Everything is not always as it seems in gaming. The era of “bullshots” — a fictional slice of a game created for trade shows like the now-defunct E3 is mostly behind us, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still developers obfuscating the quality of games with flashy pre-release material.
A trailer for the upcoming MMO Chrono Odyssey aired at this year’s Summer Game Fest. The dramatic voice-over pitting our character against the forces of evil, accompanied by action shots of Soulslike combat, likely convinced some people that Chrono Odyssey was set to be a sleeper hit. However, players who gained access to Chrono Odyssey’s ongoing playtest were met with a very different game than the one depicted in the trailer.
False Promises
Chrono Odyssey’s budding subreddit is filled with posts of players being surprised by the rough state of Chrono Odyssey. “Holy hell, is it in rough shape,” writes CalamityPhant0m. “I played around with all the graphical settings, thinking maybe the choppy animations were system-related, they weren’t […] I think it’s fair to say this needs a lot more time in the oven.”
“This game is easily the worst representation of a UE5 game that I’ve ever seen,” says Humble_Shame1438. “I almost think it was made for mobile instead. Especially if you look at the UI, and then look at the lighting. The mob AI seems like it’s bad to make up for people playing on mobile, too. […] It’s also shocking how janky everything is, even for a beta. You would literally never expect this game was in development for 4-5+ years.”
Some common complaints continuously crop up in these threads: performance issues, janky animations and poor enemy artificial intelligence. There are also nebulous complaints about how the game feels, with a few people explicitly saying that something feels very wrong in Chrono Odyssey.
Chrono Odyssey is the debut title of Chrono Studio, which is a subsidiary of Npixel, the Korean company behind Gran Saga. This is contrary to some of Chrono Odyssey’s branding, which seems to imply that Chrono Studio is a “new player” in the MMO scene that’s above the “pay-to-win” model that’s infected other games in the genre, despite Gran Saga having these same features.
Chrono Odyssey is currently undergoing early playtests.
Chrono Odyssey
- ESRB
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rp
- Developer(s)
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Chrono Studio
- Publisher(s)
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Kakao Games
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer, Online Co-Op
