Today we are going to look at some BR games, which for the most part might not be complete trash, but certainly also no hidden gems, that however lack any kind of population. I would have actually liked to at least give them a try in order to get a better overview. It was however not possible to get a game going in any of them. I am on one hand talking about the F2P BR game Mortal Royale, but we will also be speaking about three other games, in which no matches can be started any more. One is acually a good game (Anarea Battle Royale), one has already shutdown (Death Field) and one is actually pretty terrible (Element Battle Royale).
1. Anarea Battle Royale
Our first case is Anarea Battle Royale. It was intended to be something like the spirital successor to H1Z1. The gameplay of both games have a lot of similarities, especially in gunplay and movement. A difference is, that there are no vehicles in Anarea Battle Royale. The visuals of the game are pretty decent, nothing genre-defining, but still nice to look at (pretty much how you would imagine a only slightly modernized version H1Z1).
Anarea features 60 instead of 100 players and random spawns across the map (similar to games like Darwin Project, The Culling, Cuisine Royale or Last Man Standing). Currently there is only a Solo mode, but Duos and Squads were planned as well. The Anarea map reminded me a lot of those in H1Z1, PUBG or Ring of Elysium, which are not 'themepark maps', but very natural environment maps. This means there are no shiny POIs like you see in Fortnite, Realm Royale, COD Blackout or some other games, but a clean naturside of grassfields, rivers, some cities, mountains and hills. Nothing really stands out on this map, but everythings fit pretty well in the context (which is something I always appreciated at the H1Z1 map Z2). The only slightly odd aspect of the map is, that the northern part of the map only consists of a thick construct of mountains (which should be 25-30% of the playable area). If the final circle gets there, it certainly turns into an interesting place to battle. Overall I definitely did like this map. They could however try to improve the insides of buildings, which are still a bit too empty and bring a little bit more of diversity into the POIs (cities aside from Prison and Harbour could differentiate themselves a little more).
There are a couple of areas, where Anarea could have used a bit more polish. Movement works well in the game and also has that arcady feeling H1Z1 does, but the walking animation looks a bit stiff. There are also a couple of annoying Glitches and Bugs, that should be fixed. What they already improved are the crashes, which were a huge problem at release, but they now seem to have become a lot more rare.
The Sound effects in the game are nothing fancy, but they seem to work well. Footstep sounds are clearly distinguishable, weaponshots sound like they are supposed to and the metalic click sound effect after eliminating an opponent is very satisfying (main menu soundtrack is also okay, but nothing really worth talking about either).
The weapon selection is okay, the weapons do handle quite differently (which is a plus), but there are only 7 different weapons in total (2 ARs, 1 Sniper, 2 Shotguns and 2 Pistols). The itemselection also focuses only on the most important things (Med-Packs, Syringes and so on). Gunplay looks very promising and fun. It is however important to note, that in the same way like H1Z1, these weapons do require a bit of skill. In Anarea there is no first person aim, there are no scopes and only a very small zooming closer function. All weapons also have a comparibly strong recoil. Even when "zooming in", they require active aiming after every shot and hipfiring is very inacurate (with which I actually don't have a problem, since I believe hipfiring is too strong in many games). In any case the gunplay requires a bit of skill and combat often gets sweaty and competitive in Anarea, which isn't naturally a bad thing, but something to be aware off.
Something more special about Anarea is their Perk System (Even though COD Blackout has something pretty similar, but most BR games don't have Perks). Perks can be found during a match and players can choose one out of 4 offensive and 4 defensive abilities to activate, which gives the player a slight help. Leech perk for example lets you regenerate 20HP after scoring a kill, Ninja perk makes your footsteps more quiet, Murder gives some of your bullets a bleeding effect and Bomber makes grenades more effetive. All offensive and defensive perks counter each other in one way or another. Anti-Bleeing and Hardskin for example eliminate the effects of another player using Murder or Bomber. Overall this perk system seems interesting, but I am not sure if the game really benefits from it or if it would be better without. I am probably leaning a bitter closer towards the last.
