Asgard’s Wrath was considered such a VR milestone that barely 6 months after its release, Sanzaru Games was acquired by Facebook to operate under Oculus Studios. Since then, they have been hard at work on Asgard’s Wrath 2. But how do you impress people with a sequel for an outstanding PCVR title when you’re also tasked with making it a standalone title running on what we all know are glorified mobile chips?

It’s not an easy challenge, especially when you also take into account just how demanding, how fickle, and, frankly, how entitled some gamers (including ourselves) can sometimes be.

Of course, we’ll compare it to the first Asgard’s Wrath, even if we know that’s unfair. Of course, we’ll want it to be better, even though we know it doesn’t stand a chance graphically, especially when it also has to run on a Quest 2, and regardless of the resolution and frame rate bump that it just got on Quest 3.

So how is it? Is it any good? If you’re a Quest 3 owner, it doesn’t matter, does it? You got it for free anyway! But the real question is for Quest 2 owners – is this a game you should pay $60 for?

Well, that’s what we’re here to find out, innit?

Divine RPG Action

Asgard’s Wrath 2 is great, it’s fun, it’s pretty, and it’s big. Really big. You know how Douglas Adams waxed lyrical about the size of the universe in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? Well, okay. It’s not THAT big, but for anybody who’s been lamenting the bite-sized meals of most standalone VR titles, Asgard’s Wrath 2 feels huge. This fact slowly dawns on you as you play the first two hours and realize you’ve essentially just been introduced to the game. It hits you again once you’ve played for a few hours and finally get your first animal follower and start to realize you’ve barely scratched the surface of the 60+ hours of gaming it has to offer. It smacks you in the face when after all that, you realize that you’ve barely even spent much time in the whole rogue-like sub-game that Sanzaru just decided to throw in because why the hell not, and that could have been, for most developers, a standalone game in its own right. It’s just there, and Pete, for one, loves it, and who am I to argue with Pete?

So if it’s value you’re looking for, as a Quest 3 owner, it’s Christmas and Meta is a big fat Santa cramming your headset with gameplay, and if you’re a Quest 2 owner, you can’t compete with Asgard’s Wrath 2‘s bang for the buck. You can try, but you’ll fail.

Gameplay-wise, as if you didn’t know this already, AW2 is an action RPG with a divine twist. In the aftermath of AW, you’re now a god of sorts, and you get to inhabit earthly heroes as you go about the business of finding and defeating the Norse trickster God Loki, who, er..tricked you. The game dispenses with the Norse environments, probably a good move after AW1, God of War, and God of War Ragnarök, AC Valhalla, and the inevitable Norse fatigue, and places itself firmly in Egypt, and features an appropriately Egyptian pantheon; Sekhmet, Set, Isis, Horus, and all that.

You traverse the great sand sea, you explore ancient Egyptian temples, you fight reptilians right out of David Icke’s catalog of demonic misfits, you solve puzzles by altering your perspective from mortal to godly, and you power up your human heroes as well as your animal followers.

The combat in Asgard’s Wrath 2 feels good and is mostly melee-based. You can parry attacks, leaving your enemies open for a well-placed hit, and it’s pretty satisfying to cleave your enemies in half and watch them fall apart like you’re a ninja TikToker slicing fruits. You also get to throw your weapons at enemies and then retrieve them telekinetically, this ability is also used to solve some light switch-hitting puzzles, it all works well, and between the sound design and the haptics, it feels good.

Once in a while, you’ll come across a large area with a god station, or a divine altar, or whatever it’s called, and this will allow you to shift between your giant divine size, allowing you to manipulate large objects, and the possession of your mortal hero. This is where most of the puzzle elements come into play, relying on switching between the two forms and taking advantage of each. These start off simple, introducing you to the basic concepts and then progressively get more difficult, evoking some head-scratching. They’re fun and provide a good break from the combat which can, at times, start feeling repetitive.

This is always a concern with a long game time, that no matter how good the mechanics are, anything will start feeling repetitive after a few hours. To its credit, Asgard’s Wrath keeps things interesting, introducing new mechanics every now and then, new followers with new powers, and featuring a story that although not quite gripping, is nonetheless interesting and populated with identifiably unique characters.

Ra’s Radiant Realms

In terms of presentation, it’s hard to fault the game. Asgard’s Wrath 2‘s polished to a sleek shine. The game’s UI is clean, good-looking, and more importantly, always snappy. The recap that you can watch before you start the game proper, is incredibly well done, with your character flying through a giant animated 3D diorama that’s as informative as it is awesome to experience. The game’s graphics, despite some necessarily low-resolution textures are impressive overall, with fantastic art direction and detailed geometry in some of the environments. With its last update, the graphics are crisper on Q3, running at a higher resolution, and the frame rate is also a little bit higher than that on Q2, going from 72 to 90Hz.

Graphics on standalone are always a game of compromises, get it good on Q3, don’t make Q2 suck. Make it look good but keep the loading times down and keep the file size from hogging all the memory. You really can’t win. What you can do is make something that’s as good as it can be without breaking anything, and on that level, Asgard’s Wrath 2 succeeds with great graphics, expansive environments, and brisk loading times. Of course, there are compromises made, but my personal opinion is that Sanzaru have found a superb balance and done a great job.

Anubis’s Acoustic Delights

Audio-wise, the game pulls no punches. Great soundtrack, good voice acting, and impeccable sound design. There’s really not much to criticize here. The audio in the game makes everything feel solid and greatly enhances the overall feeling of presence and immersion.

Seth’s Setbacks

This is now the bit where I usually bring up any issues I’ve got with a title, but to be perfectly honest, there’s next to nothing to criticize with Asgard’s Wrath 2, other than the fact that it doesn’t fulfill some unreasonable fantasies that some might have expected from it. Yes, it doesn’t look as good as the first game, but it can’t. Yes, it didn’t release with Q3 enhancements, but we’ve already got an update that goes some way towards that. The one glaring weakness might be the general lack of standard enemy variety, the profusion of the reptilians, etc, but I’m not even halfway through the game at this point, so I don’t know if that’s an ongoing concern. In all cases, the game offers plenty of variety otherwise, with several playable characters, followers, puzzles, skill trees, and hours upon hours upon hours of gameplay.

