Bless Online is taking a beating on Steam right now

As you surely remember, Neowiz decided to “hear the players” and launch Bless Online in North America and Europe as a buy-to-play MMORPG, the opposite of what this game is in Korea, Russia and Japan. Early Access on Steam has started today, and nearly 3.000 players have discovered that all the promises of a revamped experience – mostly combat, but also optimization – were nothing but that: empty promises.

Currently sitting at a 44% rating on Steam, Bless Online is being criticized in many aspects. Let's start with the English translation, which is generally described in the reviews as “something out of Google Translate”, or “so lazily translated and difficult to understand, even the tutorial is a nightmare.” Many players mention having to resort to guides on YouTube to pass the tutorial alone.

Action combat, one of the highlights of the Bless Online Rebuild Project, is another hot topic. Apparently, the action combat for every class but the Berserker was disabled without any warning, players had to discover this by themselves. The developers said on the forums that they may re-enable it at some point, but wasn't it supposed to be already implemented? Oh, right, it's Early Access, that's an excuse for everything, for every lacking feature, although the price point remains the same.

This brings me to the communication. Players are saying that Neowiz is locking and deleting every topic where gamers complain about the state of the game. Last but not least, there seems to be some unnecessary censorship in this release, along with frequent disconnections and long queue times.

After so many years and three releases in different regions, can Bless Online still be forgiven for being in Early Access? Or is this game simply not worthy of a price tag to begin with? Read some of the reviews and let us know what you think about it.