I try to make it my mission in life to play as many different types of video games as possible, but sometimes it’s not that easy. Certain genres require you to pretty much give up playing anything else to fully experience them, and that’s simply not a sacrifice I’m willing to make. Because of this I’ve never been even remotely close to the exciting endgame portion of an MMO, and I had pretty much made peace with the fact that this particular portion of my video game knowledge would be lacking. That was before Fellowship came along though, and offered up MMO style raiding without the hours of grinding that usually precedes it.
Fellowship is essentially just the raiding part of a typical MMO, which everyone always says is the most exciting part of that mythical genre. You’ll gather a party of four to take on one of four (in this Next Fest demo build at least) raids set in varied locations. This team consists of a tank, two damage dealers and a healer, and only by working in perfect harmony will you be able to kill the bosses you need to succeed in a run.
After a handy tutorial it’s time to select your hero, of which there are six (two of each type). The tutorial showed off the more basic tank, so that’s how I decided to start my Fellowship journey. With a selection of attacking abilities alongside a taunt to attract enemies and a finisher to deal extra damage, combat is a dance of pressing buttons when cooldowns run out which is easy to grasp but extremely hard to actually master.
It’s made more difficult when you’re faced with tough enemies sporting powerful abilities to deal with. This means making sure someone on the team interrupts enemy heals or attacks with their interrupt abilities, and this requires perfect coordination to do effectively. The key to victory in Fellowship is effective teamwork, so whether you’re pinging with in-game alerts or chatting on voice comms you need to be in sync with your squad to effectively deal with foes.
As someone entirely new to this world of raiding, what impressed me most was the creativity of the enemies and especially bosses you’ll face. I kind of expected to be grinding against the same old foes and slowly wearing down health bars, but Fellowship is so much more than that. One enemy we fought on a pirate ship sucked everyone who didn’t rush to cling onto a mast into the sea and drowned them instantly. Another massive monster made of gold required the tank to roll a ball of loot around to collect piles of gold littering the arena. Merely pressing the correct buttons to attack is only half the battle, as the game rudely demonstrated by battering me over and over again.
Once you actually succeed at a run (which, thanks to some helpful random people, did actually happen) you’ll unlock the ability to make runs harder. This means adding more abilities to enemies you’ll need to interrupt, giving them more health, and perhaps most alarming adding a time limit to raids. Especially thanks to the fact you need to kill a certain amount of enemies to clear a raid, this means carefully identifying routes that make this possible. I can’t pretend this level of difficulty is something I got close to approaching, but for MMO veterans there’s plenty to sink your teeth into.
Thankfully to offset this added difficulty somewhat, you’ll gain access to all sorts of loot and new abilities as you beat harder raids. I was delighted to ride around on my lovely horse mount, and gain access to snazzy new armour to show off – and these things will also keep you alive against orcs and skeletons.
I had a great time with the Steam Next Fest demo of Fellowship, but there was one aspect of the game I’ll really need help with when the game fully releases. The tutorial really helped me get to grips with my one tank character, but without tutorials for the other five options I struggled to understand how best to use them. I’m sure more experienced raiders won’t have quite as much of an issue, but those entering this new world for the first time might need a bit of help.
Fellowship opened my eyes to a genre of game I never thought I’d get to enjoy, and I honestly can’t believe other games haven’t managed this before. With a meaty demo still available you too can test out raiding for the first time with your friends, and if you’re anything like me you’ll be incredibly glad you did.
Fellowship is coming to PC via Steam. The Next Fest demo is available now.