In fact, it’s fair to say that unless you hate action RPGs or can’t get over the graphical downgrade from PCVR quality graphics, you’ll have a fantastic time with Asgard’s Wrath 2. If you got it for free with your Quest 3, then it definitely helps validate the headset’s purchase, and if you’re on Quest 2, it’s a great purchase that’ll show you just how much that headset can still achieve, despite its age. Asgard’s Wrath 2 is an absolute triumph for Sanzaru Games, and it shows that Meta knew exactly what it was doing when it acquired the studio. Do we all secretly hope they also release a cross-buy PCVR version so we can experience it that way as well, I’d be lying if I said no, but it was built to sell standalone headsets, and on that level, it absolutely delivers the goods.

Ma’at’s Measure

Asgard’s Wrath 2 is standalone VR at its best, making a great release season even better, easily joining the ranks of great releases such as Assassin’s Creed: Nexus and Arizona Sunshine 2. If you’ve got a Quest 2 or 3, there’s no better time to enjoy it, and if you haven’t bought a headset yet, those three titles should have you seriously considering a purchase.

With great graphics, fantastic combat, intelligent and varied puzzles, interesting mechanics, and an unrivaled scope, Asgard’s Wrath 2 is an unmissable VR experience and a fantastic sequel that’s impressive in all the ways that count. Well done, Sanzaru!

And now it’s a VR game releasing on Quest and PSVR2. This isn’t the first video game based on the franchise, in fact – it’s the seventh, but it’s the first one built for VR! 

Once Bitten

You play as a character called Justice, the main antagonist of the game who’s trying to retrieve an artifact of importance, and the game lets you choose between female and er..slightly less feminine hands, and female or male voices for your characters. It’s set in a gothic version of Venice. And it takes a substantial amount of inspiration from Dishonored, and anybody who’s played Dishonored will notice that immediately. Your teleport ability is called ‘blink’. You can pull off blink attacks, and you have a fairly good skill tree to fill out as you progress through the game. 

You start with fairly limited powers, you can teleport around, climb pipes, and various other things. Sneak up on enemies, grab them, and suck them to death. Soon, you’re given a wrist-mounted crossbow, for which you start acquiring various types of bolts. 

You can play the game as a stealth game and are encouraged to do so. The bad guys have guns and rifles. You do not, and it only takes a few shots to take you from undead to dead as a doorknob. However, as you acquire more and more skills, you can also start becoming more aggressive, since it costs less to perform deadlier actions. But it’s more difficult to acquire those skills if you’re playing it like an action game since you earn more skill credits by fulfilling stealth goals such as remaining undetected or not killing any mortals. It’s a good way to balance the gameplay and keep players from going too gung-ho.

As a single-player campaign, Vampire is refreshingly ambitious. Nobody’s going to be calling this another tech demo. Fast Travel Games have tried to build a full-on game here and should be appreciated and applauded for doing so. There are a good number of levels, called ‘Undertakings’, each of which has a small intro, and most of which have a gameplay prelude on the streets of Venice before you reach their start. 

The story isn’t as engaging as it could be, but it also doesn’t suffer from lengthy bouts of exposition, so although it may not engross you narratively, it also won’t bore you. It’s a decent enough story, but since it’s adapting the first game in a set of several tabletop games, it doesn’t feel very conclusive. In fact, by the end, it very much feels like it’s setting up a sequel. 

That’s not a bad thing, at all. A series of Dishonored-type VR games with vampires? Sure, sign me up. 

It’s not all smooth sailing, though, but we’ll get to that. First, let’s talk about pretty things. 

Sangue Sacre 

The first thing you’ll notice when you start up Vampire is that its night-time Venetian environments are stunning, no matter which platform you play it on, and I’ve been to Venice. It’s quite beautiful, but what they don’t tell you is that it’s dank. That’s what happens when you have so much water around all the time. But I digress. Built with Unreal, Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is beautiful, and you’ll be looking around you all the time, taking in the scenery and thinking, damn, this game’s a looker. 

The same, understandably, doesn’t apply to the NPCs, they are more stylized, and to a certain degree, their low polygonal count somewhat contrasts with the environment.

A weaker point, perhaps, is that all the characters are key-frame animated rather than motion-captured, so their body language and gestures feel stiff and clumsy, somewhat destroying the illusion that you’re talking to another character. 

One thing to note, however, is that the PSVR2 version, although it has some better graphics, more noticeably when it comes to particle effects, flames in barrels, etc, appears to have a slower frame rate than that of the Quest version. It simply doesn’t play as smoothly and seems to chug as you move through the streets. It’s very odd, considering how much more powerful the PS5 is compared to either Quest. Re-Projection issues? Perhaps. 

So if you have the choice, I’d recommend you play it in Quest unless FTG release some kind of patch that makes it smoother on PSVR2. 

But let’s move on to the audio.

The Red Violin

The first thing you’ll notice about Vampire‘s audio is the wonderful soundtrack composed by Two Feathers (Elvira Björkman and Nicklas Hjertberg) and featuring violinist Jeff Ball. Their work on Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is possibly the best soundtrack work I’ve ever heard in a VR game. It’s absolutely suited to the game’s setting and perfectly complements the pre-dawn environments in which you roam as you silently hunt down or stealthily avoid the bad guys. 

The voice acting for the main characters is convincing, whether you’re playing as a male voiced by Zach Hoffman, or as a female, voiced by Diana Gardner. Both do a great job, and they sound appropriately grave, lifting the main character’s drama. 

The sound effects, perhaps, are the weakest part of the audio. A lot of heft and weight in VR games is created by good sound design. Sure, haptics can help, as can good in-game physics, but it’s the sound that can make a gun FEEL heavy, or make a crossbow SOUND powerful. In Vampire the sound f/x work, but they feel a little underpowered. 

Defanged

As much as I love most of what Vampire: The Masquerade offers, and appreciate massively the undertaking (see what I did there?) that Fast Travel Games have taken upon themselves, I am almost mad at Vampire, not because it’s bad, it isn’t, but because it gets so damn close to being an exceptional game, and then fumbles in various annoying ways. 

The mechanics and general polish are often clunky. Vampire tries to simulate the Half-Life: Alyx style of remote grabbing objects, but its curve is too slow, meaning you might’ve moved your hand from where an object is going when you pulled it, so it overshoots your hand then it corrects itself by snapping into your hand. It looks and feels clumsy, taking what was a great feeling mechanic from Alyx and making it feel clunky, clumsy, and janky.

The game’s visual language can also be occasionally confusing. Initially, it feels like it’s teaching the player that doors with handles can be opened, whether currently locked or unlocked, and that doors without handles are closed areas, but then around 30-35% into the game, the game starts breaking those rules, doors with handles don’t open at all.

