Pax Dei – Good Bones, Little Meat
Pax Dei Review
(Three out of Five Ales)
Pax Dei is a sandbox MMO with a heavy emphasis on building and crafting. In many ways it feels like a survival game such as Ark Survival or Conan Exiles crossed with a sandbox MMO such as EVE Online or Albion Online.
Innovation
(Three out of Five Ales)
The particular blend of genres is not something I’ve seen in any other game before though I’d say the degree to which it departs from a fairly standard survival game is currently slim. Especially with the recent release of Dune Awakening that brings MMO elements into a survival game, Pax is not currently bringing too much new to the table but it’s distinct enough to not feel overdone.
I’d be amiss here to not mention their upcoming feudal system with knights claiming land, declaring loyalty to lord’s and waging war over territories. Interestingly they also have mentioned trade towns and parishes that players will be able to compete over in a manner that does not involve locking blades. These systems have extreme potential to make the game quite unique should they come to fruition.
Character Control & Combat
(Two and a Half out of Five Ales)
Combat is real time no-tab targeting action combat similar to games like Conan Exiles, Darksouls, or New World.
There is blocking mechanics for some weapons but currently no dodge rolls. Players use abilities that mostly group into the standard trinity of DPS, tank, and healer.
Abilities are tied to gear with your weapon providing three abilities while your helm, chest, legs and boots each provide one more for a total of 7.
The abilities at this point are very basic. You’re not going to find any builds that really stand out as unique and exciting. They’re fairly easy to land with aiming be quite simple though certain combos do take a bit of practice.
I’d like to mention here that healers have some targeted abilities. Because support abilities are really the only thing targeted they take you out of the flow of combat and the keys to use them are quite poorly optimized. In my opinion they feel terrible and would be worth replacing with skill shot abilities and a self-target toggle that fit better with the game’s usual flow.
All viable builds except healers use melee weapons. Bows have no abilities and lackluster damage and swapping from a bow to a melee weapon starts a 17 second cooldown for abilities on the weapon swapped to making their use case very circumstantial outside hunting. The game originally featured a fireball spell in early access but healing magic is currently the only magic usable by players.
The entire combat system feels like the foundation of something solid but there is currently nothing there to make it worth getting excited over.
Customization
(Three and a Half out of Five Ales)
As mentioned each weapon provides three abilities and there are four armor slots that provide up to 7 active abilities. You can change your build around by swapping pieces of armor though you’ll need skill in the relevant piece of gear to use higher tier equipment.
There are no skill caps so you can experiment with multiple builds and even have different sets for different forms of content.
You also have glove and wrist slots that purely provide stats. Plate seems the clear best option for those in most scenarios as they purely provide defense and mana.
Additionally you can run three separate food buffs at a time. This gives great customization options but also gets tedious to refresh and takes up three inventory slots. Both of which could be solved by having three food inventory slots that have an auto refresh you can toggle off and on.
Overall is the foundation for a really great system but it’s just not there yet in my opinion. Beyond making food less tedious and a wider selection of more interesting abilities I’m hoping they eventually emulate Albion Online’s weapon system where instead of three abilities tied to a weapon there is one weapon unique ability and two groups of abilities that can be selected from among, allowing weapons to adapt to a variety of situations and play-styles.
Character appearance customization is better than average solidly beating out games like New World but by no means the most detailed I’ve ever seen.
It’s unfortunate that while the game features a wide array of cosmetic armor pieces there is no such thing as cosmetic skins overriding stat items even outside PvP zones.
Customizable housing is a huge aspect of the game, and rather than cramming it in here I’ll be giving its own topic.
Challenge / Pacing
(One Out of Five Ales)
Mobs and gear currently seem in a bad state. Some mobs are very easy. Others quite difficult. They can be spread apart or clustered close together. You’ll breeze through a pack of boars effortlessly then get shredded by a dire wolf all without leaving the home valleys or stepping foot in anything resembling a dungeon.
It can be quite frustrating at times and really calls to a need for more consistent challenge levels across zones outside camps, dungeons, and maybe some rare world bosses.
In that vein content currently lacks variety. While EVE and Albion clearly serve as major inspirations for Pax Dei it lacks the significant variety in content these games offer. Currently there is hunting scattered mobs, mob camps, and dungeons, in addition to crafting and building.
