In this article, we’re going to be taking a look at New World: Aeternum, which launches on October 15th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X and S, and on PC. Before I tell you all about New World: Aeternum, however, a big shout out to Amazon Games for sponsoring this article.

The Difference Between New World and New World Aeternum

So what is New World Aeternum and how is it different from New World? New World Aeternum is essentially a culmination of all patches, content expansions, and updates for New World, along with new content that is coming to the game on October 15th that has not yet been played by players. Another thing that New World Aeternum has is it has more of a focus on the solo and co-op experience than was previously available. And when you look at what they have done, they’ve kind of revamped that questing process to include cut scenes and cinematics that sort of better explain what’s happening.

I think this is maybe one of the flaws of New World when it launched was we didn’t really know why we were there and what we were doing very well. But this has been better explained, and it kind of gives you a bit more of a runway before you get into activities with other players to really understand what’s going on in the world and kind of get your bearings a bit more before you’re just kind of thrust into everything. And New World Aeternum is the first time that you’ll be able to play on console, and there are not a lot of games like this on console. I think there are a lot of people out there who are looking forward to playing this game on console. I got to play the open beta for it on PlayStation 5 a little ways back. And let me tell you, it absolutely played fantastic on console.

In a day and age where performance is a huge issue on any platform, really, but particularly consoles these days, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the game played smoothly on console. And I was probably getting over 60 FPS or at least 60 FPS the entire time I was playing. I don’t think it dropped below that at all at one point. So the game plays well. And on top of that, this was my first time playing with a controller, and I liked trying to figure out how to play New World Aeternum with a controller because previously I had played on PC with a mouse and keyboard like everybody did pretty much. I imagine some people used controllers back then.

Playing on the controller felt good and the controls felt natural. You don’t have a ton of skills to use at once so you’re not trying to remember a thousand button mappings or anything like that. It was an easy rotation of skills. Ranged combat felt good. Melee combat felt good. Everything was smooth because of the good frame rate. Honestly, I was just pleasantly surprised by how well it played on console. And I think that they did a fantastic job here.

New World Aeternum – New Features and Combat

Something that I loved while checking out that open beta as well is that I noticed that in the chat on the left side of the screen, which was popping, by the way, there were lots of people playing the open beta. I don’t know if all those people are going to buy the game or not, but there were a lot of people playing the beta, checking it out to see if it’s something they would enjoy.

But something you got to see on the left-hand side was the chat and you could see all the people talking, and it would show the platform they were talking from because New World: Aeternum has cross-play enabled. So you can play with people on PC, Xbox, or PlayStation, no matter which platform you’re playing on. And this should ensure that you have tons of people to play with all the time. You’re not going to be wondering where’s the player base in a month. Hopefully, there’s still a strong player base because of that cross-play. And I know that’s always a concern for people.

Something that I noticed during the open beta that I played as well is that they’ve added a lock-on feature to the game that makes it feel more like an ARPG than it previously was. You have that kind of souls-like lock-on that you expect from games of that type, and it is now in the game. And it kind of changes the way that New World: Aeternum plays because previously with projectile weapons and things like that, you had to manually aim them—and you still can manually aim them, and you may want to depending on what you’re facing. But also now, because there’s a lock-on, it changes the way you fight in combat, not only from a ranged perspective but from a melee perspective.

From a melee perspective, it just felt like your hits were connecting more because your camera was focusing on the targets you were fighting a bit more, and I enjoyed that. But from a ranged perspective, ranged combat was much easier to play because you could select which target you wanted to lock onto and just hit them with ranged attacks pretty reliably. And it should change the way things play in the game. For instance, PvP should be different because if you can lock onto a player with a bow, then players are going to have to come up with a strategy to combat that.

If you’re using a musket, for instance, and you’re ranging down players from far away, you’ll still probably have to manually aim because when you’re far away, by the time the projectile lands there, it’s probably not going to be exactly where that player still was because the projectile has some travel time. So there are still going to be instances where you might manually aim, but I do think the addition of a lock-on will make things easier for players and should fundamentally change the way the game plays in general.

New World Aeternum – Something New Yet Familiar

Having played the open beta on PlayStation 5 for about 10 to 15 hours, I can tell you that I just felt kind of at home when I was playing. I gradually remembered things that I had forgotten, and I was like, “Oh, yeah, this is Everfall and this is Windsward.” And these locations were familiar to me, and it was kind of all coming back to me. I was like, “Oh, yeah, I need to craft this and do that and go out and find ore“, and I remember where this ore was, and it felt really good. And I think one of the things that’s special about New World Aeternum is the leveling experience.

This game has a fantastic leveling experience. I think it’s arguably the best or one of the best leveling experiences of similar games out there. A lot of these types of games that people play focus on the end game and what’s available to do once you’re done leveling, and they hate leveling, and they don’t want to level and they just want to level quickly and get to the end game. But I feel like New World Aeternum is exactly the opposite. The beginning part of the game is the best. The leveling experience is the best part. I absolutely love that and I think one of the fundamental reasons that leveling is so much fun in New World Aeternum is because of the game’s crafting system.