The notes you find scattered throughout are handwritten, but then when you grab them, you have another layer floating above them that you actually read. Why not just make their original texture legible? It makes some of the game feel like it’s held together by duct tape. 

Another annoying thing is the rats. Yes, I know rats are naturally annoying, but here they function as health pickups. The problem is that you can’t remotely grab them, presumably because they’re living creatures and not inanimate objects, but I’d just make the distinction between ‘large’ and ‘small’ things and let me pick up a damn rat while I’m walking and contemplating silent assassinations instead of having to chase rats, stoop, pick up rats. It slows down what could have been a far more fluid and empowering experience. Why can’t I just flick grab a rat while I’m walking, and dig into its belly while I’m contemplating my next kill? That would feel a lot more like I’m a ‘deadly creature of the night’. 

The teleportation, whether to go to a ledge, or to attack an enemy is twitchy, sure, nobody’s hand is perfectly steady, but the game doesn’t allow for this, meaning that rather than aim and go, aim and go, aim and attack, you’re often carefully re-adjusting your aim, slowing things down and making you feel clumsy, destroying the illusion of a smooth stealthy killer flowing and teleporting around the levels taking out enemies. 

There is a general lack of flow in the game, and I’m not saying it destroys Vampire, but it takes it from being a fantastic game to being a pretty good game that’s not all it could be. And while we’re talking about occidendum interruptus, I can’t ignore the long loading screens, honestly, they’re painful.

I usually don’t spend this much time mentioning my issues with a game, but I like so much about Vampire, it’s so close to being amazing, that I feel the need to explain why it isn’t, in the hope that Fast Travel Games can make it so. 

It’s so damn close. 

Vamp Verdict

Vampire: The Masquerade – Justice is an ambitious game set in a beautiful environment offering plenty of gameplay possibilities. It’s a promising start to what could become a great VR franchise, but what could’ve been a sublime experience is hampered by poorly executed mechanics, long loading screens, and, at launch, a few bugs that will frustratingly waste your time. 

I have to give props where props are due, Dungeons of Eternity puts up a great front, the presentation is well polished, and sports an intriguing mix of science fiction and fantasy elements. From the opulent design of the map room, where adventurers plot their next course, to the welcoming embrace of a lounge allowing for tranquil moments in front of a fireplace with companions, Dungeons of Eternity was clearly crafted with great attention to detail.

In a genre oversaturated with hastily assembled entrants, Othergate beckons players with a promise — a promise of a unique, ever-evolving adventure where fantasy comes wrapped up in a sci-fi cloak, holding within it the potential to redefine the VR dungeon crawler landscape.

Crawling Through Eternity

The backbone of any great dungeon crawler lies in its gameplay mechanics, and here, Dungeons of Eternity does not disappoint, offering players the opportunity to craft personalized avatars along with an expansive range of load-outs and power-up perks.

A standout feature is undoubtedly the game’s melee combat system. Dungeons of Eternity does very well here, steering clear of the pitfalls that have ensnared other titles such as Everslaught Invasion. Here, the weapons bear a satisfying heft, interactions with physical objects feel convincingly real, and parrying attacks actually work.

Although the game allows several playstyles, you can use melee weapons, ranged weapons, and magic, my experience was that you only really get melee weapons and a bow at the start of the game, you’ll have to do some grinding to get magical weapons. This is a curious game design choice since it means that new players to the game can’t really go into the dungeons with a wide range of classes. In fact, there are no classes per se, you are what you do, essentially, and, at least at the start, you can’t be a mage. 

The game can be played single-player, but if you’re looking to fulfill its unspoken promise, that of essentially playing Gauntlet with friends in VR, you’ll want to play it in multiplayer, where the stakes are higher, the enemies more numerous, and the fun multiplied by the presence of others whose company you enjoy.

There are three different quest types; Dungeon Raid, where you have to traverse a dungeon to find, power up, and retrieve a drone that’s been lost, Crystal Hunt, which has you in a pyramidal structure hunting for three crystals that’ll power up a smaller pyramid at its center, giving you points you can use to buy perks, and Soul Harvest, which is essentially a horde mode and the least entertaining mode of the bunch. 

At launch, the Dungeons of Eternity offers 12 dungeons, not counting the tutorial, that are divided into different areas or themes. Although this gives some variety to the proceedings, a couple of the areas are similar enough that they don’t really feel fresh. 

Visual Vaults

Despite the generic dungeons and creatures that are on offer once you get past the sci-fi framing of the game, Dungeons of Eternity is a really good-looking game by Quest standards. The graphics are atmospheric, with real-time lighting, some nice particle effects, and good textures. The overall look of the game is very good, and the enemies, although they remain mostly generic are well designed and well rendered, if lacking in variety. 

Eternal Echoes

The audio in Dungeons of Eternity is good, if unremarkable. Suitable music comes up sometimes that helps enhance the atmosphere, but the real star in the audio department is the sound f/x for the weapons, the clangs of steel against steel, and the spatial audio that helps you turn around in time to attack, or defend yourself against, an enemy coming at you from behind. It works, and it works well. 

Pitfalls of Perpetuity

Okay, so good graphics, great physics, decent combat, and a great opportunity to go dungeon crawling with friends! What can go wrong?

Well, as mentioned previously, there are only three game modes, and one of them is a dreadfully boring horde mode that I can’t imagine many players would enjoy.

Another issue is the lack of character classes. Although this might initially seem okay, since you can increasingly customize your character and their load-outs and perks as you unlock more and more of the game, it also means that fresh players cannot play a mage, for instance. Magic is mostly staff-based, so it amounts to you becoming a shooter, and it’s only unlocked later on, which means that fresh gamers coming in can’t have a magician as part of their party of three. 

There’s also a problem with the same-iness of much of the game’s content. As mentioned before, the four areas or themes aren’t very distinct from each other, making me feel that Othergate should have capitalized on the sci-fi setup of the hub world, infusing more of that in a theme or two to give them an altogether different character from the rest. As it stands, however, the dungeons all feel quite samey. Couple that with the tedious horde mode levels, and the overall value of the content takes an unfortunate dip. 

Lastly, the single-player mode lacks any real challenge. Every single time I played the game alone, I breezed through the Dungeon Raid levels. Too many health potions, not enough enemies, not enough difficulty. The game needs to figure out how to challenge single players, even if it’s not designed around single-player gameplay.

