Corepunk Preview: Old-School Isometric MMORPG Experience
Dec. 8, 2024Corepunk Preview: Old-School Isometric MMORPG Experience
From my very first hours with the game, it became clear that this is a pretty unique game in the space of isometric MMORPGs thanks to its blend of MOBA mechanics and survival vibes with a hardcore, super old-school format. A return to unassisted discovery and exploration is something that many people have been asking for over the years, as more and more games release with too much hand-holding or guided content that clearly marks where to go at any point in the game. Corepunk takes that request for traditional exploration to the next level, to the point where it actually feels like a very hardcore experience akin to Dark Souls, but in its own unique way.
Corepunk is being developed and published by Artificial Core, who have kindly sponsored this article. So, without further ado, let’s check it out!
You play as an outworlder; an interdimensional traveler who happens upon a portal leading to the world of Corepunk. This isn’t your typical Isekai, you’re immediately met by a very grumpy goblin who is fed up with outworlders randomly appearing through their portal and puts you to work on helping out the locals. All the characters you meet are voiced and fit the theme well, and I found it generally quite entertaining. The main story keeps a humorous tone with frequent references to mature subjects and without ever setting you up as the saviour of the world, letting you be “just a guy” exploring a new world.
The first thing you’re going to do when you boot the game up is create your character and choose your class and class archetype. So far there are 3 selectable classes and 2 archetypes per class, but from the menu it looks like they plan to add maybe 9 more classes in the future, and 3 archetypes for each class. Some classes may be locked to some races, but it’s not certain whether this will make full release or if it’s experimental.
In terms of class variety, there is already a decent mix of playstyles; a spear and shield tank, a melee-focused druid, a warrior with a beyblade skill, a bow and arrow ranger, an assassin with hybrid magic and attack damage, and a ranged support healer. Each of these characters have 3 unique abilities and an ultimate, similar to League of Legends, as well as a special class skill. These will be your abilities for the whole game, so it doesn’t seem like there is complicated skill-based character building.
Once you have made your initial character choices, the grumpy goblin will send you off to get some paperwork and begin a very short tutorial, after which then the game basically just says “go”, with no markers or specific instructions on where you are headed. This is where the game will begin to test your discovery skills. Most of the instructions you will get for questing are vague such as “head north/east/south or west” or “find a person”, or “kill some beasts” – all without any markers or specifics of where exactly that person is or what kind of beast you’re meant to be hunting. Of course it’s not like you have to memorize the entire map and locations; after discovery, NPCs and specific workbenches become pinned, and your map will reveal nearby points of interest like abandoned houses or a crashed spaceship as you approach them.
Markers and player guidance has been a heavily discussed topic within gaming for a very long time, with quite a few people missing the niche “go figure it out” feeling of old school classic RPGs like Morrowind, vanilla World of Warcraft or Old School RuneScape. Many have found that a game is much more immersive when you have to actually read into dialogue to find out what to do, and where you are going.
Corepunk really leans into this while also pairing it with survival type gameplay since there is no natural health or mana regeneration in the wild, and practically 0 fast travel excluding a homing item you can use once every 30 minutes. This means your main gameplay loop is to pick up as many quests as you can from the various NPCs in the area, and go off and explore the wilderness hoping to come across these things while sustaining yourself with campfires and bread to manage your health and mana. Once you get a few quests done, you head back with the homeward item, turn in the quests and repeat. The survival paired with no markers and no fast travel really makes for a truly challenging and hardcore experience which really reminded me of the masochism I felt playing something like Dark Souls, but in a different genre now.
To give an example, for one quest I had to kill specific types of boar mammoths to get an uncommon mana amulet that is really hard to craft, and I needed one for a main quest. So I set out to find these boars as a shortcut to get it. I ended up wandering the southern woods for around 20 minutes to find absolutely nothing, then went into the spooky grey forest area to the west to see if the boars were there. Little could I suspect that Corepunk would literally turn into a horror game, with the fog of war covering packs of Alpha Wolves 4 levels higher than me around every corner, and sounds of taunting mockery from nearby level 15 imp camps. I ran for my life every time, regenerated using one of my scarce consumables or campfires, and trudged on to find the boars. After around an hour, I finally found and killed all the boars I needed, and used my return item to finally go home… Then a lizard budged me and cancelled the teleport, putting it on a 30 minute cooldown, and I had to walk back through all the terrifying enemies for 8 minutes.
This was actually a surprisingly fun experience in retrospect, similar to what you feel after mastering the start of Dark Souls and thinking back on what you went through. Once you finally get to that uncommon mana amulet and a bunch of rewards, you feel like the effort has paid off. I realize this is a really specific example, but for most of the quests in this game it will generally be the same pattern, minus the terrifying enemies.