New World Aeternum – Cathartic Crafting System

New World Aeternum has a really interesting crafting system that rewards the player for investing time and effort into crafting. A lot of the best in-slot gear you can get is from crafting. So players spending the time to gather resources, farm resources, and craft gear, sell it to get more materials, and go out and find rare nodes, and spending their valuable time doing it are really rewarded for that. And it’s something that you can do at your own pace. You can log in and just do it for a couple of hours by yourself or you can get a couple of friends and go farm some trees or some ore, do whatever you want. And it’s a really cathartic activity.

As a gamer who’s been around for quite a while now, I enjoy the cathartic nature of the crafting system and the exploration in New World. You can get lost in the landscape, find resources out there, and discover cool bosses that have unique drops. There is a lot of real fun to be had there. And I am looking for that in games these days. There was a day and age where I would get amped up playing Call of Duty or something like Battlefield, but now it’s like I want something a bit more relaxing, and it’s a lot of fun to do in New World. And I think there are players out there like me that can just kind of enjoy that for what it is.

New World Aeternum – Massive Multiplayer Done Right

And of course, on the flip side of that, there’s the PvP, and I have been known to dabble in PvP in New World Aeternum a bit. I love low-level PvP in this game before all the territories have been claimed and stuff gets into these big battles. There is a lot of fun to be had in the PvP of New World Aeternum because of its nature. And there are many PvP activities you can do in New World if you want.

I have my favorite, which we’ll go into in a minute, but there’s like a 3v3 arena. You can do large-scale PvP in the sieges, and you can do open-world PvP, and there are other things. And one of the things that’s great, too, is that there’s a new activity finder that allows you to party up for these activities.

If you don’t know anyone and you’re brand new to the game and you want to get involved in some of these activities, whether they’re PvP or PvE, you can use the activity finder to find a group to get people. And maybe you’ll make friends that way and then find groups of people to continue playing with. It’s a great way to get people into group activities without having to know a lot of people and it’s definitely needed in a lot of games. This is one that was sorely needed, and I’m glad to see that it is there now. But my favorite part of PvP in New World Aeternum, and maybe even my favorite part of the game in general, is the open-world nature of PvP.

To siege a town that some faction controls in the game, you have to do these PvE quests in a region that a faction controls. And each quest you complete fills a little bit of progress towards a bar. And when that bar completes, you can then do a siege. Well, the more people from your faction that do it, the faster it fills. And these quests are kind of similar everywhere you go. You kind of know what you’re doing every time. And as a defender, you’re not going to just let people do that, so what you do is you go out on the landscape with your faction and your friends and you stop them out on the landscape. But since you know what routes they’re going to take, you learn this after playing for a while.

You can lie in wait, ambush them, charge them, and shoot them from behind or get them when they’re in a river and they can’t move very well and just gun them down. And it is so much fun to plan and sneak because you can crawl in the game. You can crouch, you can hide in bushes, lie in wait, get the drop on people. And it is just really, really fun to do, particularly at low levels where everyone hasn’t quite figured everything out yet, and no one has super optimal gear and made it everything.

And it is one of the biggest reasons that I recommend if you’re going to pick up New World Aeternum that you do it and you play it at launch. It’s easily the best part of the game. It’s so much fun before everyone has control of all the territories. And when New World originally launched in 2021, it was some of the most fun I had for two or three weeks. I was playing around 12, 16 hours a day. I had so much fun playing that game, just doing little PvP battles, gathering resources, upping my craft, and hanging out with people. It was a ton of fun. And I feel like it’s a unique experience that I think is worth it, in my opinion.

When I look back at the amount of game time I got out of it, I didn’t play too much longer. I probably played for a month and then I kind of stopped playing, kind of petered out. But even for that amount of time, I think it was easily worth the money that I spent. And I would definitely do it again. Knowing what I know now about the game, I definitely would do it again if I had the opportunity because it was just that much fun.

New World Aeternum – Final Thoughts

The last thing I’ll say before wrapping up this article is that during the beta, I was co-opting with Fex and she’d never played New World Aeternum before. And I had a lot of experience. So we had two different complete levels of game time in this game and she had a ton of fun playing. She wanted to keep playing. The beta wasn’t long enough. We had other work to do and we couldn’t spend as much time playing as we wanted. But she wanted to keep playing. And we were like, “Oh, how can we find time in October to play, even though we have all these other games coming out?” Like we have to find some time to play this.

And as someone who played many, many hours before, I wanted to keep playing, too. Two completely different people, a returning player, and a brand new player. We both wanted to keep playing it and scratch that itch that made you want to stay up all night and play. I think that’s a good sign for this game. So that wraps up our article on New World Aeternum.

I hope you guys enjoyed this article again. Big shout out to Amazon Games for sponsoring this article. If you guys are going to pick up the game, our wiki could be helpful for you. I know there are some console players out there who are probably itching to play this.

I will probably be playing on PS5 at the launch of the game just because I had so much fun during the beta. I tried. I don’t want to play too much and then burn myself out. So I kind of tried to limit it. But I am looking forward to playing more and jumping some people that are doing some PVP out there. I can’t wait to do some of that. And we might have some more New World Aeternum articles coming out soon, too, as well. Some guides for new players we’ll see. So let me know what you guys think. What do you make of New World Aeternum? Are you going to be picking it up? Let me know in the comments.