End of Infinity

Overall, Dungeons of Eternity lays a great foundation for what could eventually grow to become a rich multiplayer experience. As it stands, it is perhaps the only game on Quest that really offers players the chance to go dungeon crawling with their friends in VR, however, the charm will soon wear off if Othergate don’t build on that foundation with more exciting missions and more varied enemies. 

I also think a longer narrative-driven mode that takes players through several different dungeons with a more gripping narrative than ‘save the fallen drone’ would absolutely propel the game into a higher tier, and make it easier to recommend.

For now, it’s not a must-have, but will provide some value and some fun to older players who miss the Gauntlet days and don’t mind the generic nature and limited scope of what’s on offer. 

The Light Brigade has balls. It has great big balls. Its balls are so big that developers Funktronic have set the review embargo to one week before launch! It’s a gutsy move, for sure, and definitely shows their confidence in the game. Well, they were right to feel confident, because The Light Brigade is fantastic.

Okay. So now, let’s see how much I can tell you about it without spoiling any of it for you.

Into the Valley of Death

Like its now only rival on Quest, In Death: Unchained, The Light Brigade is a roguelike game offering a great atmosphere, solid graphics, and great sound design. Unlike In Death: Unchained – you don’t have a bow and arrow, you have guns. Several kinds of guns. Fun guns. Great sounding guns. Guns that go bam, guns that go kabam, and guns that go thwoop! Did I mention that the guns are fun? They are. The guns are fun, they handle really well, and they sound great. 

So here’s the thing, humanity has been brought down into the darkness by the forces of evil! You are humanity’s only hope, Connor, and you have to travel through the battlegrounds, killing the bad guys, defeating their bosses, freeing other Light Brigadiers, and unlocking upgrades and perks as you play, because upgrades and perks are COOL.

You’re not named Connor, by the way, that was just a joke, Sarah. 

Flashed all their Sabres Bare

The Light Brigade does a lot of things right. A whole bunch of things. There’s rightness galore here, and I’ll tell you about it right now. It’s not without a couple of small faults, but more on those later. None of them are showstoppers. Anyway, on to the good stuff: 

The gameplay in The Light Brigade is superb. The weapon handling is excellent, and the reloading is streamlined and satisfying. The game provides both smooth locomotion and teleport locomotion for quicker traversal, and, unlike in In Death Unchained, you have six different character classes to play. Each character class is equipped with its own main weapon, dramatically changing how you go about taking them down, what kind of range you’re shooting from, and how much you need to resort to using cover. 

Along the way, you’ll find containers to open and jars to break, usually rewarding you with souls, coins, ammo, grenades, or weapon attachments. You’ll also find glowing chests that give you a choice of tarot cards, each unlocking certain stackable perks. These tarot perks can be remarkably effective. 

With some good weapons attachments and some clever tarot perks, you can become a nigh-unstoppable killing machine.  

All the World Wondered

There’s a good variety of environments on display here, and the levels themselves and the enemy variety and their starting locations are procedurally generated, so you always get a somewhat different playthrough every time you play. So far, so roguelike. 

I must commend the game on the atmospheric art design. Sure, some of it, the fogginess, for example, is there to help ye poor Quest handle the draw distances without too much popup, etc. – but it works well with the mood of the game, enhancing the ominous tone that the game sets in place from the very start when you approach the mysterious Last Temple and are beckoned by the figure known only as ‘Mother’ to pray with her before setting off to save the world from the baddies. 

The art direction is generally top-notch. It plays to the Quest’s strengths, looks good, and creates excellent immersion. 

One of the first things that impressed me about The Light Brigade was the sound design. Everything you do makes a satisfying sound that makes everything in the game feel palpable.

The game is also rich in little graphical flourishes that show off the care and attention put into it, from the tarot cards with their 2.5D holographic presentation to the particle effects that explode when you shatter a soul container to heal yourself and increase your maximum health. 

The Jaws of Death

In case you haven’t realized by now, I was blown away by The Light Brigade, right from the get-go, and have only been stepping away from it lately to play co-op sessions of Drop Dead: The Cabin with Pete while he prepares his review of that game.

Overall, I’ve played around 12 hours of the game so far, during that time, I’ve managed to unlock all the classes, complete two full runs, and unlocked quite a few upgrades. You’ll be glad to know that throughout that time, the game still managed to surprise me on occasion, throwing a few new enemy types and variants into the mix, and a couple of GASP! moments just to keep me on my toes.

I was also pleased that the bosses all required different strategies to beat. One of the few disappointments in In Death: Unchained was that all the bosses could be defeated with spam attacks. This is not the case in The Light Brigade.

One extra nice feature and sometimes absent in roguelike games is that you can continue a run across different gaming sessions. It’ll autosave between levels, and you can quit the game at any time and come back to start whichever level you were on, mid-run.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering, and to add some value to the mix, there is an endless run mode, but I won’t tell you where to find it.

Horse and Hero Fell

There’s not much to complain about with The Light Brigade, but there are a couple of niggles. The load times between levels could be improved, they usually load up in 7–11 seconds, but a confirmed glitch sometimes caused this time to double, leading to potentially frustrating pauses between levels. Having said that, I’ve experienced this far less often lately, so for all I know, it’s already been fixed. 

Another minor complaint is that sometimes you need your controllers to be so physically close to reload your pistols that they end up bumping against each other. There’s also a minor graphical glitch in one of the later levels where the floor isn’t quite set perfectly and, if you’re in the wrong spot, ends up aligned with your chest.

But these are minor issues and did not at all detract from my enjoyment of the game. I’m just noting them so that you’re aware of them, and to inform Funktronic about them so that they can patch them up as soon as possible.

I almost forgot my biggest complaint, although the game isn’t small, I wanted more of it!

Back from the Mouth of Hell

The Light Brigade is easily one of the best games I’ve played on Quest, and an easy game to recommend to fans of roguelike games and shooters alike. With atmospheric visuals and excellent sound design, a good variety of levels, and boss battles that are engaging, it quickly raises itself to the higher echelons of Quest games. Color me impressed. 

Wand-ering around

The game is split broadly into two sections. An overworld where you, as the titular newbie Magus, wander around tiny, invisible-walled areas talking to excitable, wide-eyed characters – and the dungeons, where you wander through endless grey corridors filled with identikit baddies, the majority of which look not unlike placeholder assets.

