New World: Aeternum review — A welcome rebirth

Amazon Games’ revamped MMORPG experience is finally here. Welcome to Aeternum! You might be wondering where our New World: Aeternum coverage has been! Unfortunately, the review servers were only live for a little over 2 days before they were shutdown with all progress wiped. Yup, you heard that right, only 2 days. I didn’t feel it was right, or even humanly possible, to review an MMORPG in such little time, especially when I already played the base game, and this relaunch is all about the end game content! As such, I am diving into the servers when they go live to the public so I get the full and intended experience.

Once again, New World: Aeternum is not a new game, but rather a rebrand of the original MMO that just so happens to align with the game’s first ever launch on consoles. Playstation and Xbox players rejoice. Sorry Switch owners. Think of it as a big update or patch if you still play the base game! Just note you need to own the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion to access Aeternum’s full contents. But if you’re purchasing this on console, don’t worry as it’s all included.

Aeternum tweaks the story a bit to make it more streamlined and easier for new players to onboard. The beginning hours of the game are indeed smoother than I remember when I played the vanilla version 3 years ago on PC. The robust character creator system is still the same, but now you can choose between 7 archetypes: Soldier, Occultist, Destroyer, Mystic, Ranger, Swordbearer, and Musketeer. The game has also finally added swimming after all this time, which is quite comical, but hey, I’ll take it.

If you own the base game and not the DLC, you should have been able to start Aeternum on October 15, 2024 and enjoy all the “free” updates, including the new archetypes, revamped starting experience, performance upgrades, etc. You’ll start feeling a bit behind when you hit level 20 to 25, when everyone else gets a mount. The true wall is when you hit level 60 as you won’t be able to use anything over a certain gear score. You can’t get max level crafting or gathering either. But if you do get to this point and still love the game, you can think about upgrading to the full Aeternum experience.

While there is cross-platform play for New World: Aeternum, there is no cross-platform progression. This means if you spent 1000 hours on the original New World and want to get Aeternum on PS5, you’re going to have to start from scratch. So because of this, I actually wouldn’t recommend repurchasing the game on console if you already own it on PC, unless you’re a diehard fan or something. You can create up to 3 characters per server region, and can delete any of them at any time, with a 7 day grace period, in case you regret it. Note that you can choose to play in a cross-platform world or not, but your character is permanently tied to whatever choice you made.

This review won’t go over the majority of the “beginning player” experience, as that is already covered by my previous coverage of the PS5 Open Beta and our editor Anthony’s review on PC back in 2021. The majority of New World is more or less the same: it’s an online multiplayer role playing game that has you creating a personalized character and progressing through a narrative campaign. There’s woodcutting, fishing, and mining. All the MMORPG staples. In his review, Anthony praised the game for its engaging combat and loot drop rate but dinged it for the awful leveling rate, lack of mounts, and mandatory side quests. Instead, I want to draw the focus onto what Aeternum truly brings to the table: the brand new end game content. I’ll also analyze how New World: Aeternum runs technically on the PlayStation 5.

I do want to mention that I absolutely adore the way this game plays on my console. You don’t have lots of action-oriented MMORPGs on PlayStation or Xbox. They’re all on PC! I know Amazon Games’ Throne and Liberty just came out too, but that’s more of a birds eye POV versus New World, which plays more similar to an action RPG. It’s a third person POV and you have the ability to light attack, heavy attack, dodge, and even jump! It’s much more immersive and engaging this way. The game also plays extraordinarily well on controller, but unfortunately not many of the DualSense controller’s features are utilized.

A major addition is the Cursed Mists, a new PvP zone in Cutlass Keys where players compete for resources and Cursed Doubloons in a hectic environment. This is one of the best ways to acquire endgame gear, as you can use your doubloons at the Well of Fortune. However, if you die in this area, you drop your items which can then be looted by other players. What’s nice is that Amazon Games implemented a crowd control system to prevent large groups from forming and making battles unfair, so it’s truly a free for all. This works well on paper, but in reality, it’s still not that fair and you do still see groups mob up. There are also PvE elements here, as you’ll see new Lost pirate varieties show up to change up the scene too.

Aeternum also introduces the game’s first 10-player raid, the Hive of Gorgons, which is located in the southern part of Cutlass Keys and can be entered via the raid entrance or using the group finder function. The raid is split between 3 distinct chapters, each containing a section of enemies, a puzzle action sequence, and a boss encounter, rewarding you with 3 new exclusive perks for your gear. Additionally, special crafting materials like Chromatic Seals, Hive of Gorgon Tokens, and Gorgonite Inductors can be obtained, which are needed to craft the highest leveled gear in the game.

Surprisingly, the raid is very well designed, as it features a great blend of mechanics in order to succeed. For example, the first boss, Echidna, incorporates the game’s mining/gathering mechanics into the fight, rather than straight combat. The raid also includes challenging puzzles and mazes that force you to coordinate with your party members and actually problem-solve. Each run requires a minimum of 6 players to attempt, but a full group of 10 is always better.

I do hope the developers add more raids in the future, as well as more content – dungeons, bosses, etc., in order to prevent the game from feeling stale. This can be in the form of world bosses and dynamic events, so that there is a reason to revisit specific areas in the game. Right now, there is little to no reason to tread back to old grounds, as they become irrelevant. But as a whole, there’s so much more to do now, from playing musical instruments in town to decking out your personalized house with furniture.

The game promises a better solo-player experience as well (compared to the vanilla New World), and that’s exactly what Soul Trials are. Each trial is designed to be a snapshot of a story quest, offering a condensed and more challenging version of familiar encounters. For example, you are pitted against bosses like the corrupted Leviathan or Isabella in these trials. Note that Soul Trials are specifically tailored for max-level players and are intended to provide quick, engaging endgame content that can be tackled alone. But there are plenty of side quests that still require a group of players to even start, because this is an MMORPG after all.

The new gear score cap is now 725, 25 more than what it was in the Rise of the Angry Earth expansion. Like every other online game, there is now a Battle Pass system implemented, and the game is now divided up into seasons, each lasting around 3 months. The Seasonal Reward Track consists of two tiers: a free track accessible to everyone and a premium track that can be purchased for 20,000 Marks of Fortune. Yippee!

For the most part, New World: Aeternum performs mostly well on the PS5. It takes up a total of 63.24 GB on your console, so better make some room for it! Load times are nothing to write home about, as this is an online only game, so it depends on the servers. They are actually quite long after the server went live to the public. The game does offer both Controller and Keyboard/Mouse support on the PS5, with the ability to bind a custom control scheme too.

What’s nice is you can set an uncapped framerate, so if you have a VRR supported display, you’re in luck! There are also 3 modes offered: Performance, Quality, and 4K. There are stutters and the framerates do chug a bit in extremely populated areas, like Corinth. In terms of accessibility options, you have your standard subtitle settings, a color blind filter, text-to-speech, along with aim assist! I won’t cover them all, but there’s a ton of other settings to toggle, such as language, camera, gameplay, mounts, map, HUD, and notifications.

Visually, New World: Aeternum looks amazing on the PlayStation 5, but it’s still not on par with your typical triple A blockbuster games nowadays. The island is, however, beautifully rendered, with lush environments and stunning vistas. The opening cinematic and animation sequences look fantastic, although the lip syncing and character movements during dialogue could use some work. Lighting and atmospheric effects seem well-implemented, and texture quality and environmental detail appear to be on par with the PC version.

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