Guardians of Ember Game Review

Alternate Title: Embergarde
Developer: Runewaker
Publisher: Runewaker, InselGames, GameForge
Type: Isometric MMORPG
Model: Free-to-play
Platform: PC
PvP: 1v1, 3v3, 5v5 Arenas
PvE: Open World Questing, Dungeons

I didn’t think I’d be doing another “first impressions” type video like I did with DK Online just last week but here we are – with Guardians of Ember.
Like DK Online, Guardians of Ember just released into open beta. Gameforge was kind enough to reach out to me before the open beta and live launch in an attempt to offer to sponsor a look at the game with early access – which is pretty cool.
I love getting the opportunity to play a game that’s getting ready to launch or has just recently launched as they’re normally the best times to get into them.

I didn’t know what to expect going into Guardians of Ember ’cause honestly, I didn’t do much research prior to downloading it. But I can definitely say that I was.. surprised.

The game offers 4 unique races: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and.. lolis. There are 6 classes you can choose between upon selecting your race: Knight, Priest, Arcanist, Engineer, Ranger and Dark Knight.
I went Knight because I wanted to play tank for my wife who was going Priest.
Upon choosing my class, I was taken aback by how much customization there was for your character. Full body sliders that give you control over the entirety of your characters body, and there’s even more facial customization than there is body customization.

Combat was pretty simple: If you’ve ever played a top-down isometric MMORPG then you know what to expect.
It’s complete action combat – you can either use left-click or spacebar for normal attacks and right-click for a special attack, while mapping various skills to your keys.

Something that enhances the combat drastically is the skill system. It’s actually a pretty complex system, honestly.
You have a base selection of skills: Each time you upgrade them, they have the potential to go down a different path. As an example, my wife could take her initial heal down the damage path, turning it into a powerful DPS spell.
On the other side of the spectrum, she could take her DPS spells and turn them into powerful heals.
I had the option of turning skills into taunts or powerful AoEs… so being the tank, naturally I said “screw it” to the taunts and went full-on DPS.

My favorite skill, and what is probably my wife’s least favorite skill of mine was the ability to turn myself into a Beyblade. Whenever we fought I’d just.. Beyblade around singing along to the Beyblade theme song.

Seriously, I’d play this game just so I could spin into combat with other players screaming “LET IT RIIIIIP.” Ah, there goes my childhood.

Outside of traditional questing in the open world, quite a bit of the game takes place in dungeons. My wife loves dungeons so she had no issue with this.
There are 3 difficulty modes you can choose between, and each provides a significantly increased challenge.

All in all, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of Guardians of Ember.
I loved Diablo and Path of Exile but hated MU Legend. Thankfully, it seems as though this game is much more entertaining than the latter.
It has pretty entertaining combat, I like the fact that it’s got an open-world that I can play in alongside other players, and looks pretty good.
We only made it to level 10, but we have plans on doing one or two follow-up videos over the next couple weeks as it goes into open beta and launches officially.