The overworld has nothing that could even broadly be described as ‘gameplay’ that (such as it is) is reserved for the dungeons. Here the player must make their way through a series of near-identical rooms, occasionally battling low-level enemies until they reach the goal where a damage-sponge boss of some description invariably awaits.

The combat system requires plenty of movement; when mastered, the limited number of skills and attacks can be fun to unleash. There’s a shield with a timing-based parry ability that’s pretty satisfying, and this is paired with standard, special, and super-level offensive spells. Of course, this wouldn’t be an RPG without levelling up, and there’s a decent amount to be tinkered with here, albeit tucked away behind some very clunky menus.

Button assignments and gestures are also somewhat lacking in grace, with several attacks tethered to an ill-conceived throwing mechanic and others that are totally unintuitive in the heat of battle. The main attack is point and shoot, which is at least consistent in its execution – something that can’t be said of any other offensive abilities.

Going through the potions

The character and background art in the overworld story elements of RuinsMagus are rendered in a soft, painterly style, never less than charming and often genuinely beautiful. With that said, like much of the game, it feels like something we’ve seen a million times before.

From the cobbled streets to the doe-eyed waifu companion, the game is remorseless in its drive to tick every cliche box on the JRPG done-to-death checklist.

In the dungeons, things are even worse, with every level built from a limited array of grey blocks arranged in such a way as to make it as awkward as possible to move from one point to the next. Enemies, as I’ve mentioned, are so dull that it’s hard to describe them… There’s a flying one, a fast one, a heavy one. They are all, predictably, grey and utterly devoid of anything approaching AI.

For scrying out loud

The tedium sadly extends to the game’s music and sound effects, with instrumental tunes that could have been lifted directly from hundreds of similarly set games over the decades and sound effects that could at best be described as perfunctory.

Voice work is all Japanese with subtitles, which I know will delight a lot of people, but, personally, if I want to read, I’ll grab a book. Repeatedly clicking ‘A’ to rush through overlong and melodramatic exposition is not my idea of a fun videogame.

Lacking i-magic-nation

Fundamentally there’s not a lot ‘wrong’ with RuinsMagus. It’s not broken or offensively bad; it’s just that the entire project is so terminally average. And while there’s a degree of quality in the overworld, it’s impossible not to crawl the dungeons that form the meat of the game and not become overwhelmed by all the literal and figurative greyness.

Just a short spell

Lack of variety is an enemy that the half-decent combat system cannot overcome, and sadly, though the average game-time to completion is reportedly 6-7 hours, I lost interest after just 2.

I know some believe this makes me ill-equipped to review the entirety of the game. But my perspective is that it’s the game’s job to keep me engaged from beginning to end, and should any game fail to do so, then abandoning it unfinished is just as valid a judgement as anything I could write about the final two-thirds of the game.

Spelling it out

With so little competition in this genre, RuinsMagus feels like a missed opportunity. It only needed to be a reasonable amount of fun to garner a massive fanbase in VR. Alas, it fails at clearing even that low bar with an approach so safe, familiar, and unoriginal that it renders itself utterly forgettable.

You can see the trailer for the new expansion here:

This is what Realm of The Rat King’s adds to the title:

• New environment: The sewers are dark and very dangerous. With endless threats lurking in the shadows, adventurers will want to stick together if they’re going to survive.
• New enemies: Spore Fungus are filled to the brim with poison, so be sure to watch your step — and don’t let the multi-headed Gorgon catch your gaze, or you might just turn to stone!
• New cards: Brighten your way with the trusty Torch card, treat any poisons with the new Antitoxin and go on the offensive with your brand new Web Bomb.
• New boss: The Rat King is the last monster you’d want to be trapped with when you’re five levels underground, but that’s exactly where you’ll find this horrifying monarch that is literally bound to his subjects.

The developers have promised to increase Demeo’s depth with new expansions that will keep bringing new spells, maps, and enemies to the game. If you are not familiar with Demeo, make sure to check out our Demeo review to learn more about the game and how we rated it!

Are you excited about this new adventure in Demeo? Do you think this expansion will make the game even better? What other additions do you hope they’ll bring to the game? Let us know in the comment!

Here’s a quick disclaimer, although I’ve played many RPGs throughout the years, I’ve never actually played a table-top DND game, so keep that in mind if you’re expecting a lot of table-top comparisons. 

Here There Be Monsters

Demeo keeps things pretty simple. At release, it comes with one story campaign made up of a three-level dungeon. The game can be played solo, but doing so would deprive it of its most fun component, working in tandem with friends or strangers, discussing how you should go about exploring the dungeon and defeating the monsters that lurk within. There are four characters to play; a bow-wielding hunter, a sorcerer, a stealthy assassin, and a warrior. Aside from moving your character with your virtual hands, all moves are card-based. Each character has a unique ability card that never depletes and a unique action deck with which they can fight their way through the levels. There’s a good variety of action cards. Some allow long-range attacks (if you’re the hunter or the wizard), and others allowing for powerful melee attacks (if you’re the assassin or the warrior). 

If all this sounds pretty standard for an RPG game, that’s because it is.

Why Do My Cookies All Look The Same?

Demeo is painstakingly conservative with its design and, at least with its first (and currently only) campaign, won’t throw you any curves. For the most part, there’s nothing original about the monsters you’ll face. You’ll fight the obligatory hell hounds, spiders, giant rats, ice and fire elementals, and evil mystics. If you’re a veteran of the genre, looking for innovations on that front, you’ll probably find its menagerie disappointing, its mechanics streamlined but predictable, and its character classes uninspired. However, one could argue that the initial campaign, The Black Sarcophagus, is purposely generic, essentially easing neophytes not only to the game but to the genre itself.

How Does Your Quest Quest? 

Unlike many other games on Quest, Demeo doesn’t whine or creek. The game loads quickly and runs well, and the multiplayer is well implemented. Everything is nice and snappy. You can quickmatch into an ongoing game, host one of your own, making it public or private, and ongoing games can be easily accessed with a four-digit room code. 

The controls are intuitive, and even first-time players had no trouble with them at all. Not once in my various multiplayer sessions did I see any player struggle with the controls or gameplay mechanics. 

The enemies are randomized every playthrough, and the difficulty can vary enormously between sessions, making it somewhat difficult to play solo. One thing that should also be noted is that there’s no meaningful RPG-type progression in the game. Sure, you gain experience points with your playthroughs, but your character doesn’t level up in any significant way. The experience points merely allow you to purchase cosmetic modifications to your character, dice, and base plates.