The currently bland combat system also extends to mob abilities and boss fights. Don’t expect any adrenaline pumping showdowns as you dodge roll away from an epic spell blast or cool boss attack.
There is also one zone with full loot PvP. Significant improvements will need to be made not only in PvP but more importantly in PvE to give people consistent content to keep them engaged long term.
Monetization
(Four out of Five Ales)
It’s currently box price + subscription.
The box price is $29.99 to play.
The subscription model is very reasonably priced. Premium offers players 50% more XP and grace gains. Grace being a current gained daily that offers a wide array of crafting and gathering buffs.
This subscription starts at $3.99 or $6.99 if you have a single plot and ranges all the way up to $18.99 if you have 4 plot tokens.
So how badly do you need these perks to enjoy the game? Premium is obviously very important for leveling. You can play for free but you’ll advance much more slowly. Access to plots is also very important to your experience however, if you’re in a good guild then personal plots become quite optional.
As I’ll explain in the section on building, building is probably the best done aspect of the game and I would recommend giving it a try if you’re going to play Pax Dei. You can actually build quite a significant structure with a single plot though and I don’t think the $6.99 package really holds anyone back unless they absolutely love to build grandiose structures or maintain multiple settlements around the map.
I could even see going entirely free to play if you’re satisfied with your level and only hop in for occasional guild events, or just really want to play for a month you’re tight on cash.
The only cosmetics that have currently been sold were tied to the founder’s packages and there is no cash shop for anything other than subs at the moment.
So overall they offer significant value with some of the cheapest viable subscription options I have ever seen in a game. The only thing holding me back from five out of five ales is the initial box price on-top of a sub. Even then I’d probably grant a 5 out of 5 if the game were in a better state. $30 + $6.99 monthly for a very viable package is a real steal for a good MMO.
Immersion / Artistic Appeal
(Three and A Half Out of Five Ales)
The graphics are beautiful and one of the major draws to this game for me. If you love realistic graphics in a medieval setting you’re going to love how this game looks.
The gathering animations are also quite fun. You watch the rocks slowly crumble away as you mine them and fell trees as you chop them up.
When gathering and building I often feel fully immersed in my task. Combat and certain elements of crafting are a bit less immersive just because of the state those systems are in.
The sound is solidly adequate. It takes nothing from the experience but I don’t find myself humming Pax Dei music in my head.
Story / Lore
(Three out of Five Ales)
The story and lore are not central to this game but nonetheless it does have them and they’re somewhat interesting.
Pax Dei is built in a land inspired by medieval Europe with the twist that all the myths and folklore are true and magic is real.
The world has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times with each cycle pushing previous versions of earth being pushed lower and lower to create layers of hell.
The God’s intervene directly in the world with safe zones being a result of their intervention but where their power is weaker, things are less safe.
The church that follows the God’s bears strong resemblance to medieval Catholicism.
Overall it’s an interesting premise. I like how it incorporates gamey mechanics like safe zones into the lore so they make more sense. It also leaves the door open to future mechanics such as going underground to fight in different levels of hell.
It’s not tied too much into the experience of playing the game currently however and you have to go outside the game to read the lore. I find it adequate for a game not based on story.
Crafting / Economy
(One and Half out of Five Ales)
This game has a crafting system. There is need for crafted items. You can craft a variety of things, using a variety of ingredients, all on the same character with no need for alts. People who enjoy grinding will enjoy that aspect of crafting in this game. That’s everything good I have to say about crafting in this game.
This game has taken to standard crafting system where resources go in and crafted items come out while your character afks at a bench and made it more grindy. Getting to level to make better items is more expensive but those items really aren’t that hard to make once you have the levels. You can only gain levels from item in a narrow range of difficulties close to your current level in the craft.
The end result is that any item useful for leveling is devalued to practically nothing. Guild feed all their resources to specific crafters. And more than one crafter in a specific craft is only useful to the extent of getting things made while someone isn’t online.
Ontop of that there is no function to a lot of the items made while level grinding. You can’t deconstruct them for a bit of material return. You can’t sacrifice them for grace. If you make 50 cloth gloves pushing levels and don’t want them taking up 50 storage slots your best recourse is to throw them on the ground which just feels terrible.
