Secret World Legends

An outstanding, still relevant game. Not much as an MMO, so definitely do not play it if you're looking for a regular online experience. But as a solo, story-driven game, it's just incredible despite outdated graphics and combat system. The universe, the mystery, the lore, the overall tone, the cryptic collectible legends, the humored way off aproaching the lovecraftian theme, the investigation missions, and and the effort put by the developers on the credible and voiced dialogues throughout the entire game make it worth it and it's sad that it didn't get the recognition that it deserves.

I dont understand why funcom dont want to reinvest this game
- setting and lore is top notch
- the story is nothing ground breaking but for f2p game? Its amazing
The highlight of this game for me
- the puzzle quest, dear god the puzzle quest is probably the most amazing thing i play ever, you dont just click or kill stuff, you actually have to use your brain to solve it, and the best part? Many of the puzzle require real life knowledge to solve it, morse code, searching on google, etc. Its amazing, if you play this for the first time, the puzzle quest will blown you away
- the atmosphere in this game is amazing, there was some quest in this game that made me legit scared, not scary as in monster jumpscare but scary as in you want to keep moving but slowly because you not sure what will happen next, best example? The parking garage quest in tokyo, omg that was spooky as hell
I just dont get it why funcom abandon this, this is literally a gold mine, i really hope one day this game will get update again, or maybe a remake

BEFORE PLAYING THE GAME:
In the launcher you should check "full client", switch to directX 9 then click apply and wait a bit to actually download the entire game. Then you might have to click "repair broken data". Now you can play the game with zero issues and no lag.
I moved on to playing on the funcom launcher (so I have quite a few more hours than what it says here). I'm still going through the zones at my own pace but honestly there's no online game like this one in terms of setting and story. This "MMO" is a blend of conspiracy iceberg, horror, love craft and I put MMO in quotes because the game is basically a solo single player story experience where you see people on the side and can maybe team up with a couple of people for group content over the weekend. With it being f2p and having basically the entire experience $0 spender friendly I think it's worth for every single person who clicked on this steam page to download and check it out.
Pros:
- Lore, world, setting, conspiracies
- Investigation missions: This isn't anything related to a typical MMO gameplay, you solve puzzles and investigate things and use clues to finish the mission.
- No class FOMO, your character can use every "class" aka weapon. The starting class is just unlocking the initial weapon to do the content with but you can just unlock more weapons right away. You will also be able to grind and unlock every ability and passive for every class so there's no worry about messing about builds.
The cons:
- Performance is terrible if you don't do the (pretty easy) fix, but it's easy to miss and the game not being playable "out of the box" is annoying. Look above to do the fix before playing the game.
- If you are looking for a COMBAT gameplay forward mmo, this is on the opposite end of the spectrum to something like Black Desert or Blade and Soul. It's a unique "tab target" but instead of using tab you aim your mouse like its a third person shooter, without the third person shooter impact and mechanics.
- Side quest and unlocking story quest structure can get tedious if you aren't really into the world. It's also not too challenging. So imagine doing a bunch of "fetch" and "kill x amount of y" quests and that's basically a big portion of the game you have to push through before getting more story content. But i'm telling you is very worth it if you ever watched a Wendigoon video.