Shiny Shiny Spells

The graphics and animations in Demeo are pretty good, using a simple cartoony look that works well on Quest, making your characters and enemies pleasant to look at even when zoomed up close. The character designs are low on polygons and rely primarily on the texture work to liven them up. Spellcasting and combat moves are well animated, making most of the actions quickly recognizable and, at least before you get used to them, entertaining to watch in action. 

The audio is clear and practical, lending atmosphere to the proceedings without ever being too distracting, allowing you and your fellow players to converse easily throughout.

Nothing Beats Good Company

I was fortunate enough to run into a great bunch of people every time I played Demeo. The game style and length are perhaps responsible for this, helping weed out obnoxious players who might not have the patience for a turn-based dungeon-crawly RPG that rewards cooperation and coordination. The multiplayer component is robust, allowing you to mute players, use your in-game hands to illustrate things on the game board, and, if you’re the game’s host, kick any players that are making asses of themselves. 

There’s a Chink In Your Armor

If there’s one glaring issue with Demeo at launch, it is the absence of content. The starter pack is fun, but it is just one mission that you’ll find yourself forced to play over and over again, the only novelty being the company that you find yourself in, something for which the game can hardly claim any credit. For some players, this might mean that they’ll get a few rounds out of it, finish it once or twice, and then find the game less compelling to return to, at least until the promised DLC packs start materializing. The first of these, Realm of The Rat King, is due for release sometime in the summer, and for many users, it might be worth waiting until that’s released before shelling out $29.99 for the game. The good thing is that this expansion and at least the initial set of DLC’s will be free and promise new environments, enemies, and cards, so early adopters will at least be rewarded for their patience.

Boss Level

Demeo has been overhyped but is undeniably fun, especially with good company. It’s short on content for the moment but will undoubtedly get much better as new content is added over the next year.

Link! Link? Is That You?

Although Journey of the Gods has no relation whatsoever to Nintendo’s franchise of Zelda games, their influence is all over the game. Like Zelda, Journey of the Gods is an action-adventure tasking the player with rescuing a cutely-rendered land. It’s not quite Hyrule, but it’s a great looking place nonetheless, stylized to work within the Quest’s limitations, but with beautiful art direction and some charming design choices.

When the game starts, you’re introduced to the land, and you can see that it’s under attack by various monsters and demons.

What Horrors Have Befallen Thee!

As Journey of the Gods begins, you realize that this once beautiful land has been brought to ruins. It’s been beset by demons, and it’s gods have all been imprisoned, rendered unable to heal the world or protect it without your help. Ironically, you don’t realize the extent of the damage done to the land until the very end.

More Action Than RPG, But Still…

The game has some RPG elements in the sense that you can upgrade your abilities and your weapons. You start off with a relatively weak short sword, a small shield, and a small crossbow with limited ammo capacity. As you visit the various levels, you’ll find sword pieces, shield pieces, and other items that you can take back to the smiths at the starting village. Said smiths will cheerfully use those to fashion weapon upgrades and hand them back to you. Journey of the Gods keeps things simple; as soon as you get a new upgrade or weapon, you’re sent to a field where you’re given a quick tutorial on your new gear, and a chance to practice using it. It all makes for an engaging and amicable experience.

Gods! Ye Gods!

Along with your more traditional sword and shield, you get to use more divine powers. As the game progresses, you find that each little village protects a rather large egg. Once the village is saved, the egg blows open and reveals one of several colorful birdlike gods. These gods grant you various feathers that adorn your wrist and provide you with supernatural powers. One gives you some control over plants, allowing you to turn saplings into full-grown trees, or full-grown trees back into sprouts. Another allows you to slow down time, while others enable you to control sand or fire, and one gives you the ability to hurl lightning bolts at your enemies. To use these powers, you go into ‘god mode’. It’s easy enough to do so long as you have enough mana, and much like the god mode in Asgard’s Wrath, it gives you a bird’s eye view of the landscape, making it that much easier to manipulate things. The game design is intelligent, making you use these powers not just as weapons, but as a way to solve some environmental puzzles to continue your journey.

Unreal Graphics, Fantastic Sound

Unlike most games on Quest, which seem to rely on the Unity engine, Journey of the Gods uses the Unreal engine. However, unlike Red Matter, which squeezes Unreal to attempt photorealism on the Quest, Journey of the Gods utilizes a cartoony art style that would easily look at home on a Nintendo system. The graphics are simple enough in appearance, but beautiful to look at, very colorful, and even get a little sinister towards the last levels of the game.

The game utilizes audio wonderfully. The music score is perfect. It’s light and humorous when it needs to be, and engaging and dynamic when the occasion calls for it, and finally, joyful and inspiring when great victories are achieved. The sounds effects are equally adept, and spatial audio always helps you know where you should be paying attention.

The NPC’s that you meet don’t talk so much as make sweet chirpy sounds, the meaning of which is often hinted at by the icons shown in the speech bubbles above their heads.

Control This, Zelda!

Journey of the Gods has almost perfect controls. Everything works as you’d expect it to, and the tutorials remove any confusion or mystery as to how you should be doing things. The only issue I had during my playthrough was an occasional failure to throw lightning bolts at enemies or rock crystals. This only happened a few times, and even though it was slightly frustrating, it wasn’t at all a serious issue. You run around wherever you want, hacking away at enemies with your sword. You dodge their energy bullets, their rays of death, and the idiots with crocodile-like heads who come charging at you. It’s all a very smooth and surprisingly trouble-free experience. If there’s one thing that can be said about Journey of the Gods is that it’s highly polished.

Who’s The Boss?

Although the variety of enemies could be improved, the additions to their ranks are paced pretty well. You’re never quite bored of the enemies coming at you, even if most of them are ones you’ve seen on earlier levels. Journey of the Gods takes you through six levels, and the level bosses are the real stars of the show, and the less said about those, the better since you’ll get to experience them on your own. They are each unique, and not ‘modded’ versions of any of the standard enemies you encounter. If there’s one issue with the game, it might be that it’s a little too easy, and won’t provide much of a challenge to any well-calloused gamer. Having said that, I did play it on medium difficulty, and I’m sure it would offer much more of a challenge on hard.

Options Galore

Journey of the Gods does its best to make you comfortable, providing an optional vignette, three difficulty levels, slow or fast movement options, and various levels of snap-turning. It’s a perfect game for children and for adults alike, providing hours of polished gameplay and a wonderfully cute world in which to experience it.

