Good community, bad game

I've contemplated whether or not to give this a bad review for a while. The honest truth is that the game is not fun and feels like it's having a slow painful death, but the community that is trying to keep it alive is amazing.

For context, I played Elysium for roughly a month. In that time I was welcomed into the community with open arms, offered all I needed to thrive, and had amazing interactions with many veteran players.

The community is amazing, as many other reviews have said. The rest is not unfortunately.

First, Elysium is a game that does not particularly respect your time. Character progression is entirely time based, with lessons being awarded to you for simply being logged in. Your actions can increase the rate at which you earn lessons, but no matter what, the only way to progress and learn new skills is just lots and lots of waiting. Spending 30 mins to an hour here or there really doesn't provide you with any meaningful results, and skills can get expensive quick. There are other time based aspects that really don't encourage casual play, but I think lessons are the big one. I think this was my biggest gripe since progress really didn't carry any sense of accomplishment.

Second, the game's systems have depth but are designed for hundreds of active players, not the low tens that are active now. There are too many cities, each with too many open positions to run them efficiently, and essentially no way for a ruler to give new players a good experience without spending way too much time doing everything themselves (which ties back to the game doesn't respect your time). Even if the ruler is spending too much time in game, with each city having maybe 2-3 active players, they all feel pretty dead.

Finally, the game generally lacks polish. The continents can be awkward to navigate, with many empty rooms that can be connected in non-intuitive ways. Combat feels unresponsive and generally unsatisfying. Help files can be difficult to find. In general, you need to overcome stumbling blocks for a while before you get the hang of the world.

In conclusion, I love the community that has developed around this game, but the community is not the game. If Gralnak (the creator) wants the game to thrive, I think he needs to rethink some of the core aspects of the game to allow for a better experience with the current player count and players that can't dedicate time every day to playing.