Since my graphics card died, I’ve been playing on my PS5 a lot more. And in my search of native PS5 games to play, I discovered Fortnite.
I played a little bit of Save the World, the original PvE game-mode before Battle Royale took off, a few years ago. I kind of enjoyed it, but I lost interest for some reason. Coming back to it years later, I can see why I liked playing it in the first place, but I also understand why I stopped playing.
I’m a huge fan of tower defense games. I love building long tunnels of traps and watching the game force these poor Husks to march into my death house on the way to the thing I’m defending. The variety of traps and player archetypes allow for a ton of different play-styles. Do you wanna build your own death house? Play a constructor. Do you wanna leave the building to someone else and go guns blazing? Play a soldier.
The choice… is yours.™
The variety of traps and play-styles lead to Save the World being a wet-dream for min-maxers. It’s almost like a gacha game. One of the many rewards you’ll get in this game is Schematics. These are recipes for weapons and traps with distinct perks attached. So you could get a Purple Retractable Floor Spike trap schematic as a quest reward, and it’s very likely it’ll have different perks from another Purple Retractable Floor Spike trap schematic. A mechanic like that inherently breeds grinding for the “best” Retractable Floor Spike trap schematic.
Luckily, you can do a lot to improve whatever schematics you do have. I’m pretty sure any schematic of any rarity or perks could theoretically be molded to the most effective version of that trap. You can upgrade color-rarity and exchange perk slots via resources you get from finishing missions. So if you have a Blue Floor Spike schematic, I’m pretty sure it’s possible to level it up a bunch until it’s equal to a Yellow Floor Spike schematic. It’ll just take you a shit-ton of resources.
Ah, there’s the hook. You don’t have to grind for a hyper specific trap rarity with the perks you want, you can just use the one you’ve always had. But you do have to grind for resources to level that trap up.
And you won’t just be leveling up traps. You’re leveling up Heroes (Player Characters), Defenders (AI that fights with you), Survivors (People you send out on timed missions), and Weapon Schematics, in addition to spending upgrade points on two different skill trees.
It’s not just the level that matters though. How you slot those Heroes into your loadout or how you allocate Defenders in their squads directly impacts how strong you are.
Look… I’m a fan of games where you can level up a bunch of stuff to directly improve your gameplay. On paper, I love these systems. The weapon perks you get aren’t boring 10% upgrades, they’re like 90% upgrades to fire rate or damage, at least at the higher level. Stuff you actually notice in battle.
But this is too much.
There’s not enough resources given out to make it feel like I’m progressing. After going through the generous pool of resources you’re given for starting the game that gachas always have, resources become sparse real quick. There’s not enough XP to level up the 20 or so defenders that I need to. It feels like I’m being pushed towards the MTX shop.
Another thing I’m sour on, is how poorly this game teaches it’s mechanics. My actual biggest gripe with this game, is that it doesn’t even attempt to explain how Husks find their way to the objective you’re defending. That might seem like a weird complaint, but it’s important when the core of the game is building strong defense.
Like I said, I love building death houses for Husks to walk down. But it’s extremely frustrating to spend all my resources on a layout I’m happy with, then all the husks just “decide” to take another path, and all my resources spent on building those traps (which isn’t nothing, mind you) is wasted. I’m sure there’s some internal path-finding they use that I don’t know. That’s fine if they have that. I just wish the game would explain what it is!
This game is peak “doesn’t explain shit”. The way so many systems are presented and interact with each other is daunting at points, and even if they are explained with some on-screen message, it’s often confusing or forgettable.
The UI is a complete mess. There’s so many little quirks that I’ve become used to over my playtime, but they’re still annoying to deal with.
That’s the core of this game. An overwhelming amount of tiny design choices that piss me off. Each design choice by itself isn’t bad, but when they’re compounded, it’s hard to figure out why they thought it was a good idea.
There’s one mission type where you go out and collect random stuff, just to restock your crafting resources. You’re not defending anything, you just go out and destroy trees and shit.
But you can still fail this mission.
It actually gives you objectives like Destroy 15 Cars or Collect 10 Supply Crates. On top of those objectives, there’s a closing storm circle, like in Battle Royale, that shifts around the map.
Consider this. What if you have 8/10 Supply Crates collected, and you have a minute left? The storm circle is at it’s smallest point and there are no supply crates nearby. What if the last two are on the other side of the map? You probably wouldn’t be able to make it there without dying or getting there in the remaining 60 seconds.
Granted, I don’t know what happens if you fail one of these Resupply missions, but it’s fuckin stupid. I resupplied. I didn’t fail at that!
Ugh, there’s just so many problems with Save the World. But I can’t stop playing it. Maybe it’s just because I want the v-bucks to buy stuff in the Battle Royale mode or I actually enjoy it.
Would I Recommend It?
If I’m being honest, I genuinely do enjoy playing Fortnite: Save the World. There’s a wide variety of combat abilities and traps to keep me satisfied during missions, and I’m a straight-up number junkie, so I love leveling up a bunch of shit. But I only love it to a point. And I think this game goes beyond that point.
If you’re willing to put up with Min-Max: The Game, then you’re gonna have a blast here. But if you don’t, you can get by for quite a long time without dedicating yourself to getting the best stats. That’s really only an endgame thing.