Theres also nothing really fun of creative to crafting. In early versions there were many versions of Mead made with a variety of fruits and most of those got removed to streamline things but they never added back in something like a “fruit slot” where you can put different fruit in to change the properties of the mead or add an additional stat. Recipes are entirely predetermined.
There are several ways I can think of to make this system engaging but as it stands it’s really nothing worth buying the game for.
On the trade front players can create stalls they can sell goods at. There is supposed to be an option for them to buy your goods too but it doesn’t currently work. There is no direct player to player trade and it’s done instead by throwing item on the ground or opening chests. If you want an item it’s very difficult to find what you want as you have to go all around the map checking player stalls. It’s difficult enough to find what you need that most people don’t bother.
Localized goods are also not really a thing in the grander scheme of things you can generally find everything worth having in a very small area leaving no incentive to transport goods across great distances such as between two opposite corners of the map.
Finally there is absolutely nothing for hauling goods around. Not wagons. Not mules. Not even upgradable backpacks. The maximum amount of goods you can take anywhere is one inventory load.
As a result, trade is pretty dead. Most guilds father and make 90% of what they need in-house and only trade with immediate neighbors.
Trade seems like it has a long way to go and needs many significant changes to even be average, much less good.
Building
(Four out of Five Ales)
Pax Dei leans so heavily on building to make this game fun it really deserves its own category. And the good news here is it’s done one seemingly simple thing that makes this aspect of the game so incredibly fun it’s diminished my enjoyment of building in other games.
That thing, is no collision between many elements of buildings combined with the ability to free-move pieces outside their snap points. This seemingly simple thing opens up worlds worth of possibilities to the creative mind. Overlapping foundations give significant control to structure shapes. Overlapping logs and beams allow beautifully detailed structures that can be true works of art.
There is one big downside and a couple small ones to building that are holding me back from a five ale rating. The first is a lack of any terraforming at all. Even trees will regrow through your structure if chopped down to build over. And terrain shaping or resurfacing is entirely out of the question. This is by far the biggest downside.
Two smaller problems both revolve around variety. The first is there is a fairly small number of buildings components and decorations to work with. The second is uniformity among these pieces. For instance every log beam looks exactly the same as every other down to where the knots in the wood are, leading log structures to look a bit weirder than if there were a few different styles it randomly selected between.
The latter two problems are admittedly nit-picky, and my final take is that if you set aside terraforming and focus purely on building and decorating, it’s by far my favorite building system of any game I have played.
Social Features
(Two out of Five Ales)
Chat in this game has a really cool feature in that your Discord PMs pop up in-game. It’s got logical tabs and is easy to use.
In a baffling decision for the age of Discord though, there are no global channels. No general chat, no trade chat, and no help chat. This can often make the world feel very lonely and socially isolate the player outside their guild. It seems small but when I’ve played at less active periods of EA it’s absolutely oppressive.
As mentioned trade can only be performed through chests, vendors, and throwing objects on the ground.
Guilds carry all the weight of social systems for the most part but are also very poorly done. Ranks and permissions allow very little customization and have some glaring flaws. For instance if I want others to be able to use my furnaces, tanning racks, and looms I need to set my plot to clan. This also allows others to build/deconstruct on my plot, meaning I open myself up to sabotage by simply allowing people to use my furnace.
None of these systems feel fleshed out to a release state. Clan permissions in particular feel like they are in alpha state. I’d expect more even from a beta.
Stability/Performance
(Three out of Five Ales)
The game has numerous issues. Certain zone transitions cause crashes and rarely there can be serious log in issues that require a full reinstall.
That being said for an MMO game in early release I’ve seen a lot worse. And I’m actually surprised how well the game seems to render in and perform housing plots filled with hundreds of objects.
Conclusion
Pax Dei seems to be a game still in beta despite its state of being released. It has a lot of solid foundations but not very much meat on its bones.
Most of the problems described here were also a problem when Early Access released over a year ago so it seems some major issues are taking a long time to fix which shakes my faith in the game.
That being said it’s amazing building and fair pricing do make the game worth looking at if you’re extremely excited about the premise of what it is or curious and have some spare time on your hands.
I really hope to see this game improve a lot and be something amazing in the future. But I’m not holding my breath.
