Several years ago a new studio was formed named Chief Rebel with the expressed purpose of building an MMO-style game without the fluff and filler. Instead of playing through a forgettable story, grinding out levels, and min-maxing a build just to finally get to the fun part you signed up for in the form of raids and endgame dungeon runs, Fellowship is a game that skips to the good part at the start.
It’s been in development for a long time, but Fellowship is finally here (well, in early access at least), thanks in part to publisher Arc Games, and after spending a few hours with it and talking to the developers behind the unique MMO-adjacent cooperative dungeon crawling action-RPG amalgamation, I can absolutely say they’ve delivered on their goal already.
Fellowship is a New Type of Online RPG
As someone who has two kids, a full-time job in technology communications, game consulting projects, and several freelancing contracts writing about games for places like Forbes, my time is limited. Back in middle school, high school, college, and the first few years after those periods I was heavily into MMOs, but I just don’t have the time, energy, or attention span for the genre as much as I used to.
Now, the tricky part is that MMOs appeal to different segments of players for a variety of reasons. Sometimes people love the leveling, exploration, and questing process that makes up the early part of a game. Other times, folks might be in it just for the social roleplaying aspect, or the competitive player-versus-player content. But then a lot of the time, people play MMOs to reach endgame, run dungeons with guildmates and friends, and amass stacks of loot and gear. Enter Fellowship.
For that last group of players mentioned, Fellowship could be like a dream come true. When you first launch the game you play through a tutorial teaching you the mechanics, but anyone who has ever ran dungeons or gotten involved in raids in an MMO will quickly pick up the basics.
Every group is comprised of one tank, two DPS dealers, and one healer: aka the holy trinity. I always gravitate towards tank characters and fortunately the initial default starting character is a heavily armored, sword-and-shield wielding beast of a woman. She’s the only one I’ve tried so far, but there is a great assortment of playstyles within each role.
Notably, you do not get to make a character at all in this game. Instead, they’ve taken an approach similar to multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games like League of Legends in which the roster is made up of named characters with their own defined designs and backstories. It should come as no surprise Cheif Rebel are describing Fellowship as a multiplayer online dungeon adventure, or MODA.
I understand the vision and approach, but it does miss the mark for my personal tastes a bit. When I play online games like this, the main draw for me is growing a character that I’ve made my own, which includes character creation, customization elements, and varied gear acquisition. I’ve always loved that very gradual rags-to-riches character arc of getting to start out as a nobody and slowly work my way towards the status of a hero in a massive, persistent world. Fellowship isn’t that type of game, and that’s okay, because it isn’t trying to be.
From the main hub area you can queue up for dungeon runs and eventually rise up the ranks to harder difficulties for greater challenges and better loot. I’ve done a few runs already and the first thing that sticks out to me is just how varied these adventures already are. In the first couple of runs I’ve already seen puzzle mechanics and bosses that would be considered sophisticated and innovative for most modern MMOs and we’re just barely entering launch weekend for this game. That’s a really promising sign.
Enemies are aggressive, their skill rotations require you to adapt quickly, and once you move beyond the starting dungeons teamwork and communication will quickly become crucial. Thankfully preset hot keys like calling dibs on interrupting an enemy will help distribute actions and prevent teammates from wasting a skill too early.
There’s a certain rhythmic balance to combat in Fellowship that feels fantastic already at this stage. As a tank, I can throw my shield to ping-pong between enemies and pull entire groups my way before dashing forward to stop them before they reach the squishy mages behind me. From there, I have shouts and taunts to keep their attention focused on me while I buff my shields and hold aggro. It’s a delicate dance that feels great in action, especially as my teammates all conduct their own version of the dance for themselves.
Fellowship is Still in Early Access
As great as Fellowship seems to be already out of the gate, it’s still very important to remember that this an early access period and the game is technically not done yet. In fact, when providing access to the game for this coverage, the PR representative emphasized they’re not looking for scored reviews. They just want community feedback first and foremost.
That being said, in my opinion, once you start charging people for something I think officially scored reviews are absolutely fair to publish, as long as it’s clear in the review that the game is still in early access. I don’t have time for that right now, but I think it’s fair game to do so at this point.
After just one day of being live, the game already has over 1,500 reviews on Steam and is sitting at a ‘Mostly Positive’ rating as of the time of this writing, which is a great sign. The first few days are usually very tough for highly-anticipated live service games like this, but it’s been mostly stable so far.
Other than some expected hiccups in the first few hours and a weird issue requiring me to mark the Steam folder as an exception in my AVG anti-virus software to get the server list to even show up, it’s been smooth. I even hit a queue when logging in last night, which means it’s certainly popular.
My biggest issue with Fellowship right now is that the tutorialization feels a little under cooked. The starting tutorial does a fantastic job of explaining the dynamics of combat and running dungeons, but once you finish the game’s tutorial, it dumps you into the hub area without much instruction or direction. I’ve only learned half the game and now I’m expected to figure out the complex progression, upgrade, and gear management systems on my own with nothing but walls of text to guide me. It’s a bit daunting, especially if you don’t have a ton of MMO experience.
But again, this is early access, and I know the team is working on improvements for this onboarding process.
Fellowship is out now on Steam in early access. You can also visit the official website and join the Discord to be more directly involved in the community and find players to group up with.