In The End…

Rewarding from start to finish, Journey of the Gods might be one of the Quest’s greatest hidden treasures. It’s well-made, endearing, and eminently playable. Suitable for both children and adults who still know how to be children, it’ll provide you with hours of entertainment and wonder. When it ends, you’ll be touched by the beauty of its finale and made sad by the knowledge that your journey is over.

The Basics

OrbusVR: Reborn is an expanded/reimagined version of the VR MMORPG OrbusVR, which was launched in early access for major VR headsets in late 2017. Reborn released shortly before the Quest, and this release brought the game out of its early-access period. Because of this, OrbusVR: Reborn was made available at the launch of the Quest, with a hefty $39.99 price tag. However, OrbusVR uses a “buy to play” model, charging upfront for the game, and does not charge any additional monthly subscription fees.

The price tag of OrbusVR: Reborn has inspired a lot of discussion among Quest users online wondering whether it’s worth almost $40. OrbusVR remains one of the most expensive games on the Oculus Store, with only Tokyo Chronos (a visual novel) matching it for price. To some players, OrbusVR will very much be worth the price, with hundreds of hours of content available and more always on the way. To other players, however, it will not be worth it, as the experience will frustrate them out of playing before they really get to experience all of this content. My goal with this review is to supply enough information for you, the reader, to determine whether this game will be right for you and better inform your buying decision.

Gameplay

While OrbusVR is an MMORPG, it does not play like the traditional Hotbar-based MMOs we have become accustomed to. OrbusVR makes use of the Oculus Touch controllers’ motion controls, and each class’s basic controls are intuitive to the weapon being held. Swords are swung, muskets are aimed and fired with the trigger, and magic is cast by drawing runes in the air with a wand. However, each class has some mechanics beyond this that are very important but are not as obvious. These mechanics are summarized in the player journal, but even then are easy to miss for new players.

Character Classes

For example, for my first choice of class, I played a warrior. I began my first fights by walking up to the monster I wanted to kill and wildly hacking away at it with my sword. It was very tiring and the damage done was minimal, leading to very long bouts of hacking to kill the monster. It wasn’t until watching some helpful YouTube videos that I learned what I was doing wrong. The warrior is a combo-based class, with four attack combos that apply a taunt, burst damage, area of effect, or slowing effect to the enemy. Warriors can also hold their swords above their heads until they charge it, then swing once more to repeat the effect. 

The warrior also has a horn that taunts all enemies within a specific range, a charge attack that closes the distance between them, and small or large shields to choose from. The small shields provide more damage, the large ones offer more damage absorption. These are a lot of mechanics to learn, but once you learn them, the motion-based controls will become second nature.

See Also

Best of the Quest | The Newbie Guide

By Omar Kamel

In Features

Interactions

In many cases, a lot of thought has been put into how you interact with the world in OrbusVR. To speak to NPCs, you simply walk up to them and wave your hand at them as though you’re saying hello. You look at your Quests by physically opening your journal and paging through a book that you can move around and turn the pages. You unsheathe weapons and other equipped items by physically pulling them off your body, and you blow horns by holding them up to your mouth. 

Many of these interactions really lend a sense of realism to the world, giving it the illusion of living in a real place. Changing classes is very easy as well, as a vendor in the middle of town hands out beginner weapons for any character class. Changing character classes is as easy as equipping that class’ weapon. You could level every class to max level on a single character if you wish to do so!

However, for every satisfying interaction in the game, there also seems to be another unintuitive aspect. This leads to a lot of frustration among players just starting off. While the journal is easy to use, getting it open is accomplished by grabbing your compass off your body, then turning it upside down. This is easy enough once you learn it but may confuse players early on. The menus, as well, are not always organized as one may expect, with mission tracking, achievements, and class talents being shoehorned into the inventory menu.

Loot

Leveling and gearing your character is generally accomplished by accepting missions in the main town of Highsteppe. Most missions require a certain number of enemies of a particular type to be defeated to complete it.  Missions can be completed at either a bronze, silver, or gold level, depending on the number of target monsters you killed before finalizing it. The various missions offer XP, reputation, money, and gear depending on the level at which you completed it. Gear is also dropped by enemies at random intervals, but cannot be traded or sold between players.  This makes grinding out missions and killing enemies the only way to obtain gear, which is a bit of a bummer.

If this sounds like a grind, it is. Missions can be repeated after their initial completion by spending mission tokens to have them reassigned to you. You get five tokens a day, and they stack up to 25. However, if you run out of these tokens, you are left grinding mobs for relatively low XP gains to level up if you want to play solo. You can, however, still engage in group content, such as dungeons and world events. These will net you XP and gear, so there are always alternatives that may provide more fulfilling ways to progress. 

There are also lore quests available that fill in the backstory of the game and often have more exciting objectives associated with them than the main missions. Unfortunately, the only reward for completing these quests is additional reputation points with the NPC that gave them to you. This makes lore quests feel less rewarding than the main game missions. I can’t help but think that they would be more fulfilling if there were at least some additional XP reward for completing them.

Issues

OrbusVR is the kind of game you must meet halfway. You need to be willing to work through the game’s bugs, grinding, and obtuse design, but if you do the game rewards you with exciting gameplay. On more than one occasion, Orbus would not register the swings of my sword, leading to some frustrating deaths. In some instances, it stopped registering my hits entirely, necessitating a restart of the game. Orbus even crashed my Quest during one session, requiring a complete power-down to make the Quest usable again.

Latency can also be an issue, sometimes causing delays in damage being applied during combat, which can lead to some infrequent, but frustrating, deaths. I’ve also had some moments of hitching in character positions, which can be jarring and could potentially cause some motion sickness. I found the frame rate, in most cases, quite smooth.

Activities Galore

OrbusVR: Reborn is also loaded to the brim with side activities. These include crafting of lures and potions, fishing, dragon pet races, critter capture, resource gathering, special events, and more. Many of these side events, such as potion crafting, are both fun and feed into the main gameplay. Others, like fishing, dragon racing, and critter capture, have their own missions associated with them that can be used to help level and gear your character. These events are an excellent way to break up the game’s combat if that method of leveling starts to feel monotonous. I especially enjoyed Critter Capture, which has the player tracking down small animals (sometimes by finding their droppings), then using a horn to scare them out. After revealing the creatures, you capture them with a net gun in a minigame that feels like an MMO version of the classic NES Duck Hunt. 

