izigame.me

This game is my happy place and my hours will show it. I've been a guild officer, Trials leader, and became a Grand Master Crafter (without taking the cheese step). However, I can't recommend it to everyone at this time without some qualifications. The current creative direction of the game is finally listening to player feedback in some areas like story design of new content, while ignoring all other player needs.
The game peaked, in my opinion, at some point in the last two years and is now in decline regarding its fundamental feel. It has far to fall though, so don't worry you can still get an amazing 1k hours in. Just know that they will be rug pulling some of the best builds and ways of doing things. Company leadership also has one of the most wholesome and reasonable communities of any game ever, let alone any MMO but will engage in toxic comments constantly against player concerns.
Now, with that out of the way let's get onto the review!
For PvP players, the game is no longer worth your time and certainly not worth your investment to get up to a good level of competence and gear. Too much has been changed in failed update after failed update, including major changes to how combat feels and to how data is hitting the server (far less data is hitting the server).
For PvE players who want a feel good game with endless amounts of rich content, then this game is more of a true Elder Scrolls game than it is ever given credit for. I give it a solid 8.5/10 on quality, but bump that up to a 8.9/10 for raw scale after all the High Isle content has been added. The story of Vestige, this world, and all the small groups and towns within it is enjoyable. But when you are playing the story it is for the story, as for some reason the insane choice was made to not make story missions actually rewarding, save for the skill point. In this age where players want more difficulty there is sadly not a way to increase it. Once you hit gear level and make any improvements to gear then all content in all areas of the game (except for trials and vet Dungeons with a party) is utterly trivialized. So yeah, 600 hours of story content and side quests that's on ultra easy mode is annoying, even if it's not quite as bad as horrifying as I'm making it seem. Adding a little more difficulty and a little more rewards though would have made it one of MMO's best experiences
The early game is a little rough to learn, as things are kind of obtuse. But if you can make it to a major city and tinker with the crafting benches and learn to read the maps, it will be mostly smooth sailing from there. Just focus on leveling up and doing story missions and you can participate in everything easily. The One Tamriel system in this game works so well that after first finding it weird I have since come to love the ability for anyone at any level to group up and go almost everywhere.
In my opinion, this game is better as a tank or healer than it is as a DPS. The skills required are more social and cerebreal than the raw practicing on a dummy that the DPS must do. I'd say the game is a full 2 points better as a tank and 1 point better as a healer than as a base DPS. One note, the latest changes "nerf" healing leaving you not being able to give precise and refined levels of outgoing heals, procs, etc to such a granular and intense level. In a way that's for the best as my healer was so god-tier overpowered that I could save anyone who was not one-shotted.
The class design in this game is beautiful, and I wish they were not homogenizing it so much. Wardens and Necromancers were truly a special experience (though I recommend necromancers only for veterans or those who are patient with a good awareness of what's going on around them during battles). In my opinion the Templar class has not aged as well, and even as Dragonknights have gotten some revision something is still less than satisfying there even as they remain crunchy and impactful. The Nightblade is the polished corvette of the old classes and it never gets old to cloak on people and sneak up behind them to crit strike.
For people who like to farm materials and then craft housing with them... This game is a solid 11/10. The housing scene is passionate and has some scenes that feel like a professional interior designer made them. Guilds focused on such are worth joining.
I had fun in this game. I even found it richly fulfilling. I also do feel it has an endgame more than some critics, especially having recently played some games without such.
In my mind the pinnacle of this game is dungeons, either with friends or queued with randoms. They just flow well and are interesting, giving a good balance of time investment to rewards for each run. To get good at veteran dungeons is also worth it in my opinion, and the extra dungeons are worth the subscription alone.
Be careful in listening to online content creators and guides. Why? This is an MMO that requires a heavy time investment (though it's not forcing you to constantly re-level everything and rat race constantly, so that's a plus) to be able to have a wide selection of gear and a lot of skill points. You simply cannot come close to building what you'll see in guides and it's hard to get yourself set to the idea that even assembling all the parts of a beginner's build takes some work. I have seen guides ruin most people's experience with this game and cause them to have such unrealistic expectations that we all laugh at them in guild. You will not start out the game being able to get mythic items (the leads take forever to farm, and that's after days spent scrying and excavating in mini games, so imagine week-to-weeks for veteran players to do), you absolutely should not gold your gear, and you shouldn't even imagine doing vet Arenas for the special weapons unless you have a sibling sitting next to you that can teach you when it fills you with rage and despair. I've seen people quit over the ideas given to them by the latest YT vid. I really wish this game portrayed weapons well, as many people simply never get or even try for the chase weapons. They aren't even necessary for most high level builds which are powerful with just a 2 gear sets and a monster mask set.
Go into this game with some patience, an open mind, and ignore the creator community and devs. Just play the game and go to your guild for advice, as guilds in this game are the only people who are honest and represent the community. They'll make gear for you and help you to do dungeons to get the better gear.
I'm serious, go play this game for the guilds, the friends, the story content, and the housing. If you do that, you'll be happy like I was for a few thousand hours.
This truly is a good game and more fulfilling than most.
(Oh, and also DO NOT BUY THE CRATES. Everyone warned me, but I did and regret every single time I did, they are the worst boxes in any single game currently out there. 99.99999% of everything you get from them will be chaff. They shouldn't be legal, and in this case they are literally that bad to the point they make gacha games seem generous and ethical.)