The presentation overall is despite the game's strengths still a bit unpolished, but shows potential and resembles its inspiration source H1Z1 pretty well. I understand why H1 Fans were so hyped for this game.
The two biggest problems with Anarea BR are probably the lack of players and the asking price of 15 Euro/Dollars on Steam. In combination both factors have lead to the essential death of the game. In the last 4 months the game averaged between 1-2 players, which makes it impossible to get a game going and which prevents me and many others from purchasing it. The devs had previously announced wanting to add Duo/Squads mods and finally turning the game into F2P. Unfortunately they seem to have simply abandonned this plans without publicly communicating it. That is a shame, since the gameplay is actually pretty fun and with a decent F2P system Anarea might have not turned into a commercial mega-success, but it could have been profitable for the devs and the players.
There is still a glimpse of hope. While the devs have not communicated anything official since September 2020, they are still engaging on Discord and promised to release a new update in February/March 2021. It seems however like they have downsized significantly to around 2-3 permanent developers, which massively slowed down the development process. Hopefully they can still turn the situation around and make the game free in the process (In that case I would certainly try it out and write a new article about it).
Anarea Battle Royale is actually a good game and would deserve a larger audience, than it currently has. While Anarea is still rough in some areas, the gameplay foundation itself is pretty decent and a good alternative for H1 players. They should just turn the game F2P and work on polishing the game (animations, server stability etc).
6/10
2. Mortal Royale
Mortal Royale is melee focused BR game in a medieval setting, which is based on the MMORPG Mortal Online.
There are a couple of aspects, which make Mortal Royale standout in the BR genre. For one, it is pretty much the only first person melee driven BR game in a medieval setting and the second aspect is, that allows up to 1000 (not a typo!) players to participate in one match. That sounds really impressive, but according to Steam Stats there have never been more than 93 concurrent players been online. To be fair, I would imagine the 1000 player matches to turn into total and utter mayhem and chaos. In order to start a match you require at least 5 participants (a 30 day average of 0,1 players made this into an impossible task). I couldn't find a match and the chances of that changing in the future are very close to zero.
Mortal uses a melee combat system in which the directions of attacks and their strength play a role. To block a right attack for example you also need to block on the right. You can also parry/counter or use stabs/pushes instead of swings. In theory this sounds rather cool, but in reality the combat system in Mortal Royale is pretty clunky and weird. Many players find it a bit funny looking (Sometimes enemy players will stand with their back towards you and still manage to get a successful hit). That being said you can't deny that it actually has a complex system behind it. Nonetheless, I believe that it looks a bit like a much slower and less fun version of the Culling combat.
Aside from swords and lances/axes , players can also use magic spells (there is a really large variety of different spells) and bows and arrows to defeat their opponents. Furthermore, players can use horses not only for traveling, but also to engage in mounted combat. This is honestly a really cool idea and works somewhat well (You can however also not deny that it looks quite a bit goofy as well, especially since most horses are actually small donkeys in this game).
There are also by the way a lot of different armour pieces, shields, food items etc in the game (you can for example eat the corpses of other players xD). Mortal Royale clearly shows its MMORPG origins in these aspects.
The map of Mortal Online has been taken over into Mortal Royale. Since Mortal Online is an MMORPG and the map in Mortal Royale has to be playable for 1000 players, you can already imagine that the map is absolutely gigantic for a BR game. The positive aspect about this however is, that the map is quite well designed. Some places however do look a bit empty, but that probably has to expected from such a big map. The circle in this game is a flaming ring of fire and so Mortal Royale is actually the first BR to do so and not Battlefield 5 Firestorm. This ring of fire gives the sky a red glimpse, which creates a bit of a hellish/apocalyptic atmosphere. I did like that design. Something unique about Mortal Royale is also, that players before the match traverse the map already in some kind of shadow mode and will start the real match exactly in the position where they were in shadow mode. Low players numbers thankfully lead to the match already starting with one of the final circles. That being said, even this smaller circle is still really large and because of the slow movement speed, it can take a bit of time to meet other players.
