Core Keeper Review (enoxx)
So.. Core Keeper is a simple game, but very frankly a good one.
The game is essentially 60% Terraria, 35% Minecraft, and 5% Stardew.
The big complaints people have are.. you have to look up guides? And that the story is incomplete.
Most games don't hold your hand to such an extent that you never look up guides, or look up things pertaining to the game. And honestly, nothing about this game is complicated. There's no complexities that you come across that make it a massive learning curve. Every guide can be read in one minute. Guides are hardly even guides half the time, just telling you where things are likely to spawn, or what gear to bring to a fight to make it easier. The game frankly, does hold your hand a little. You can craft items that tell you exactly where the bosses are. Some people find this problematic (somehow), and other people are complaining that they can't find the bosses in the procedurally generated Core Keeper world. These two kinds of reviews conflict with each other, and it just goes to show that these people either don't read tool-tips, struggle to navigate simple menus/mechanics, or glazed over playing the game for an hour and went into it deciding it was gonna be ass.
Other people find the endless map an issue, which is similar to Minecraft. But realistically, map size is not a problem. You can literally craft portals. Portals. You can just make a portal, as many as you want. You don't like running a long distance? Make a railway. Or a portal.
The story is incomplete, sure - but the game is in early access and is literally $15. I've spent more on McDonald's. The game tells its lore through your interpretation of what you see, and item descriptions. New updates and biomes add new lore bits. You don't need to be spoonfed a story. Elden Ring did this and the world deepthroated it gratefully, Core Keeper does it and a few people cry in reviews. It's early access, you pay for early access, you get early access.
So what do I think?
Character creation is nice, simple and quick. Nothing overwhelming. Can't say anything bad about it whatsoever.
Base building is enjoyable, you get a lot of choices in how you want to construct your base, and where. Resource management is easy, you will never feel pressed for resources as long as you play even remotely half assed, and this is fine. Someone mentioned their base getting attacked, they likely had no idea what they were doing in the slightest and didn't even try to figure out what the issue might've been. I can hardly fathom that complaint.
Bosses are (generally) mostly easy, Omoroth is challenging, and Igneous can be punishing. But with the gloriousness that is min maxxing, you can kill both in under 15 seconds if you want to. If you play the game the way the developers expect, it will be a little harder but still completely doable.
QOL wise, there are good features. Once you make one workbench, you get access to the recipes of the ones below as well. There are ways to travel quickly across different environments. The skill system explains itself well and you can respecc very cheaply. Ore nodes that can be auto mined give generous quantities of ore. Farming is trivial. Characters can be played on multiple worlds, and you can transfer items between said worlds.
The bones of the game are good, and what content is available is also good. It is fine to say there is a lack of content in certain aspects, but the game is early access. I cannot stress enough that for what this game has to offer and the fact that it is in early access, it is GOOD. Theoretically it'll continue to get better, the devs listen to the community (mostly) and are interactive on their discord.
I'd recommend it to anyone with the caveat that if you don't like Minecraft, or Terraria, you will not like this game either. And that's fine. Just don't misrepresent the games systems when you review it because you failed to play a simple game briefly.
I will update this review upon the new content patch arriving on Oct. 4th.