Chris InglisBuilding a functional massively multiplayer online game is usually the playground of massive, AAA studios with infinite budgets. So, when a mid-sized studio like Shiro Games released Farever into Steam Early Access, you might expect a severely compromised experience. Instead, they’ve managed to capture the core magic of a sprawling, old-school MMORPG, condensing it into a highly focused, small-scale shared world that feels rewarding to explore.
From the game’s Steam page: You’re no foretold hero, just one among many! Explore a vast open world of vibrant landscapes, alone or with allies, where dungeons, enemy camps, and curiosities lie scattered across the realm. From forgotten temples to underwater caves, Siagarta is full of wonders waiting to be discovered. Look closely, and you’ll find treasures and equipment to guide you on your adventure!
The realm of Siagarta is a true, seamless open-world theme park sandbox with two major explorable regions in this early access build, and up to level 20 for your character progression. You can also play in parties of 4 to do content with shared XP. While the servers scale down to a smaller, more intimate player count per instance compared to traditional mega-MMOs, the world feels actively alive. You will naturally run into other players while exploring vertical cliffs, diving into deep lakes, or gliding across massive ravines.
You could be struggling against an elite camp or a world boss, only for a couple of random players to leap down from a nearby ridge, dive into the fray, and help you turn the tide. The gameplay loop hits a fantastic sweet spot between freedom and structure. Farever features a soft holy trinity system (Tanks, Healers, and DPS), but it doesn’t box you in too rigidly.
Your hotbar is split, partially dictated by your chosen class (Warrior, Rogue, Mage, Cleric) and by your equipped primary and secondary weapons. You can theorycraft wildly different playstyles, combining unique weapon skills and custom attribute specs to unlock devastating team synergies and flashy finishers. Mastering gathering and crafting professions to forge your own high-tier gear or gather rare materials gives the progression that distinct, satisfying MMORPG weight.
Where Farever stands out for me, aside from the colourful aesthetic and active combat in a similar vein to Guild Wars 2, is the approach to tracking your journey. The in-game Codex is a stroke of mastery, serving as a comprehensive completionist’s dream that encourages pure exploration over mindless checklist-ticking.
- Region Progression & Mapping: The Codex meticulously tracks exactly how much of a region you have uncovered. Instead of completely holding your hand, it peppers the map with cryptic question marks highlighting key quest zones and hidden secrets, urging you to get out there and discover them yourself.
- The Monster Compendium: When you start, your bestiary is completely greyed out. It is up to you to hunt down these creatures to unlock their entries. The game challenges you to slay a targeted milestone (usually between 8 and 20) of each creature type, rewarding you with detailed lore and beautifully stylized portraits for rare and boss monsters once defeated as well as their loot tables.
The dungeon design further proof-tests the game’s mini-MMO feel, stepping away from linear corridors in favour of engaging, rewarding mechanics. Each dungeon comes equipped with its own internal checklist, requiring you to clear specific monster types alongside standard completion goals. But the real genius lies in the final reward: the grand treasure chest at the end of the run remains firmly locked until you fulfill the major dungeon quest.
In the first dungeon, for example, this means hunting down a set number of rare, purple dungeon-specific mobs alongside the standard trash packs. Combined with clever environmental puzzles required just to open the path to the boss arena, the game gives you a genuine reason to run these instances multiple times until every single box is ticked, rather than just solely chasing a piece of armour or a weapon.
Despite being in early access, Shiro Games has built a blueprint for a cozy, community-driven online world. If you miss the era of 2000s online RPGs but want modern combat, slick traversal, and a world that rewards your curiosity, Farever is absolutely worth jumping into early. They have a comprehensive roadmap of features that include more regions, more dungeons and bosses, and new classes and most importantly for me, new gathering types like fishing and archeology. I just hope there are enough players to keep the servers active and in development.
This review utilised a key provided by Stride PR and Farever is available now on Steam early access.
#roundtablecoop
