Last night, on June 12, 2025, the embargo fell for the many YouTubers and streamers who were allowed to play Chrono Odyssey for two days. Their reports show: The MMORPG has potential, but also still many issues.
Who was allowed to play Chrono Odyssey and for how long? So far, the new MMORPG from Chrono Studio has only had exclusive focus group tests, the most recent of which allowed a selected group of YouTubers and streamers to play Chrono Odyssey for two days.
Invited were mainly English-speaking content creators who specialize in MMOs and MMORPGs – such as Kanon (YouTube), who has already participated in two tests and can show around 70 hours of gameplay, as well as MMOByte (YouTube) and BagginsTV (YouTube). From the German scene, Entenburg was invited, and you can also find his preview report on YouTube.
The latest trailer for Chrono Odyssey from the Summer Game Fest 2025:
Great potential, but also many issues
What do the testers report? Many genre fans ultimately draw a positive conclusion about their experiences with the “Early Game” of Chrono Odyssey, but emphasize that the developers still have a lot of work ahead of them.
Entenburg describes it in his video, for example, as a game that wants to be a AAA MMORPG but comes from an indie studio and therefore does not (yet) have the polish and the qualities at the top that one would expect from a AAA product.
In the following, we will go through the most important areas and summarize the general sentiment of the testers.
Character Creation
- Has many options, but probably does not quite reach the level of builders like the one from Black Desert.
- No gender lock for the 6 classes, you can freely choose the gender.
- At times, the character models in the game are probably significantly uglier than in character creation.
Structure of the Early Game
- At the beginning, you are briefly guided to internalize basic systems and mechanics.
- Quite early on (at level 3 or 4), you arrive at the first Chaos Gate, where a challenging boss fight awaits you. Many initially failed there and had to look for other content or activities to level up and improve equipment.
- For character progression, you have the free choice of life skills (gathering and crafting), bounty hunts, world events, quests, enemy drops, dungeon content, or exploration of the game world. In exploring the world, you will also encounter enemies that are significantly stronger than you.
- Once you have mastered the first Chaos Gate, you will receive the first ability to manipulate time as a reward. After that, you are supposed to find and master the next Chaos Gate. When to attempt this is up to you.
- As not many players participated in the test, the world felt quite empty, and it was difficult to find companions for group content. However, many activities can be done well solo – despite the high difficulty level (more on that later).
You can watch Entenburg’s video here:
Graphics, Technology, and World Design
- The graphics in the beta version are nowhere near as pretty as shown in the first trailers. A Throne and Liberty has a noticeably higher graphic quality, for example.
- However, the world is atmospherically and unusually darkly staged, exploring the world feels exciting and rewarding – which is also due to the dynamic events and random encounters and the constant danger from strong enemies. You sometimes have to master jumping passages to reach a hidden chest, for example.
- The map of the world unfolds only gradually. You can highlight special places with your own markers. There is no mini-map; you navigate with a compass.
- There are still many graphic errors, especially with the lighting in many regions. Some areas are far too dark, others are unpleasantly brightly lit, or the screen flickers continuously.
- No one reported performance problems. However, the enemies sometimes move very jerkily and laggy, making fights feel suboptimal. Additionally, their animations sometimes seem oddly subdued and uneven.
- The unobtrusive user interface is praised by many players. Only the skill icons could be more distinct.
- The characters are quite mobile, can swim, climb low ledges, and have a double jump.
Fights
- Many testers generally had fun with the action-packed fights, although Entenburg emphasizes that he finds the equivalent from New World significantly better. He also criticizes that the camera is too close to the character, causing a lack of overview at times.
- Kanon explains, on the other hand, that Chrono Odyssey comes as close to a “Dark Souls MMORPG” as possible – which is mainly due to the combat and setting.
- Berserkers and sword masters are said to feel wonderfully hefty and possess fun skills.
- The ranger, on the other hand, still needs quite a bit of work: the range of the bow is said to be unusually low, while clear hits miss the target. The latter is all the more annoying because headshots reward increased damage.
- The sound effects of the crossbow and rapier seem inappropriate. The hit feedback is mixed; at times, attacks feel very hefty, while at other times enemies do not react at all.
- With the dodge roll, once started skill animations cannot be interrupted. This can quickly become dangerous, especially with slow weapons like the two-handed axe.
- The cooldown times of the skills are initially a bit too long.
- Overall, many testers explain that the difficulty level of many contents from Chrono Odyssey is unusually high. There are frequent character deaths. You can achieve a lot very early with skill and perfect dodging/blocking, but mistakes are sometimes harshly punished. This, however, receives a lot of praise because it finally offers a challenge again.
Activities like Dungeons, Crafting, and Bounty Hunts
- The bounty quests are probably just simple: Find boss X in region Y, take him down, bring the head to NPC Z. This brings loot and bounty tokens that you can exchange for equipment.
- Crafting feels as good and motivating as in New World, with each tool quality allowing you to gather all associated resources – it just takes a long time to chop down a huge tree with a bad axe. Leveling gathering skills only affects the speed and efficiency of resource gathering. There is no punishing random system in crafting.
- As for PvP, in the test you could only duel or mark yourself for PvP in the open world. However, this does not seem to be well balanced.
- The first 3-player dungeon of the game offers solid PvE content.
- Some of the dungeon content is very unspectacular as it only consists of a few switch puzzles or jumping passages.
- In the mazes, you often have to master jumping passages and puzzles to reach a boss. These are very rewarding, but can be frustrating because some traps are hard or impossible to avoid and the character does not always respond optimally.
- The world bosses played very challenging during the test, even with multiple players.
- The trials are solo content for which you need keys and where you choose between several doors to face the challenges behind them. These can be bosses or the traversal of a room, such as a water basin full of sharks. The quality of this content varies greatly.
The YouTuber Kanon has already hinted that some of the weaknesses mentioned by the testers are said to have been fixed in a newer version of the game. However, he was not allowed to disclose details.
Nevertheless, the impression remains that the inexperienced studio might ultimately overreach itself with the set release in 2025. After all, only the “Early Game” has been tested, which has revealed many issues both technically and in terms of concrete content.
These errors are likely to persist in later regions and activities. Will a few months be enough to fix all of that? We at the MeinMMO editorial team are skeptical, but of course, we want to get our own impression of the game in the upcoming beta test.
By the way: From June 20 to 22, 2025, the closed beta for Chrono Odyssey will take place on Steam, where you will be able to play the exact version that the YouTubers played. About 1 million interested players are supposed to be let onto the servers. Everything you need to know about the test can be found here: Chrono Odyssey: Closed Beta Starting Soon – Here’s How to Join and What’s Included
