Frontier Legends

A Wild West fantasy that arrived rougher than the trailers promised

Frontier Legends casts players as a new settler on an untamed frontier, building a camp into a working settlement while surviving the elements, wildlife, and outlaws, taming wild horses, and choosing a path as hunter, trader, bandit, or lawman. It's a premise the review pool is broadly enthusiastic about on paper — a western-themed survival-crafting-and-town-building game sits in genuinely underused territory compared to the genre's usual medieval and post-apocalyptic settings, and more than one reviewer explicitly says they've been waiting for exactly this kind of game. The trouble, and it's the dominant thread running through the review pool at "Mostly Negative," is the gap reviewers repeatedly describe between the game's promotional trailers and its actual day-one Early Access state: sparse, quiet servers, thin systems, and a level of technical roughness that goes well beyond what most reviewers say they've come to expect and tolerate from Early Access survival games specifically.

A loop with real promise buried under real friction

The core gather-craft-build loop draws a genuinely split reaction. A meaningful minority of reviewers — including several with hundreds of hours logged — describe a relaxing, engaging experience: walking the frontier, gathering resources, decorating a growing camp, taming and riding horses, and enjoying the co-op multiplayer with friends. One long-session reviewer compares it favorably to Sengoku Dynasty and Medieval Dynasty as a "distilled," simpler take on the settlement-survival formula. But even sympathetic reviewers pair that praise with real complaints: resource gathering is frequently called dull and unrewarding rather than satisfying, hunting animals is described as absurdly tedious (one reviewer reports using fifteen arrows to kill a single deer), and food-and-water survival balancing is singled out by a detailed update-review as frustrating enough to actively work against enjoying the game, with crop watering in particular needing attention every few minutes.

Systems that feel unfinished rather than merely rough

Character customization is a specific, recurring sore point: four hair presets and four hair colors across two body types, with no facial customization, body sliders, or facial hair options — a notable omission for a Wild West game, as more than one reviewer points out. The interface draws similar frustration: the weapon and tool hotbar is buried inside the inventory menu rather than being readily accessible, clicking "cancel" doesn't reliably close menu sidebars, and there's no real tutorial to explain crafting, questing, or town management to a new player. The tech tree is reported at around fifteen entries total, thin even by the standards of a day-one Early Access release, and the promised MMO-style community events sit awkwardly against a reported twenty-player server cap, with many public servers found password-protected at launch — leaving several reviewers who came in hoping for a persistent multiplayer world instead finding what plays closer to a solo experience.

Bugs and performance that go beyond ordinary Early Access roughness

Technical issues are the review pool's most consistent and severe complaint. Multiple reviewers report progress-destroying bugs: entire camps and inventories reset to zero after logging back in following a server restart, characters returning naked with lost levels and points, purchased items or placed campsites simply vanishing, and a first quest that can bug out entirely and become unable to be turned in. Performance draws pointed frustration too — several reviewers running high-end hardware, including a 4090 paired with a 7800X3D, report only around 70 FPS at 4K even with DLSS set to Performance, a result reviewers say doesn't match what the game's visual fidelity would suggest it should cost. A recurring and more serious accusation running through the negative reviews is that the game is built substantially on an off-the-shelf Unreal Engine asset pack, pointing to specific matching store assets as evidence, and several reviewers separately flag undisclosed AI-generated store artwork and AI-voiced dialogue as a transparency concern under Steam's own content-disclosure rules — criticism the developer's own community moderation has reportedly responded to by locking or removing forum threads that raise it, a pattern several reviewers cite as a red flag in its own right.

A developer with a rocky track record, according to reviewers

Multiple detailed reviews raise the same concern about Neojac Entertainment's history: two earlier Early Access titles from the studio, launched roughly six months apart in 2023, are reported by reviewers as still sitting in Early Access years later without having reached a finished state, which several reviewers cite directly as their reason for distrusting Frontier Legends' own Early Access roadmap and six-month "coming soon" full-release framing. That said, a smaller but genuine contingent of supportive reviewers pushes back on the harshest criticism, describing an actively communicative developer team pushing frequent balance and quality-of-life patches in the weeks after launch, and specifically crediting visible, fast responsiveness to player feedback as a reason for cautious optimism even among reviewers who acknowledge the rough current state.

Verdict

Frontier Legends lands on a setting the survival-crafting genre has genuinely been missing, and the reviewers who look past its rough day-one edges find a real, if thin, foundation worth watching. But "Mostly Negative" is the honest read on where it stands today: performance that undersells even high-end hardware, character customization and interface choices that feel unfinished rather than merely early, a tech tree and content pool too thin to justify a roughly NZ$46 price tag on its own, and progress-destroying bugs that go beyond the ordinary bumps of Early Access. Layer on a developer track record reviewers describe as leaving prior Early Access titles unfinished for years, and undisclosed AI-generated assets drawing pointed transparency criticism, and Frontier Legends currently reads as a wait-and-see prospect rather than a safe day-one buy — worth revisiting once, or if, the roadmap actually delivers.