0 1 person found this review helpful

Not Recommended 3.1 hrs on record

I want QuiVR to be good, I waited a few years for it to come out of early access, and sadly it might be the best archery simulator, but I still cannot recommend it because there's so many issues that hold it back.



To start I want to shout out top players rett and Brookcowboy for playing with me and being nice showing a newer player the ropes. These guys have 400+ hours in QuiVR and I'm really glad this game has enough end-game content that it can deliver to those dedicated players.



My biggest tripping point that I have to get off my chest before anything else is not being able to turn incrementally and having to spin 360 in my room and then hit my chair and walls when I have to draw the bow in an unexpected direction. There is no excuse for not having a 45/90 degree incremental turn functionality.



QuiVR has solid archery mechanics, provided that you can get the offset right to start since there are three sliders (horizontal, vertical, and angle) that could be messed up and make it feel like garbage, but once those feel right the bow mechanics are good and you better enjoy them or else this game is gonna get old real fast because you're gonna be shooting thousands of arrows and doing nothing else. There is no prediction or guide to help so all your shots are free aim, so you've really gotta get that muscle memory and hand eye coordination to even get past the first few enemies.



At its core QuiVR is a wave shooter but the waves are coming at a stationary gate and you can move between set spots in the valley, but the reason this is frustrating is that these spots always have a blind spot so if there is an enemy right below you about to reach your gate and you can't get a line on it or missed your window of opportunity you have to teleport to a further spot (by shooting an arrow at it which you can also spend quite a few shots failing at) to even continue aiming at it. It is because of this that the skill curve is very steep requiring the skill to shoot the small moving targets with no guide before you can even get to the first boss.



The bosses are the most exciting part of this game, but sadly they are a prime example of something that is a pain point throughout this game: no hints at what you're supposed to be doing. There are so many times even in menus or the gear upgrade system where I don't even know what button I'm supposed to push to activate the upgrade or where I get an item reward and it says right in front of me "would you like to equip? - Yes - No" and I can't even get the popup to disappear clicking every button over Yes but nothing in response. Back to the bosses, I've seen so many requests for help on the bosses like "what the hell am I even supposed to do here?" my experience with a Tremors style earth worm would have been fantastic if it was clear that the obscured red circles near the ground are the things to shoot at instead of the big spears sticking out of his face that are similar to the weak points of another boss.

Similar to this I finally found a post about the new "elite" system from 10/19/18 that says hey watch out elites can now have modifiers, but there is no explanation of that in the game. I am a huge fan of exploration in games but I'm shooting at these enemies and the arrows are bouncing off, being sent flying in random directions and occasionally those thrown off arrows are hitting portals super far away that I can't even get back to the fight because I can't hit the portals to take me back and my run is over because of it. There needs to be a minimal amount of info at least when presented with new obstacles.



My final qualm is the gear system. It definitely works if you are a dedicated player coming back for days and weeks to this game, but it does not feel respectful of the player's time to me. Each run you can get random gear and points and can spend those points in a lotto style gear upgrade system, but getting good gear and rolling good upgrades takes hours worth of grinding, so if you enjoy the game this will add replayability but unless you have done this don't expect to make it very far in the game once certain enemies show up that you have no option of even damaging because they will spit your arrows right back at you and its game over.