Have you ever been so diametrically opposed to a game that you knew right from the very beginning that it was going to be a bad time? It doesn’t happen often to me – as a writer and a gamer I like to try to give anything I’m playing time to state its case – but Pax Dei is one of those games.
While I can admit that I’ve had a pretty bad week this past week just in general, this game did not do much to improve that mood, primarily thanks to some general boneheaded design choices and a game loop that has been done so much better by so many other survival-esque games, early access or otherwise.
As instructed, I reset and made a new character (or more specifically just let the character creator clap one together for me) and dropped in. Quite literally: I plopped into the home location I selected and that’s it. Luckily I wasn’t going into this completely unawares, meaning I was armed with a tiny bit of knowledge, but otherwise instructions were available only by reading a help paragraph or going through some tutorials. Not the strongest start, but it’s fine.
The server and starting location I selected was a little mish-mash of people just starting their own bases and those who had constructed some impressive little villas for themselves, in what I can only assume is a perfect visual representation of people who really liked this game and people who didn’t. Still, there was at least some ground for me to start the very bare beginnings of my base camp from what I could tell, so I didn’t feel as if I was completely shoved out.
My natural survival sandbox experience told me to run to the nearest tree and rock and punch it for materials. When that didn’t work, I did the next best thing: run around in circles with my head staring at the ground in a desperate attempt to find materials laying on the ground. A bunch of sticks and a few rocks later, I was able to craft some rudimentary tools and begin the process of building my homestead.
Literally none of this surprised me, and so it didn’t do much to delight me either. Gathering is typical. Crafting is typical, though instead of watching a bar slowly fill you watch it fill from two different ends hoping that the progress side passes an arrow threshold before the failure side does. I built tools. I crafted raw materials. I got some of the smaller balls rolling.
And then I ran into the requirement of needing clay.
Up to this point, I had not seen any clay scattered around, nor are there any tools or deposits that one can specifically farm clay from like you can timber and gneiss. So it was time for me to pick up my crude shield and pointy stick to set out looking for this vital material.
Since I had established base at the slope of a hill, I sort of assumed that I would need to head to some water sources in order to find some clay scattered around. Luckily, I selected a start point that was near a lake and a river, so I felt reasonably confident I would be able to locate some without too much hassle. This ended up being far more harrowing than expected, however, as the nearby woods held big dangers in the form of boars.
Most of the time, boars are trivial enemies in MMOs. The boars in Pax Dei do not mess around. And they attack in packs, apparently. As I was walking around, a line of three of them ran sideways at me, cutting off huge chunks of my health as I ran away. It took a long time for the aggro leash to break, but eventually it did, leaving me with about 13 HP out of the 100 or so I had. I gnoshed on some blueberries, waited for my health to regen, and tried again, this time giving the boars a wide berth.
Eventually I made it to the lake and river bank, but all I ended up mostly finding was several houses built immediately on the side of the river. There was some flint that I wandered into, but the banks and nearby forest looked to be utterly devoid of clay. I did find a fox and a badger, each of which attacked me for some reason. I killed them easily enough, but… aggro foxes? Aggro badgers? What??
After some more wandering around, following the river’s path and avoiding a bear, I managed to stumble across a small pile of clay. Frantically I gathered it all up and started to make my way back to base camp. The sun was beginning to set, and I was not about to be caught out in the dark woods in a game where freaking foxes want to murder me.
Finally, I made it back home. I pulled out my building hammer. I selected a stone foundation tile to build. It required 10 clay to craft.
I found 14.
Now I don’t necessarily mind scarcity in survival sandboxes. I don’t even necessarily mind some danger. But this game is tuned way too hard for me and what I like out of my sandbox experiences. Clay is apparently as precious and as rare as gold, crafting requirements seem tuned way too high, and gameplay seemed to be forcing me to enter with a bunch of people right from the very start.
And that’s to say nothing of some of the other annoyances in Pax Dei. You can’t gather while on the move even when you’re running over or near materials, meaning when I saw something I wanted, I had to stop and then hit the “E” key – and not because I was in animation lock either since I just slurped up the item on the ground. Enemies are dumb as rocks, meaning the “challenge” is a matter of them taking huge bites out of your health bar in the early going. All the while, some long, lilting notes from a soundtrack composed by what sounded like Dollar Store Jeremy Soule droned along, desperately trying to convince me I was on the cusp of a grand adventure.
No, Pax Dei, suffering through your survival nonsense to build one small square of a base foundation is not an adventure. It’s garbage.
This is an early access game, so it stands to reason that ideally things will improve. And it’s also worth pointing out that, as far as I can tell, this game appears to have found its audience. And last but not least, I remind readers that this column isn’t intended as a final review of the game I’m playing; it’s a toe-dip at best. But I seriously doubt I’ll be back any time soon. As I mentioned last week, I reserved the right to take up the second voted-for game in the polls, Fractured Online, and I’m exercising that option. And while I don’t expect this one to go much better, at least it won’t be… this. We’re moving on.
Which planet should I start on in Fractured Online?
- Syndesia. Be a normal human. (30%, 56 Votes)
- Arboreous. Be a plant person. (70%, 132 Votes)
Total Voters: 188
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Polling will close at the usual 1:00 p.m. EDT time on Friday, August 19th. I’m going to do something else now; all I get when I think about this game is angry.
Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.
