Chrono Odyssey – Beta Review
As the release of Chrono Odyssey gets closer, and with solid information about the game still pretty scarce, hype has definitely started to build. The recent closed beta gave us our first proper chance to get hands-on, and I was lucky enough to get access.
I’ve put in a few hours and wanted to share some first impressions, but it’s worth mentioning upfront: the beta build we played was reportedly about seven months old. So while things may have changed behind the scenes, it’s hard to imagine this test is drastically different from what we’ll see at launch supposedly in the next 6 months.
Performance? Not Great
Let’s just get this out of the way: Chrono Odyssey didn’t run well for me at all. I tested it from ultra all the way to low settings across my 500mbps internet, and the result was the same — freezing, stuttering, and a constant choppy feel.
Camera movement, in particular, was rough. It felt like trying to record a video on a 2008 phone: blurry and sluggish, probably hovering between 15–30 FPS. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some FPS limit in place for console optimisation, but whatever the reason, it was bad. The visuals themselves were decent, but the overall experience was dragged down by the performance issues.
Character Creator – A Stretch (Literally)
The character creator is fairly detailed, as you’d expect from a Korean MMORPG, but I wasn’t a fan of the height slider. Instead of adjusting the proportions naturally, it just stretches the whole character like dough. As someone who’s 6’7″, I couldn’t help but laugh at how ridiculous it looked.
Add in the ability to shrink your head down to goblin-size on a hulking body, and it quickly turns from immersive to comical.
The New World Comparison
I’ve seen people compare Chrono to New World, which I get to a point. The gathering and crafting systems definitely feel familiar: chopping trees, smashing rocks, and picking plants across the map without heavy restrictions is a good thing.
That said, the similarities end there. Aside from a bit of environmental resemblance, the two games feel very different. Chrono doesn’t borrow much else from New World, for better or worse.
Story and Quests
To my surprise, the main story was actually quite engaging. Where New World missed the mark with a strong narrative, Chrono Odyssey looks like it might deliver something more substantial.
Side quests, though, were mostly generic fetch tasks. A couple of missions like helping defend a boundary stood out slightly, but for the most part, it was the usual “go here and kill this” type of content.
What really hurt the immersion was the lack of voice acting. After years of playing ESO, it’s hard going back to mute NPCs, they just don’t have any character when all you get is a wall of text and at this point I kind of expect big budget games to have voice acting.
Combat – Fast, But Not Fun
Combat was a mixed bag. On the one hand, it’s not overly easy, you do have to dodge and pay attention, especially in open world fights. On the other hand, the actual mechanics felt flat and unimpactful.
Holding down the mouse to auto-attack with the occasional skill thrown in doesn’t feel satisfying. The animations are floaty, and the weapon swings often miss completely. Collision is poor, and your character just swings through the enemy like they’re not even there. It lacked weight and feedback.
Enemy AI also felt questionable. Sometimes they’d overshoot their attack, completely miss you, and then spend several seconds attacking thin air in the wrong direction. It didn’t feel polished at all.
The skills I used felt bland. Some just added an on-screen effect, like crosses to indicate a dual-wield move, but the character didn’t visibly do anything different from their normal auto-attack. For a Korean MMORPG, that’s disappointing, you expect flashy abilities, not placeholder-feeling effects.
Final Thoughts
After about five hours, I decided to step away. I don’t like burning myself out in betas, especially when the full release is still months away.
Chrono Odyssey has potential. The time-stop mechanics and the focus on story offer something slightly new. I like that it’s trying to be different. But at the moment, it feels like it’s borrowing a lot of ideas from other games without doing any of them better.
The game feels unpolished and unoptimised, and if it’s launching before the end of the year, that’s a tight window to fix these issues. Hopefully, the devs have made big progress behind the scenes, because if this beta build is anything to go by, it’s going to be a rough launch.
That said, there’s still a part of me that wants it to succeed. I’d love to see the game double down on its story, time mechanics, and cooperative play. Just… maybe not the New World trajectory of hype, launch, and player drop-off.