This no guardrails system isn’t without its faults; I definitely think that a little more direction in the quest dialogues would help the initial slow pace of the game to prevent players from giving up too early and missing out on the fun to be had. For example, those 20 minutes I spent in the southern woods wouldn’t have happened if they told me to go west, and the lack of fast travel is something that will be a sorepoint when the player wants to uncover more of the massive world. Artificial Core, the developers behind Corepunk, seem quite dedicated to ongoing game development, balancing, and quality-of-life improvements based on player feedback. So I think it’s quite key that anyone interested in the game gives it a try and highlights all and any issues so that the experience can be polished further.
Of course MMOs work around much more than just questing. NPCs also serve as merchants and guides for the various different crafting systems in the game. These include the 4 resource crafting categories, Mining, Logging, Herbalism and Butchery, as well as the 5 item crafting categories Mysticism, Weaponsmithing, Construction, Alchemy and Cooking. Crafting is the core mechanic of Corepunk which will progress your character. You will get resources by taking trips out into the wild and mining various stones, chopping down trees, foraging bushes and skinning animals (again, very survival-like). Once you find those resources, and condense them into useful items like Treated Wood or Leather, you can start using them to craft yourself some useful items.
Armor in this game is purely cosmetic, often found as quest rewards, but your character progression is based on Artifact crafting. On the bottom right of the hud, there are up to 6 slots for artifacts which can increase your base stats such as health, physical damage, armor, magic resistance and more. Construction and Mysticism are the crafting jobs for creating those artifacts and runes, that add small bonuses to artifacts, and all of these are made with the materials you get from butchering and foraging.
Weaponsmithing is what you expect, crafting weapons, and it serves as a big power spike to your character since most of your attacks will be basic attacks with your equipped weapon. Alchemy is for making consumables that you can use in combat, such as an ointment to increase armor, or a stim to increase attack damage. Cooking is arguably the most important since it makes consumables for restoring health and mana, which directly play into how long you can stay out in the field. All of these systems feel quite good, it’s fun to go find resources and they are intertwined in a very seemless way. They will gradually level as you spend more time into them, providing some bonuses to speed things up and get higher rarity equipment, becoming even more satisfying.
One more note I want to make on these different items that I found pretty funny is thethemeof them. The artifact for boosting your HP is a “stimulating implant”, a consumable for increasing attack power is a Bio Steroids Shot, you have a mana pipe for regenerating HP, and a small joint for boosting crit chance. Definitely an “old school” choice.
Moving on, the other form of progression in this game is by leveling your weapon mastery and innate talents. You’ll level your weapon mastery by completing quests and exploring the world to find weapon experience catalysts. Every ability for the class will have an upgrade path which will slowly change the skills to be completely different. In the case of the ranger class which I chose, the arrow rain ability would eventually have 2 charges, deal acidic damage scaling with your spell power, and then become a fire volley creating a fire wall. Or for the net shot ability which roots enemies in place, it would reduce their armor and magic resistance, snare one more person, and then shoot an additional enhanced fire arrow.
For the innate talents, once you get to level 5 you can choose one of 10 talent masteries, most of which are designated to specific playstyles, such as a hunter, assassin, mage, tank or support. Some talent masteries are more niche though, such as the Pathfinder mastery which gives some very helpful buffs for when you play the game solo, such as damage resistance, enhanced consumable buffs and survival skills.
The good news is that you can respec both talents and specializations using a special renewal item which you can find via some specific quests and activities, so you never have to fully stick with some stupid choices you made when you were 5 hours into the game.
All in all, I feel like the progression system is pretty well made, and had me hooked after the relatively slow start. There’s room for progression to be tuned, such as the amount of gold and experience you get from quests that can feel a little grindy. To give some context, most quests will give a modest 10 or 20 gold and 100xp, and the first mount you can get at level 7 costs 250 gold, and leveling from 5 to 6 is around 1000 xp. That being said, the effort to get to that 250 gold did feel really rewarding since a mount is an actual game-changer in a game with no fast travel, so I do see what they are going for. I just think they need to tone it down a bit so that new players don’t feel completely overwhelmed once they start.
Performance wise, the game runs very well, and seems to be fully optimised for my system. At mostly High settings and 1440p, I had no frame drops at a 120 FPS cap using GeForce RTX 3090 GPU, Ryzen 9 5950X CPU and 32GB of RAM. Loading screens were short and there was minimal rubberbanding or lag when exploring areas or revealing enemies. I should note that there are servers in several continents including Oceania so this is probably a big factor on how your ping works when you play. Towns may have been a bit more resource intensive but it was milliseconds worth so not disruptive. In terms of graphics, the game does look pretty good, with a unique art style that complements the overall feel of their world and setting.
Corepunk is a very unique game in the modern gaming space that strikes a significant contrast to the hand-holding nature of current RPG games. While still rough around the edges with the pacing and pending refinement on how far old school they want to go, early access is a great way to find and sort out these issues. The game is bursting with personality, and can definitely shape up to be a big launch given some more time and feedback.
Castielle
Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.
