Should I Buy? Fortnite: Save The World Review

Fortnite: Save the World (STW) is the original game mode that would have likely been relegated to the dump heap of Epic Games had it not been for the surprising success of the Battle Royale mode. At its core, STW is a tower defense game with an interesting building mechanic that could have made it a highly intriguing game where you construct elaborate defenses to protect the objective. Instead, you have a, micro-transaction software to extract money from parents’ credit cards, I mean, a stripped down, simplistic, and banal game that rarely relies on anything more than running and gunning. It is, perhaps, a prime example of a good idea ruined by a free-to-play monetization model. Given very early iterations of the game, it’s not even clear that they had a good idea of what they wanted this game to be.

Part of the biggest problem is progression, unlike many games of its type, isn’t tied to time played, missions done, or any of the traditional ways in which one would “level up” in a game. While some missions grant xp to level up traps and survivors, it’s a smattering, and tied to the rng of missions available. Even then, you still need the blueprints to create weapons and traps, and those come primarily from loot llamas (boxes). And those, as you might guess, come from spending in game currency (v-bucks) that can very slowly be acquired from playing, but is otherwise acquired using the almighty credit card.

Not that progression matters much. At some point the story might be finished. At some point the story might also be good. I wouldn’t hold out hope on either. But the story points to another part of the flawed design of the game. Outside the main objective of a mission, players have individual goals that encourage them to act for their own benefit rather than as a team. The result is that missions can take upwards of 30 minutes or more as you wait for teammates to finish their individual goals and be ready to tackle the main task.

However, don’t fret if you don’t get that far in the game. Most quests are some iteration of find x items (almost always requiring doing multiple missions) or just do x missions. Any story attached to them isn’t that compelling. Basically, all you’d lose is the opportunity to do the same few mission types in a different setting. That’s assuming you can find people doing that mission later in the game anyways if it doesn’t offer the desired reward.

If you’re a fan of tower defense games like Orcs Must Die, don’t mind an excessive amount of grind, or care much about story in a game, then you perhaps might find some joy within this game. It’s not the kind of game where you’re going to be replicating minecraft, voxel-style building. While you can collect resources, they’re used to build non-permanent structures in missions, except for the few Storm Shield Defenses (think homebase) missions. Here you could eventually build some creations out of some variations of floors, roofs, and walls.

And, if you’re not a fan of dealing with children, and there will be children, then you might want to give this a solid pass. Unless you play by yourself, or with a regular group of friends, the quality of your teammates will, in general, be poor with a general lack of knowledge of game mechanics. Even if they know what they’re doing, they have different goals to accomplish than you. If you’re the kind of person who likes to take charge of the group, you’re likely going to get frustrated very quickly.

Is it for anyone? Well, some people seemingly love it, even have multiple accounts. But, some people have weird fetishes. Some people also have some magical ability to have a surfeit of free time that hasn’t existed for me since college. If you’re one of those people, then you probably have a very different take on this game and likely shouldn’t take my opinions to account about future purchases.

Just buy your kid Minecraft on the PC. Introduce them to modded Minecraft and experience a whole lot more creative and challenging fun. And, if you’re a fan of tower defense games, there’s plenty of better and cheaper games out there that don’t require excessive grind and actually encourage creative and strategic planning.

Until the game goes free-to-play it isn’t worth spending the money on, nor is it probably worth your time when it does. It could have been a good game had they focused on the ways in which their building mechanics, a diversity of traps, and unique mobs interacted to give the user a challenging tower defense “sandbox.” Instead, they skimped on development of the core game, drove it into the ground with free-to-play mechanics, and abandoned it in favor of its more successful cousin.