Vindictus (PC/Mac)

A real beauty marred by repetition, lag, and pay-to-win.

The Overview

Vindictus is an amazing 3D action RPG that deserves far better treatment from its creators than it has received. The fast-paced visceral combat and challenging bosses make every dungeon in Vindictus a satisfying experience as both you and your character's skills grow. Unfortunately, the honeymoon is short lived... Vindictus is marred by performance issues, lack of support, and freemium pay-to-win mechanics.

The boat where every adventure begins.

The Good

Tense combat. Combat in Vindictus is fast-paced and tactical. Survival requires executing combos, counterattacks, and dodges with perfect timing. Challenging, but well worth the effort.

Graphics and theming. While not the best graphics available, Vindictus has respectable graphical quality and consistent style. Dungeons are comfortable to explore. Nothing feels awkward or out of place. And the combat visual effects are spot on.

Destructible environments. Dungeons in Vindictus are littered with debris and ruins that players can interact with.

Debris include chunks of wood, stone, pillars, barrels, bodies, and weapons dropped by enemies. Debris can be used as melee weapons, or it can be thrown or rolled at enemies as a stunning diversion.

Ruins are formations of stone pillars of varying height and size. When damaged, the pillars collapse and the falling stones inflict damage upon any players or monsters struck by them. Some ruins also have stone roofs. Falling roofs can be deadly.

While debris and ruins are mostly a novelty, there are boss battles where players need to be mindful of the dangers (and advantages) of the environment around them to do well.

Vella's signature cross slash attack.

The Bad

Lag. For a game designed for fast-paced battles that involve dodging and parrying blows with perfect timing, Vindictus has an unacceptable amount of lag. In such a tense battle system, every stutter, missed attack, and failed block makes the difference between success and failure. Failure is harshly punished with no rewards, high equipment repair fees, and the loss of precious consumables. Adding insult to injury, each death prompts the player to pay $$$ for another try.

Lag traps. The video game equivalent of being left on hold. Players often find themselves trapped at the dungeon exit until the server remembers them. This doesn't happen in every dungeon, but a minute or two wait kills the fun. The rare five to ten minute waits are torture.
While this doesn't happen in every dungeon, a minute or two wait kills the fun and a five to ten minute wait is torture.

Crafting is a painful pointless timesink. Not only does gathering crafting materials involve massive amounts of grinding and lucky RNG, it can also take several minutes to craft a single item. While some players may be fine watching Vella wiggle her butt in front of the anvil for hours on end to level their crafting skills, there are no real benefits to doing so. Master crafting recipes do produce valuable equips, however they require materials that are so insanely rare you will likely never get to craft them!

Peer-to-peer networking. Vindictus is designed to be a party game. When things run smoothly, team boss fights are one of the ways Vindictus really shines. Unfortunately, the P2P networking design punishes the entire team with unstable connections, lag spikes, and general performance issues.

Freemium pay-to-win. Paywalls and poor design increasingly hinder progress as you level. The ridiculous one-hit KO mechanics of harder bosses are designed purely to sell premium consumables. High level equips are available in the cash shop as rentals and are nearly unobtainable in the game. In its efforts to promote purchases, Vindictus simultaneously forces players to grind, penalizes them for doing so, and then shows them an upsell.

Anti-cheaterplayer design. While the 'anti-farming' features in Vindictus create a powerful incentive to push ahead into higher leveled content, they aren't balanced with the grinding pace of advancements, crafting, achievements, and quests. Instead, these mechanisms simultaneously discourage players from repeating old content and punish them for playing harder content.

For example, to prevent farming, players cannot earn gold until they reach level 21. Players also earn little to no gold when completing dungeons under their level. This prohibits players from completing side quests, crafting, and building wealth.

In addition to this, every dungeon you complete damages your equipment. The effectiveness of your equipment degrades the more it is damaged. Equipment repair costs increase with equipment level, enhancements, and the amount of damage the equipment has taken. This traps players in a frustrating fruitless grind that often doesn't even cover repair costs.

Lack of love. Despite all the flaws it had, I really enjoyed playing Vindictus. However, the complete lack of developer support was unbearable. Vindictus never felt like it was in the hands of a team who cared about it. The story chapters were badly balanced, paywalls blocked too much content, meaningful updates were rare, the same generic events repeated every few weeks, and even the cash shop had next to no content.

"90 seconds is nothing after that 5 minute one. Now lets make a dozen more..."

The Notable Mechanics

Achievements with benefits. Achievements in most games have no real value to the player. In Vindictus players earn small bonuses. While one or two points of Strength or Dexterity aren't worth much on their own, completing dozens of achievements generates noticeable changes.

Bonus challenges. Most dungeon levels include extra challenges to give players a chance to earn extra gold. Challenges vary in difficulty, from stomping a few spiders to completing a dungeon without wearing any armor. These challenges add some extra variety and goals to liven up the dungeon grinds.

Combat controls. Combat requires only a few buttons. Timing and combos control everything. This system is easy to understand and supports players using a keyboard, mouse, or joystick. The simple design keeps the focus where it should be, on the combat.

"Who cares if I have two swords, Jump Kick!"

Vella's screen-shattering cyclone attack.

The Summary

Vindictus was a heartbreaking experience with a game that could have been amazing if it just got a little more love from its developers (and publisher). Unfortunately, they were more focused on monetization than player experience. Vindictus is still worth trying, but don't get too attached.

Summary:

• + awesome battle system
• + beautiful graphics
• + fun & addictive
• + free to play
• + variety of heroes with completely different playing styles
• - crafting is a pointless timesink
• - repetitive grinding
• - freemium & pay-to-win
• - lag
• - lack of support
• - felt like a beta release

You can learn more about Vindictus by visiting the official website vindictus.nexon.net

Disclaimer: I last played Vindictus in April 2015. This review is based on extensive notes from my experience at the time. Vindictus is still under development and may have changed significantly from that time.