill, rather than aggressive, that's one of the big things that makes this game special. And the people begging for a PVE-only mode would see that vanish from the game, and it would be the death of ARC Raiders. There is nothing wrong with PVP in a PVPVE game, and it should stay exactly the way it is.

These people need to go play a different game and let ARC be ARC.

Take a lesson from EVE Online: If you can't afford to lose what you're taking into a lobby, DON'T TAKE IT.

Anyway, 100 out of 100, would recommend!

I've been very skeptical of this game. Mainly because, any game that people regard as a "killer" of another game, well, we have a whole history of World of Warcraft clones to look at in order to see what happened in that respect. And then there's the AI stuff in the Zoi creator, the texture and clothing creation, and so on and so forth. Honestly, if it wasn't something destroying the environment and fueling the propaganda machine in the US, maybe I wouldn't have such a negative, massively negative opinion about it.

That aside, there's still a game under the hood. I run Linux on my desktop PC, Pop!_OS to be exact, and I wasn't expecting it to work flawlessly out of the box.

But it did.

And it hasn't crashed in nearly 5 hours, and it's not laggy.

It feels like basegame Sims 3 before they added vampires, witches, fairies, and zombies.

I'm tentatively thinking this game is actually good, and headed in the right direction. MAYBE. We'll see. Otherwise, yeah. I have a house with a couple Zois and the whole carpeting is astroturf, the walls are made of beef, and I have a dirt garden in the basement. Because it just lets you do that.

First off, I've played and have had an account in this game since 2003, and unlike those days, I'm on Linux now. Suffice to say, the Steam version of Anarchy Online is very much hit or miss depending on your hardware and what distro you're using. For me, it's Pop!_OS with AMD hardware, and through Steam, this game won't launch at all.

But! It works on Lutris with Wine, and that's good enough for me (this is why my Steam played time is low)

That out of the way, Anarchy Online is a very complex MMO, a far cry from the MMOs of today, i.e., flashy, simple, same-y.

AO is a sci-fi MMORPG with over 200 levels to gain. The playerbase is small now, but it keeps on chugging no matter the year. It betrays even the ideals of what Funcom is today, in that it isn't a survival game where the players are fronting the cost of server hosting. This is a real MMO, captured and frozen in time, and if you're worried about Funcom basically having this game on maintanence mode, I'll assure you that there's enough content in here to keep you busy for years.

Heck, in 2004 I never even managed to get to 220, and I'M STILL NOT THERE. Of course, nowadays, that's mostly because finding a team is a bit harder, and I'm using daily missions to gain little bits of experience. But there's a lot of fun to be had if you're starting a new character.

Twinking, running missions, going through all the public dungeons, collecting loot, hoarding creds, plopping implants into your body, and heck, PVP is still kind of active.

If you're looking for something that isn't just a cashgrab MTX MMO that'll be dropped in 2 years by NCSoft or some other pjrofit driven company, just play Anarchy Online.

Maybe I'll see you in here