u/thegeminiii

the claim that a game like Arc Raiders is better than Marathon is objectively wrong. I came from Arc Raiders, 240 hours to be exact. And I, too, nearly didn’t give Marathon a hint of a chance because of the insane amount of negativity surrounding it. Arc looks beautiful, Marathon not so much. The Arc theme is much more relatable on the surface. But once you get through the gameplay loop a time or two, Arc really starts to fall apart. The quests are literally just a chore & serve no purpose. The loot is not diverse. Endlessly crafting the same things with the same loot becomes dreadful. And you’re just stuck doing the same things every run over and over again. If somebody told me I had to adrenaline shot my way back to reinforced reception one more time I think I would rather die. Then there’s Marathon. The art style is initially off putting, but grows on you. The theme & story line is actually really unique and interesting if you decide to pay attention to it. Each map provides different events that you can choose to tackle depending on the level of loot you’re looking for and risk you’re willing to take. Having different factions provide a vast amount of different upgrades & categories of upgrades is such a good design choice. You actually have an engaging way to choose how you want to level your runner instead of using a low effort stat tree where everybody chooses the same exact meta stats with their basic skill point leveling system. Marathon has a substantially higher amount of content that makes it far more engaging as long as you’re not absolute dog shit at pvp. I am 170 hours into marathon and I still have tons of things to do that I haven’t even attempted to try yet on each map. I get that the genre isn’t for everybody, but I don’t believe it’s a low effort game by any means. It’s polished, unique, engaging, responsive, rewarding, and is very addictive once it clicks. I think Embark deserves much more hate for how they completely failed to retain their massive player base due to sheer lack of content.