Life is Feudal: MMO vs Ylands
Life is Feudal: MMO
Life is Feudal: MMO is a medieval-themed sandbox MMORPG that offers you a pretty hardcore survival gameplay where death and bad behavior are both severely penalized. You can also craft a wide variety of tools and items, build amazing forts and other structures, and explore a huge world and see other people’s creations.All of these sound great and all, but what truly makes this game stand out is its iconic, karma-like system called the Alignment system. Players who break common sense norms, like not stealing other people’s harvest, destroying people’s homes, or even killing another player unprovoked, will get marked with a negative alignment. The punishment from this system isn’t instant or swift, but if the bad-behaving player dies with negative alignment, he may risk losing all that he has worked hard for. He may potentially lose all of the skill points he had painstakingly grinded for.
On the downside, the combat in this game still feels a tad bit clunky and many players have mentioned that the cosmetics in-game shop are sold at ridiculous prices. The game is still currently in early access as well and thus, the game does have its fair share of bugs.
Although many have drawn a comparison with Wurm Online, those very same players would probably unanimously agree that Life is Feudal simply looks much better and plays out a whole lot better as well. The dynamicity of its world is astounding and the alignment system serves as a great deterrent to bad and toxic players. Life is Feudal may not be the ultimate medieval-themed sandbox MMORPG, but it’s pretty close.
Ylands
Ylands is a sandbox adventure game that has a gameplay that's a lot like a massively expanded version of Minecraft with a lot more resources for you to gather, items to craft, and amazing things to build. Instead of being "just a game", Ylands is more like a platform, much like Roblox is, where players are given the tools to create whatever worlds or games they like, be it a fun go-kart racing game that's inspired from Lega Racers or even a watery world where epic pirate-themed naval battles can take place. The worlds are completely interactive as well and every action you do will modify, no matter how slightly, the game environment of that segment of the world you happen to be in. In fact, if you change a terrain and populate it with an entirely different diversity of flora and fauna, you can basically change the climate system there.Unlike Minecraft though, Ylands has opted for a more polygonal appearance which gave it the extra leverage it needed to overcome the painful dismissal and degratory label of being simply a "Minecraft clone" - which admittedly, Ylands is most definitely not. The game has so much going for it and players truly have all the freedom within the game's pretty wide parameters to literally create anything they like. Of course, the game also supports sharing, so you can let other players in Yland enjoy that (for example) crazy maze-running game you've just made!
Ylands is most certainly impressive to say the least. However, due to its indie origins, not many players know about the game, let alone buy it on Steam. So, if you really like Minecraft-like sandbox games, you simply must give this game a try, and if you've had a great time there, be sure to recommend it to your friends or even buy it for them as their Christmas/ birthday gift!