As of the writing of this review, a currently ongoing fall seasonal event has added some additional lore quests and Critter Capture events to the game, with seasonally cosmetic item rewards. All of these events add diversity and value to the overall package and offer more content to experience alone or with friends.

Social Features

Orbus nails its social features. The Oculus Quest makes interacting with other players as easy as walking up to them and talking. The microphone picks up your voice automatically, and any players in earshot can hear it. 

Being able to gesture with your hands adds an individual expressiveness to the game that many other MMOs don’t always capture with canned emotes. This works very similarly to other VR social apps like VRChat and RecRoom. However, I believe the OrbusVR community is much friendlier than other VR social app communities for a few reasons. Since the game gives players unified goals to work together to complete, there’s much more of a culture of cooperation instilled within the community. 

The fact that the game has a relatively steep paywall, rather than being a free app, also seems to keep the toxicity in check. No one wants to be banned from the game they paid $40 for.

Group Content

Group content is at the heart of this game like any MMO, and OrbusVR: Reborn thankfully does it very well. As of this review, the game contains four group dungeons as well as an endgame raid. Finding a pick-up group for this content is easy because of the built-in group finder. The portal to these dungeons is located in the central city of Highsteppe, which also provides a convenient location to chat and find a group the old-fashioned way. There are methods to adjust the difficulty of these activities to meet the skill level of your group. The dungeons feel a bit shorter than many other MMOs, consisting each of two bosses connected by relatively short stretches of “trash” enemies. This brevity works in the game’s favor, surprisingly, allowing more runs in a shorter period, and helping to avoid some problems of the Quest’s physical design (see below). 

Even More Content

The bosses in the group dungeons/raid include the type of mechanical complexity that other MMOs usually have. This complexity results in a great sense of accomplishment as your group figures out how to collaborate to overcome the boss. The developers have already promised two new dungeons. In addition, one new raid will be released soon, further bolstering the game’s suite of group content.

Other social activities include opt-in world PvP and organized PvP battlegrounds, a robust player economy that consists of both player-run stores and an auction house. Any mission, quest, or activity in the game can also be completed together with friends, which significantly enhances the fun of these activities. Players can also organize into Fellowships (guilds) giving a more extensive network for players to cooperate on the type of content they want to play. 

There are individual-player and Fellowship houses in the game, but unfortunately at this moment customization of this is minimal. World events also provide some quick opportunities to team up with fellow players. Beacons pop up all over the world signifying a short challenge, often with new objectives and rewards, that can be completed in conjunction with other players that are currently in the area.

Graphics/Sound

Unfortunately, OrbusVR: Reborn is not the most majestic game, visually or aurally. The environments in the game have a very low-poly, minimalistic look. This can be a style decision in and of itself, but here it feels more like it was chosen out of necessity. Player character models have a very cartoony look to them and float through the environment, but just don’t look very appealing. Enemy models are more detailed and creative but don’t always seem to animate as they should. Sometimes the models skip attack animations, and sometimes they skip death animations and simply disappear. Compared to footage of other versions, it seems that a severe graphical downgrade was necessary to get this game running on the Quest. Some environmental effects, such as rain, are entirely absent.

The sound effects in the game are basic but are generally helpful in conveying game state information to the player, such as taking hits from enemies, leveling up, and sound effects related to different class gameplay functions. The various overworld music themes work for their various subjects, but tend to drone on and are easily ignored by the player.

Longevity

Longevity is OrbusVR’s bread and butter. Out of the box, there is a ton of content between leveling up the eight character classes to level 30, then going through endgame raids, as well as a long list of side activities. As this is an MMO, there’s also the promise of further content patches and expansions on the horizon. This will add even more activities to an already content-rich experience and cements OrbusVR: Reborn as the biggest game on the Quest so far.

This large amount of content certainly justifies the $40 price tag. This game will last longer than most other paid games currently on the Oculus store by orders of magnitude. The promise of further content only makes the deal sweeter, and I find this model preferable to paying a subscription fee. There are extra in-game purchases that can be made, likely to help further fund development of the game. When I looked through these items, they were entirely cosmetic items such as pets, mounts, and costume pieces. The prices of these items maxed out around $10 each. There were no consumables, XP boosters, or loot boxes on sale in the cash shop, so there’s thankfully no ability to “pay to win” in the game.

Preview	Product	Price
	Oculus Quest Travel Case (301-00199-01)	$49.99	Buy on Amazon

Quest Comfort

However, in the case of the Quest version, the Oculus Quest itself can somewhat work against the longevity of the game, at least as far as the length of each play session is concerned. Because this is a massive MMO, players will likely want to play this for hours on end, but the Quest’s limited battery life necessitates breaks for recharging. The Quest itself also tends to get heavy on the user’s head during extended play sessions. 

If you wish to really spend your time in OrbusVR, you’ll likely want to invest in some comfort/battery modifications for your Quest. Also, while the Quest is technically a portable system, OrbusVR is an always-online MMORPG, and thus requires a location with a good Wi-Fi connection to be played. Potential buyers must know this and be able to plan for it ahead of time.

Last Words

OrbusVR: Reborn is a challenging game to assign a score to, as it will be many different things to many different players. Some will get into the game’s group content and raiding scene, while others will enjoy engaging with the game economy and playing as a merchant and crafter. Others will love the social aspect of the game, and get deep into collecting cosmetic items, pets, and mounts. Others may not see any of this content and might be turned off by the endless grind of the game, or by the bugs and server issues. Some will get into PvP combat, and others may avoid it entirely. Some will appreciate the innovative nature of playing an MMORPG in VR and truly inhabiting a fantasy world. I have no doubt that others will find themselves compelled to compare it to other, more user-friendly, MMORPGs.

I personally enjoyed my time in OrbusVR: Reborn, and I thought it was a fun world to hop into to do some questing and group content. The people that will most appreciate this game are Quest owners looking for meaty experiences who don’t mind dealing with grinding and technical issues. OrbusVR will also appeal to MMORPG fans that want a game that feels like a throwback to the pre-World of Warcraft days. If this sounds terrible to you, this game may not be what you are looking for, and I would suggest waiting to see if a free demo comes to the Quest before jumping in.

Due to some of my initial difficulties with the game, I found myself compiling a list of 10 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started Playing OrbusVR: Reborn. If you’re diving in, I suggest you read it and save yourself some frustration! Don’t worry, it’s spoiler-free!