The original game was epic. I loved this game, but I came in late, right before the swap-over to "Legends".
Before, it was a buy to play, with boosted elements w/ monthly sub. They had a "permanent subscription" plan, which I purchased just weeks before they discontinued it (because they swapped to Legends and the f2p garbage that now exists).
I didn't know they were working on "Legends" and that they were going to kill the original. Only a fraction of my stuff transferred over (thanks for wiping my cash investment) to the new game and that's the minimal issue.
The original had a skill wheel, you could think of it as a talent tree, where you could pick so many skills from the wheel at any one time. By mixing and matching skills you became a different class. This made it somewhat of a steep learning curve, but it was a FUN learning curve, and made each character unique. This was my favorite feature of the game (beside story, which I'll get to).
After the swap to "Legends" they cut it to a skill path, where you could only pick individual weapons and then had to pay to swap to other weapons or reset talents, etc. I'm writing from memory, as I haven't played in quite a while. Regardless, the combat system and UI interface and control setup all changed for the new version, and it wasn't a good change. They tried to make it like a fps game, but w/ mmo style buttons. It wasn't a good change. It's not complete trash, it just isn't as good as it was. Update: So, I've played again since writing this review, spending some time on both The Secret World and Secret World Legends. I've noticed some of the major changes to skills and classes (such as blood magic not being able to spend health to cast when out of resources).
The Skills: The wheel of the old let you pick and purchase skills on the wheel as you choose and as you spent enough points you could move up to "level 2" of the wheel and pick from those skills. The path, however, requires more of a buy this skill then this then this and so on. You still get somewhat of a skill choice, and you can still ultimately use skills and passives (I'm mixing up the technical terms here) as you wish, once you've unlocked them.
The Combat: The original is more of an MMO style combat with the ability to swap to fps style of combat with auto targeting. Legends swapped it so that the fps format is the primary by default and mmo style combat doesn't really work the same as it used to. But I'm not actually against this as much as I was with the initial change (I don't like change q.q). This does work, and it's somewhat clunky, but it's a little better for control. They changed the resources for combat (mana, vs energy, etc.) and added stuff like shotgun shells that reload and heat resources for elemental, and corruption for blood magic and so on. The resources change is actually pretty slick, because it requires more finesse when fighting.
The Graphics: We were told Legends would have updated graphics. It does. But it doesn't. The models are still the same models, just smoothly rendered. I think this was my biggest grief with Legends, (well beside them not passing over all my costumes I paid for), because the character models are still just as glitchy. If making a new game, why not fix the glitches??! *cough* Ark *cough*. Buuuut they are a touch better-looking at least. I guess.
The Pay-to-Win garbage: I lied, this is the absolute worst aspect of this game. Want more Ability Points? spend money! Want more Skill Points? Spend money! Want to run faster? Spend money! and on and on and on. Loot chests in dungeons? Require fkn keys! If you pay to sub, you get 1 key per day (not unlimited, cheapskates). You can buy 25 keys for like 15 bux. wtf. Everything is overpriced. EVERYTHING. This, I think, is what absolutely killed this game. Killed dead. I hate it. Whatever jerk wad thought this was a good idea should've been fired, or downgraded to janitor, or something horrible, because their greed killed this game.
The story is what brings me back every now and then. It's like X-Files meets Zombies meets Aliens meets Stargate. It's dark, it's horror, it's gruesome, it's amazing.
You can still download the original and play as well at least, which I do sometimes (usually), since I have all my stuff over there (I think).
The story line for the original is amazing. I loved it. Starts with some zombie infestations and moves into supernatural stuff, and it's just a ton of fun, even if it looks goofy af. The quests were story driven, with some mystery/investigation type quests that have no guidance, just a little bit of info and a need for lore understanding to sniff it out (google also exists if you need help, naturally). But if you wanted to do the research yourself, you could do it, and it was brilliant.
There's some creepy story in there, stuff that gives the creepypasta feels with hints of backroom (before backrooms) and bizarreness.
The story has changed in places, cutting some and adding others, so there's some plot holes now as a result.
I will still recommend the game, because I think it's worth a play through, and the last time I played, there were still a number of people actually playing (I don't think the original still shows up in steam stats).
What I would love to see, now that they've got an income again from the Dune series, is a remake of THE ORIGINAL (maybe even Legends), with new graphics interface and better character models, etc. I think it would fly if they actually put some love into it. There's good money hidden here, they're just letting it rot, and that's gd heartbreaking.
Hell, I'd love to see them just resume work on the game, kill the p2w elements and bring the stupid price jacking down to nickle and diming (especially in this economy jfc). Even a small team doing little fixes and updating, I think they could breathe life back into it and bring back the fun of The Secret World.

This is far and away one of the best games I've ever played, even with the Legends version. Legends has some extra content and rebalances most of the game for single player, though it is also missing content, is absolutely predatory in its monetization, and removes some of the more interesting mechanics which set the game apart from other mmos of the era. However, I still recommend it to anyone who enjoys a good secret society story.

The world and quests are this game's strongest points, as all of the sidequests given by npcs have accompanying fully voiced cutscenes, and many npcs have additional voiced dialogue in a simple tree system. The world is also vibrant with many varieties of mythos and conspiracy represented. There is also a good amount of variety to the missions, including vehicle sections, gimmick fights which replace all your skills, stealth sections, wave defense, heists, puzzles, and of course the ARG elements. Many complain about the ARG stuff, but that first quest most people complain about is a little more obtuse than most of the investigation quests in the game.

If I had to list a major complaint other than the monetization, it's that the endgame content is not really worth it. Finding a group is difficult due to the low playerbase and there are only two raids. You also need to optimize your build in ways that the story never requires of you, so you could be quite unlucky and end up having to re-upgrade from scratch a whole new weapon category which is quite expensive. It's also quite depressing that the final piece of content ends on a bit of a cliffhanger. There's not much to the social aspect either; I quested with a random maybe twice in my playtime. There's just no reason to interact with most players via other means than the auction house till endgame.

All of that being said, the presentation and story make the experience more than worth it by themselves, and I strongly recommend the game to anyone remotely interested in the concept. Even though I consider Legends the inferior version, it's still absolutely worth playing and you will never find anything else like it.

I will never get how the playerbase for this game is so small nowadays. I'm relatively new and jesus christ, this game has some unique quest designs and riddles.
If you ever wanted to go for a lovecraftian game, while still having satisfying combat and classic MMO-elements, this is what you're looking for.
Many riddles are genuinely tough to figure out, and it's such a nice change from "oh the riddle to the solution is on the desk next to it with a flashing quest marker".
The microtransactions are debatable, but they're nothing that truly takes away from the game experience.
All in all, i absolutely recommend letting yourself get immersed in this game, especially so to make the multiplayer dungeons more colorful and lively again.

I remember playing this game with my dad as kid lmao. So maybe I'm biased but its fun and more interesting take on MMORPG rather then other cookie cutter MMO (i wont name names).