Planet Explorers (PC) Review

As your typical survival game, Planet Explorers is all about exploring a vast, diverse world - make no mistake, though, the bulk of the experience is mostly about gathering and crafting; therefore, and despite the existence of a story mode, don't come in expecting a deep RPG, or something of that ilk. In fact, most people are advised to start with Adventure mode from the get go, as it's basically the Story mode minus the boring character interactions and plot. At least, is the whole gathering and crafting business any fun? In one word: yes. In more words: it's decent.

The actual gathering process is, honestly, slow and boring but, luckily, very few crafting recipes (if any) require plenty of materials before being able to create a weapon, health potion, or whatever. As for the structure of the whole thing, it goes something like this: build X with which you can gather Y, so that you can craft Z - rinse, repeat. The second thing one should bear in mind is that Planet Explorers doesn't really strive to be the most immersive title out there.

The main problem (if you can call it that) is how similar this looks to the MMOs of 2005-to-2010, both in the way the UI is designed, but mostly in the how "lifeless" the game world is. Fortunately, while this lacks that extra something that could make its locales feel more atmospheric and "tangible," everything is quite colourful, looks decent enough, and the OST is a pleasure to listen to... something that makes the surprisingly robotic and/or cheesy voice acting stand out even more so.

The big thing about Planet Explorers, though, has always been its custom crafting aspect, which lets players create new items, weapons, vehicles, and even structures, via an in-game editor that's relatively easy to get the hang of, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty with something that kind of feels like lite-modding. Sadly, and while this is definitely an awesome concept, and one where it's easy to realise that your imagination is the limit, it has a major problem: a severe lack of balance - something that leads to the main issue with the product at hand.

Simply put, this feels as if it's not a complete title, and while the updates can be "felt" with each new push (which, in all honesty, do come very frequently), this is definitely something that needs some heavy polishing in all of its aspects, and especially the custom crafting one, as most, if not all, of the created items tend to be outclassed by the simplest of in-game ones, like how that super sword you have just made using rare components turns out to be weaker than a measly weapon found in a beginner-friendly dungeon.