I put some thought into this before I decided to write out this review. I am not recommending Where Winds Meet, for a number of reasons, that I felt, outweighed its strong showing as a great game. My opinion on this game is very much mixed. It is both an excellent game, and an insidious one.

First off, "F2P" is a fallacy. There is no such thing as a free lunch. People want to throw out that "its a great game and its free". When its not, your access to the game is a transactional contract. You give your information, your data, which can be sold to third parties or given to the CCP for "reasons". If you feel its worth that price, then by all means, indulge yourself.

Secondly, this game's true nature is simple: its a whale game. Everything about this game is driven about the collection of cosmetic items to be applied to your character, which you can then show off when you interact in the game's social game modes. It's so overt, the game literally tracks your cosmetic collection as a stat known as "elegance", and its tracked on global leaderboards. Whaling is literally the lifeblood of this game.

If you can accept the fact, this game is designed to social engineer you into buying the ludicrously overpriced cosmetics, and engage with the predatory gacha systems (its pity pull system requires $300 USD to trigger). then you may be able to enjoy this game without much issues. If you however, have OCD and collection obsessive urges. I strongly urge you, to stop here, and *DO NOT PLAY THIS GAME*. You simply will not be able to afford it, most of the legendary gacha-only skins cost upward of $600 dollars investment to even have a CHANCE of getting one without incredible luck that beats less then 1% drop rates. You have better chances at casinos, then with this game's gacha. It's not worth it unless you have money to waste.

If you can past these shortcomings, then you have to deal with a phenomenal game that will eventually whiplash you with its F2P nature.

MY experience with Where Winds Meets began great. It's story, its accessibility, its world building, all exceptional. Then you hit the F2P wall. The developers have put in, internal daily hard caps on drops so efficient grinding is punished. This is on top of the weekly hard caps.

This game is fantastic until you realize its on rails dictated by the developers. Then it becomes frustrating, as leveling requires that you log in and play the game like a daily chore. It's no longer a game you play at your pace, but by weekly and daily activity caps. I played Destiny 2 and enjoyed it until I realized it did exactly this. One has to basically play or FOMO. This game is full of FOMO. Miss an event? Too bad, that cosmetic is permanently delisted. Missed a week during an event? You missed the event's final reward milestone, too bad.

When a game has to constantly bait you with another piece of candy to keep you engaged because it will not let you enjoy it if you outpace the activity cap. Then you see why a great game gets not recommended.

I noticed alot of people drop this game because of this. Most of the game basically is daily activity grinding and going into social hubs to see how many people are willing to throw their money into a black hole.

So if you can overlook its nature as a game, and deal with its frustrating handicaps as a F2P game. You will get your time's worth out of this game. But always understand, this game is literally a whale game. It's designed around whales and getting people to convince themselves its worth it, when its not.

This game is actually incredible. It's a love letter to Half Life and the SCIENCE team. With some nods to other scifi giants as well such as SCP.

It focuses more on what makes a game fun rather then graphic fidelity, and the rustic graphics enhance its charm as it truly does make me feel like I just popped up the OG Half Life game again.

If you like the silly charm of the SCIENCE team in Half-Life combined with a surprisingly robvust crafting, survival gameplay loop, you will like this game.

Even being in Early Access, this game is not particularly unstable or buggy. It's polish, and future roadmap of additions makes me genuinely excited for what comes next.

Do give this game a try, it will give you a good time even as a Early Access title.

EDIT: 11/28/2024. This game keeps getting better and better. DO get it before it goes out of Early Access!