Element Battle Royale has recently been receiving an overhaul update and we are going to give it a short inspection today, after the servers weren't playable at my last attempt in march (https://gamereviewnation.blogspot.com/2021/03/mediocre-br-games-without-players.html).
The most important changes are, that the servers of the game are no longer broken, Bots have been added to the game, to make it playable again and the map has been changed a bit as well.
The fixing of the servers was long overdue and absolutely necessary. The integration of the Bots was also definitely a good idea, even though they are unfortunately not the best Bots around. Bots either have movement problems and behave a little retarded or they laser you from 100 meters plus. At the end it isn't a problem to outplay them, but the AI is definitely not working as intended.
The map changes sounded promising, but I was once more being left disappointed. The old map got replaced with a bigger, even duller one. The new map also has a hill in the middle of it, but there is nothing interesting aside from this hill. The hill only has 3 small huts with a couple of chests and outside of the hill there are only generic trees and empty spaces till the ocean as a natural limitation of the map. Sure the ocean is new, but the factory halls got removed and the map actually manages to look and feel even worse than the previous one. I didn't think this was possible.
The unique wall feature of the game btw only starts after 5 minutes, but since all players still start at the same location in the middle of the map, it is far from guaranteed to even see them during the match.
Most of the other negative aspects have however unfortunately not improved. The gunplay is still as bad and imprecise as it used to be (after finally trying it out myself, I am horrified by this gunplay and the awful recoil patterns), there is still the problem of all players starting right next to each other and there are barely any visual improvements being made (texture quality might have improved minimally, but the game still looks atrocious overall).
Sound is another critical area. The well done main menu soundtrack was sadly replaced, but the new one is also okay. The issue in the sound area are footstep and gunshot sounds, which are all over the place. You will hear your own footsteps 2-3 seconds after you stopped walking, which is more than just irritating and gunshots don't match the position of the enemies at all. This really needs to be fixed.
According to the steam store page, the dev of Element BR is considering to move his game from being F2P to a B2P model in the future. Given the status of the game nearly 1 year after its initial launch, that seems completly insane to me. This game isn't worth playing for free, who on earth is supposed to pay for it???
Pro:
(- Main menu soundtrack is okay, but not as good as the old one)
- System of killing walls as a circle is still interesting
- Addition of Bots makes the game playable again
Contra:
- All players still spawn at the same location
- Visuals are still hideous (very little, nearly not noticeable improvements)
- The new map is probably even worse than the old one
- Gunplay and recoil are absolutely awful
- Bots are either retarded or master snipers
- Sound synchronization is often broken (you hear footsteps and gunshot sounds too late and completely out of place)
Result:
I was actually expecting to be able to at least upgrade the score of Element Battle Royale to a 2.5/10 or 3/10, after the servers were fixed, Bots got added and a new map replaced the bad old one. But somehow the new Element Battle Royale managed to not get any better. Visuals look nearly unchanged, which equals very bad. Gunplay is still a nightmare, the new map isn't an improvement, sound effects are often broken and the new Bots are either brainless or trick shooters. It doesn't get more than 2 Points, because it simply doesn't offer anything that would justify it. I strongly recommend to not play this game. There are very few games, who are worse than Element Battle Royale.
2/10
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