It would have been nice to have found something fun to play while on the go. It turns out Orna is just not that game for me. I’ve played it for a bit, built most of the buildings, and almost reached level 150. It no longer feels like I have much else to do other than the pain and miserable grind to level 250.
This has often been my issue with of mobile games. They just get to the point they have such stupid slowed-down progression and a grind that is so mind-numbing you could watch paint dry on two walls and still play the game without looking down at the phone and not miss a beat.
I at least would have thought the “PvP” aspect of the game would be interesting. It is done in an arena where you have to spend keys to do it. Everyone just seems to be running the same build with the same pet that heals. Meanwhile, I’m over here getting like an 80% win rate if not better just spamming the same attack.
I also have no idea if I’m even dealing with real players. They try and make it appear like you are dealing with real people. It will even say things like there are “46,544” opponents available to spar with. Yet it clearly states you are fighting AI-controlled characters. Who are frankly bad.
They all sit there casting a bunch of different buff spells first. Unless you are somehow increasing your defense so high that I can no longer deal any damage or your evade so high I can no longer land a hit. Guess what? By the time they even do any damage to me, I already have them under 50% health and it’s not much longer after that for yet another win for me.
There are also really only two or so creatures I’ve found that drop stone. Stone is needed in a lot of buildings. Thankfully I was able to build the building that required 100 stones. That many days times not even have ten in total of the monsters that can drop stone and it’s not even a guaranteed drop either.
Then you have just strange and lazy fishing. You collect fishing lures and when you click on one next to the water it opens up a mini-fishing game. You can click and click again to send out the line depending on when you tapped on the screen.
Then you are just waiting and sometimes waiting even longer for a fish to show up. Sometimes it will bite the line right away other times you just see it swimming back and forth past your bobber till after some time it “bites.”
There is nothing on your part required to reel in the fish. Once the fish touches the bobber it’s yours. Many times it’s not even a fish you caught. You might end up with an easy to one-shot encounter or some so shitty item you can’t but help think you just wasted five minutes of your life waiting for that fish to bite.
Even more strange the fishing lure you consumed to start fishing is not used every time you cast out a new line. Instead, that was consumed only to open the mini-game. That more or less makes it feel like if you don’t waste hours fishing you just wasted a lure and I’ve only gotten a couple in total for the many weeks of play now.
There are also a lot of different systems where you are supposed to be collecting automatically gold or orns for defeating harder bosses or putting gold in your storage. The daily rewards even after playing for weeks now are so low a single higher-level kill gives me more than my daily bonus rewards for doing so many fights and putting an insane amount of gold into storage.
A lot of things just feel like they were features that were added to give the players something more to do. Those features have no real meaning other than to waste your time thinking you are getting something for that time spent.
I think overall that is my issue with a lot of mobile games. The massive grinds and not a big enough payoff for the player for any enjoyment. Don’t even get me started on the games people blow a year’s worth of salary just to push past a paywall to end up at another paywall with nothing real to show for it.
At this point the experience grind is so slow I could sit there for hours just tap, tap, tap, taping on the phone screen and I would not even be close to the next level. I even looted an item that gives me an attack ability that more or less saves me from having to use any of my mana unless I’m fighting a boss.
So unless I need to stop to heal with potions for a moment. There is hardly any requirement for me to pay attention to the screen other than clicking on the next creature and moving my finger down to where my attack from my piece of gear is.
I don’t even care what I’m even looting. I’ve not looted anything worth upgrading at the Smith in over half a week. The last upgrade I got was from the daily login reward. Now that is disappointing despite all the levels I’ve gained and bosses I’ve slain. My upgrades are coming from logging in daily as nothing good enough is dropping.
You would just think when you go to kill a higher-level boss for instance. It drops a sword. That the sword would have some kind of chance of being an upgrade? No. It’s like 265 less damage which is such a downgrade I weapon I found over a week ago from a much lower-level creature is better off.
It’s gotten to the point where I’m just putting my items in for upgrades at the blacksmith that take a day or I assume longer at this point before I get them back. I’m not even bothering to put on an old set. I’m fighting naked and outside of a dragon boss it’s not an issue.
Final Thoughts
I would have thought with how many reviews, players, and what appears to be some kind of active player base this game would have something to keep players lured in. I don’t even want to know what kind of brain-dead zombie I’d have to become to get to level 250 in this game. I frankly would not be shocked if it’s just all bots at this point.
There got to be a breaking point for the average player where they just run and hide. Run and hide from endless grinding, not finding any upgrades when you still have 100 levels till you are maxed level, and find none of the content challenging. The only time you die is out of being too lazy to heal yourself.
The cherry on top of it all has to be going into a massive highly density building and finding out there is less stuff to do in this game there than there was in the middle of nowhere. You would think since this is a location-based game they should have easy-to-tag and automate large areas filled with all sorts of things that make them worthwhile seeking out. Nope, I’d have better luck going into the woods in the middle of nowhere and finding a better dungeon or something to do.
Other Content
Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Orna: The GPS RPG.
