Camelot Unchained is a Disaster: My Early Access Review
It probably came as no surprise to no one that the early access launch of Camelot Unchained was an unmitigated disaster. After 10+ years of development from Unchained Entertainment (formally City State Entertainment), Camelot Unchained launched on steam early access on June 2nd, 2026, and immediately was welcomed by mostly negative reviews on steam with only 27% positive reviews as of the writing of this blog. As an early backer of the game at the $400 level, this was extremely disappointing to me that they even launched on steam in the first place, especially having played the early access build before it went to steam and seeing how empty it was with content for players to enjoy.
I will begin with the only positive that I saw from the whole launch day, which was the fact that they decided to price the game at $10. They at least had the wherewithal to not charge players with a full priced game for a game that I would not even call a game right now. At a $10 price tag, I can actually see people being willing to try the game one day, assuming that the development continues beyond this point. For all we know, this could easily turn into a situation where the developers run out of money because their initial investors are not pleased with the release of the game and its current player base.
If, however, enough people end up trying the game because of the low entry point of $10, then perhaps they can solidify more investment and keep developing the game into the future. Again, it is just my own personal opinion that they are having money problems, because to launch this game in the current state that it is, on the biggest platform of steam, borders on incompetence in terms of marketing and business sense. A first impression is key no matter where you launch, but especially on steam.
Now let's turn to the very limited gameplay that is available to play. As of the early access launch on 6/2/2026, the following activities are available:
1). Character Creation: Choosing between three realms and the multiple classes available to test
2). PvE: Only available at outposts. The rest of the world is empty.
3). Gathering: Only available at outposts. The rest of the world is empty. Your realm must capture the outpost in order to gather the resources around it.
4). Crafting: Available at the home islands of each realm. It is an arduous and long process to craft.
5). PvP: PvP is open across the whole game map. There is no progression system tied to PvP however, so people are simply engaging in PvP to level up their ability skills with no real goal to strive for.
6). Ability Progression: Using your abilities levels them up to a current maximum level of 5 per skill tree. Each class has three skill trees. There are no choices to make in these skill trees. You simply level them up and get whatever skill is associated with them, without any kind of customization options.
7). Bank: There is a vendor that allows you to stockpile resources in a bank, both a personal and shared bank.
8). Royal Vendor: There is a vendor that allows you to sell gathered and crafted items to it to earn gold. There also appears to be some sort of mechanic to track some progress for your realm activities that rewards you with gold on a daily basis. Currently there is no use for gold in the game.
After playing the game over the weekend prior to release on steam and then playing the game yesterday at the launch for an hour or so, I was able to literally experience all of the content available within a couple of hours of playing the game. This is how shallow the content and gameplay are. The world feels empty. There is no guidance for new players to understand where to go and what to do to find others to PvP against. The game pretty much has nothing to do and can be literally achieved within the steam refund window. This is why the reviews are so negative, because people realized that the game is not really a game at all, but a shell of a game that needed much more time to cook before being released onto steam.
The game also had your typical launch day issues, including server crashes and downtime needed to deploy hot fixes. The game had multiple issues where my ability bar would disappear, or my skills simply would not work. The game is highly unoptimized and hence, did not feel good to traverse the landscape and fight during PvP. Veteran players who have been playing this early access build for months also had a leg up on the gear they were wearing because the server was not wiped for steam release. This isn't an issue when leveling skills because they (skills) only go to level 5 and is a very fast progression that you can max within an hour or two. The crafted gear however takes a long time to attain, and this is where veterans had a leg up against the new players, being able to essentially one-shot people they went up against.
As a $400 backer for nearly 10 years, I have seen the ups and mainly downs that the development of Camelot Unchained has gone through. The number of mistakes that this development team has made is staggering to say the least, with the most egregious being their detour to make another game called Final Stand Ragnarok while promising the community that this would not put Camelot Unchained back in terms of a timeline of completion. That lie has manifested itself with further delays and with the shutdown of Final Stand Ragnarok itself, so what's left now is an unfinished early access game that launched on steam called Camelot Unchained.
While I still wish the development team well, I can only hope that this does not turn into another death to an MMO due to poor decisions from a development team. There are parallels that people are forming between Camelot Unchained and the disaster which was Ashes of Creation, and I can see how they can draw a line between the two. Let's hope Unchained Entertainment can get some more funding so that they can save this game from following the same fate.
Until next time,
Blackboa