A Complete Look At Guardians Of Ember: Immortal Edition

Thanks to Runewaker for the partnership. All thoughts/opinions belong to the reviewer. Your experience may differ.

Guardians Of Ember Waypoint

Released on December 13, 2016, Guardians of Ember is the newest hack-and-slash MMORPG game by Runewaker. Runewaker is the maker of the games Runes of Magic and Dragon's Prophet.

(Much thanks to Leigh for the review!)

I was given a chance to play Guardians of Ember in its fullest by getting its Immortal Edition, which does give you a lot of interesting items to enjoy the game with. I also looked in depth at each race and class although I did primarily stuck with three classes through-out my gameplay experience due to my play style. I tried out many of the games features including the dungeoning system, Party system, and PvP battlegrounds.

The Different Races

Races (left to right): Dwarves, Neia, Elf (Female), Elf (Male), Human (Female), Human (Male)

In Guardians of Ember there are four different races: Human, Dwarf, Elf, and Neia.

• The Human race has a small story to how they are part of the campaign and look as you would expect a human to look and you can choose whether you want to play a Male or Female Character. 
• The Elves also are accompanied by a short backstory and have what we would call Elvish characteristics with being tall with long hair and pointy ears, and you can also choose to be a Male or Female character. 
• The Dwarves, although are short and stubbly with beard like you would expect, are restricted to only playing with the Male gender and their short background doesn’t explain why that is. 
• Like The Dwarves, the Neia also have a sex restriction but it is restricted to Female only. The Neia also look like very short versions of the elves but their background story is very extensive when compared to the other races. 

With each race you do have a wide assortment of ways you can change the way your character can look by changing the color of their skin, eyes, hair, and lips, and the color pallet is very large compared to some games. Other than the sex restrictions given to both the Dwarfs and Neias, one other thing was missing which you can find in almost any type of MMORPG, the RNG or Random Name Generator. I love to just pick a random name for my characters instead of having to deal with a message saying, “That name is already taken.” every time you try to make one up yourself. I hope that some of these issues such as the gender restrictions and the RNG are implemented in future updates for the game.

The Classes

There are now six different classes which are Knight, Priest, Arcanist, Engineer, Ranger, and Dark Knight. 

• The Knight class is your typical sword swinging, shield wielding, tank/damage class. 
• The Priest is more of your support healer who can damage at range with spells. 
• The Arcanist is a magic casting damage dealing squishy. 
• The Engineer uses guns ether 2 pistols or 1 rifle for damage and uses machines to help buff or heal the party. 
• The Ranger is your bow and crossbow wielding ranged class. 
• The Dark Knight is also a duel-wielding damage/tank whose abilities can enhance their weapons. 

I personally like the class system which brings iconic classes to be played in a much different environment.

Gameplay

Arcanist Gameplay screenshot

The gameplay is what you would expect from these types of games. You collect your quests from anyone with a yellow exclamation point above their head and turn them into the people with a blue question mark. You go around completing quests buy collecting items, killing certain creatures, or achieving certain objectives. I just wish they had a way to tell the difference between Main storyline quests and optional side quests, especially since you have to read everything with no voice-overs even in cinematic scenes.

As for the graphics for the game I would say a good 3 out of 5 on the “World” graphics and 4 out of 5 on the cinematic graphics. 

Cutscene

The normal party system is average. All you have to do is find someone or a friend who you want to party with and send a party invite. The dungeons are a bit liner with MOBS every so often and there is no dungeon party making system, but it’s not really needed because you can solo these dungeons, even if you’re a squishy Arcanist, as long as you know how to “kite” the bosses. The PvP, in my opinion, is where the most work is needed. All the PvP is either 1v1 or 3v3 and it’s you killing the other team on a 2 tier circular map. I would have liked a more objective based PvP Battleground.

Guardians of Ember Boss

The Immortal Edition

The Immortal Edition of the game costs $50 and entitles you to many different perks. These perks include Exclusive Permanente mounts, items for visual fireworks, Bag expansion, experience boosts, and much more. There is however one very big downfall. The code given to you so you can get these Items can only be applied to one character and in my experience, when you buy a special edition of any game, including MMORPGs, it is implemented to all characters you have or make in the future and unless it is fixed in future patches, I do not think it is worth the price you pay.

Guardians Of Ember Engineer

After playing the game for quite a while I have learned that there are features that I really like about the game and a few features which seem mundane. Overall I would give the game a 3 out of 5 the way it currently is, but if some of the thing I mentioned were fixed, I would say 5’s across the board. I will definitely continue to play the game because it is a fun play through and I can’t wait to see what changes they have in store for Guardians of Ember.

You can find Guardians of Ember on Steam for PC. Editions available are the Mortal Edition ($19.99), Demigod Edition ($29.99), and Immortal Edition ($49.99).