Mortal Royale also has an interesting character creator. Players can choose out of different races, but all aside of humans are locked behind a DLC paywall (Understandable that they want to earn money somehow, but who was really supposed to buy them?). The other races are something like Orcs and Darkelves and there is also a hybrid race. Players also had the opportunity to randomly generate a character by choosing his 4 grandparents and their races (Something you certainly don't see in many BR games). By default there is only 1 hair cut, face, tattoo etc unlocked for the character creation. Most other cosmetic items can simply be unlocked by leveling up.
The visuals of the game are very outdated and remind me a lot of Morrowind (which is from 2002!). The graphics of Mortal Online were already noticeably outdated in 2010 and they haven't improved in Mortal Royale. I personally like the early 2000 graphic engines, but you can't objectively deny that the visuals don't hold up too well in 2021. The soundtrack ingame is actually pretty epic and probably the best part of the game. Sound effects are okay, but also sometimes sound a bit wooden.
Another interesting aspect of Mortal Royale is its Spectator mode. Instead of actively watching another player, one can freely move around the map after their death and watch the other players. The only difference is that the player moves in shadow mode again, and he can't interact with any other players.
Overall Mortal Royale is a bit of a weird Battle Royale game. In a lot of aspects, it feels more like the MMORPG it is based on, just in a BR set of rules. That being said, it has a very complex combat system and a large variety of ingame items, weapons, magic etc. Unfortunately the combat can despite the strong concept often feel quite clunky/odd in execution, the movement is really slow and the visuals are severely outdated. Map and Soundtrack are some other good aspects, but the lack of a playerbase makes it impossible to experience them. Mortal Royale seems to be another case of a good concept with a poor execution.
4.5/10
3. Element Battle Royale
Now lets also talk about a pretty terrible game, that I wanted to review properly, but found myself incappable of doing so. Element Battle Royale is small BR game from a single indie developer, but it was at least released on Steam, so I thought about giving it a shot. Unfortunately despite queuing on multiple occasions I couldn't get into a game. I was a bit more optimistic to play Element since it only required 2 players to start a game (you can't really require less than that), but even that proved too much of a challenge. I even convinced a friend, that we would both queue up, but the game refused to start a lobby anyway (maybe it is currently broken or servers shutdown?)
Element Battle Royale has nearly nothing special about it. If you wanted to point anything out, than it would be the fact, that all players start the match at the same location very close to each other before they can go looting for a weapon. The only other somewhat interesting aspect is, that this game has walls as a circle and every player outside of these walls gets automatically killed instead of just receiving continuous damage.
The visuals are very bare bones, the map only consists of grasslands with some empty factory buildings. The gunplay looks really awful and weapon variety is nearly nonexistent. There is a Stamina System, that doesn't really affect gameplay unless you find a full lobby (which was probably never the case), since the map is too small for it to have a bigger impact. Soundeffects are also very basic, but the soundtrack in the main menu is at least actually not bad. I could point out, that controls and sound/ visual detail settings are customizable, but honestly that is simply something than can be expected. There are no Bots in Element Battle Royale and also no real players, since there is no reason play this pre-alpha version of an under average BR-game. The game is a really bad version of a painfully generic BR game.
Before seeing the Gameplay of Element Battle Royale I believed, that Culling 2 and Battle Royale Survival were probably going to compete for the shame of being the worst Battle Royale games I have given a closer look or played myself. I would now change my mind, since I even find the idea of playing Culling 2 more entertaining than experiencing Element BR. You just have to see Element Battle Royale as more of a Tech-Demo, than isn't a complete disaster for the first attempt of an amateur developer. As a real Videogame however Element Battle Royale fails in nearly every department and it isn't really worth talking more about.
2/10
4. Death Field: The Battle Royale of Disaster
Another mediocre Battle Royale game that has already shutdown is Death Field: The Battle Royale of Disaster. The game had a pretty cool concept as a BR game with environmental catastrophes. A volcano was spitting out fireballs onto the players and theses 'disasters' were the reason for parts of the map to be closed. A BR match could either be won by killing all other players, or escaping via a rescue helicopter. This helicopter however was only going to arrive after all the parts of the map had already been closed down. The catch at Death Field was that players could wear nuclear protective suits to avoid damage from the contaminated parts of the map. The ring/cycle system of BR maps was therefore a bit different in this game. Before every volcanic eruption there were also alarm sirens being activated, to that players could potentially take cover and dodge the flaming debris.
While I really like this concept, I still feel that it was severely underutilized. It would have been really cool, if the environmental disasters had a real impact on the map instead of just the flaming debris. Lava or craters could have taken over the closed part of the map and made the game a lot more atmospheric/ immersive.
Another interesting aspect of Death Field was the crafting system, which forced players to collect resources in order to upgrade weapons and armours or to create new items. At the end, I don't think it was that impactful to the gameplay, but the crafting system was a pretty cool idea.
The game featured jeeps as driveable vehicles and a decent weapon selection. A little disappointing, that there were only these jeeps and no other vehicles in the game. The cars also didn't seem to have any fuel barometer, so that the vehicles could theoretically be used indefinitely during a match, which doesn't sound optimal. The weapon selection might be decent (even though some of them have a really strong recoil), but same as the inventory, they look nearly identical to those of H1Z1 and PUBG. At least a bit more of visual differentiation would have been appreciated. Gunplay therefore is also okay. Not as good as the inspiration sources, but also not a mess.
Unfortunately the game lacked Duo and Squad modes. Given the small playerbase however it was probably for the better.
The map of the game had a decent size (at least if 100 players are/would be playing) and is divided into 20 different sectors, which will all sequentially close during the match. Most parts of the map are just environments, but there are also a couple of cities scattered across the map and even a big solar complex. The map is, like a lot of parts of this game, neither breathtaking nor a disaster, but just decent/okay (The plane to drop out of the beginning of a match, was in this game a burning zeppelin, which is pretty cool).
The visuals of Death Field are also relatively okay, maybe a little under average. I would however rate them neither as too bad nor as really good, and the visual style reminded me a lot of H1Z1 or an uglier version of PUBG.
Some of the biggest problems of the game were the lack of players, the asking price and the launch problems.
At the launch of the game, weapons were way too rare and so many of the (already few) players died without a chance to even defend themselves. There were also annoying glitches that prevented players from picking up items or opening doors and some Lag issues. According to Steam charts there were only 46 concurrent players at launch and the numbers dropped in the following days even lower than that. The game received only very little marketing, so that most potential players weren't even aware of its existence. And a lot of those, who knew of the game were strongly discouraged by the 15 Euro/Dollar Price tag (which already included a day 1 price drop). If a new BR games is released with a price tag, than it needs to have a big marketing push, so that there will be full servers from the start, otherwise a snowball effect will start, which prevents people from trying out the game. The developers of Death Field failed in that regard (I saw a video of a guy, who played one match all by himself. There were no other players in his lobby and he just escaped via the helicopter...).
The developers at least attempted to turn the situation around by fixing most of these glitches and adding Bots to the matchmaking. The damage however had already been done and the reputation of the game was irrevocably ruined (You could say the game literally turned into 'The Battle Royale of Disaster'). Sequentially the game had to shut the servers down in August 2018 after less then 4 months. In some ways Death Field reminded me of The Culling 2, even though it admittedly is the better game.
Overall Death Field: Battle Royale of Disaster is a wasted opportunity. The trailer and the concept were pretty promising, but the developers failed to utilize on it. The game should have generally gotten more time in development, the gunplay could have been refined, the environmental disasters should have been more impactful, it should have released F2P or at least made a way bigger marketing push to get full lobbies. There were some cool ideas in this game, like the volcano fire balls, the crafting system or the nuclear protection suit, which allowed to walk outside of the playable area. The end product however was lackluster and pretty average in comparison to games like H1Z1 or PUBG, which released much earlier.
5/10
