Before I start: I think some of this review may read like "You don't like older style MMOs". I went back to City of Heroes with the private servers that released last year and had quite a bit of fun. I left with overall positive feelings, despite wanting a break, whereas my overall feelings here were negative. Just want to give that point of reference before diving in.

Project Gorgon is filled with unique and charming ideas. The insane amount of available skills gives endless room for experimentation, and you always have a variety of activities available. It's awesome that you can play as a deer, spider, cow, or pig if you want. Or focus on necromancy or archery. You can also pick up as many crafts as you want from a massive list. You can fish, farm, make cheese, grow mushrooms, tan leather, etc. The campy writing and lore add to the fun of running around and working on whatever it is you want. The combat is fairly simple tab-targeting, but generally manages to be enjoyable. Unfortunately, many of the design decisions feel like they are punishing you for being new to the game.

The skills are insanely interconnected. If you want to have all of the options open for being Unarmed, you need to be good at Meditation. But, to make your meditation bonuses last long enough, you need to be good at Carpentry. To get the wood you need for Carpentry, you need to be good at Foraging. Nearly every skill runs into a loop like this. I think I got to do the thing I sat down to do maybe a quarter of the time.

To make this even worse, you have very limited inventory space. You'll spend the first 30 hours doing everything you can to increase this space, mainly bribing NPCs to like you more so you can use their storage. Even then, there are so many resources you need, that you'll constantly be running into a full inventory as you explore. It certainly gets a lot better as time goes on, but inventory management will always be a substantial portion of the game. I've seen other players talk about spending hours just trying to reorganize things as they move to storage in new zones.

Of course, if you want to go to these new zones, you have to walk. The starting movement speed is abysmally slow. I'd often just turn on auto move and click over to my browser while I waited. There are many options to increase your movement speed, but many of the most readily available options are dependent on loot. Project Gorgon has a small population, and no standard auction house. Instead, there is a building where players can set up shops. So, if you don't want to rely on luck from farming, you'll need to click through 50 player shops hoping they'll have something you want. But, since the mods on equipment are tied to certain skills, you'll need to have leveled the same pair of skills as the person selling the equipment. So, good luck with that. There are a couple of low level speed potions, but they either have weak effects or short durations.

The graphics and UI are awful.

Many of the later zones have freezing temperatures, requiring you to constantly battle frostbite. I've never particularly cared for this type of survival mechanic, and the amount of grinding required to get gear or craft items to help you deal with this was just a no-go for me. Oh, and there are enemies that break your bones giving you a permanent debuff that requires a much higher first aid skill than I had to cure. Prior to this, the game gives you VERY clear warnings when an enemy could inflict a permanent debuff. Other players are more than willing to help with this type of thing, so I could have had it sorted out within an hour or so. I'm mentioning it here mainly because it was the straw that broke this camels back. I just wasn't willing to stop what I was doing and travel to where I could get help with everything else.

Also, once you get to the later portions of the game, you need to pay substantial amounts of money to continue increasing your abilities. The lack of an auction house makes it rather difficult to sell to other players. You can put a few items on consignment in shops here or there, but it seems like most players grind crafting skills and the 'industry' skill, where you fulfill requests for random amounts of certain items.

The thing about Project Gorgon is that no one of these things is a complete deal breaker on its own for me. Requiring extra effort to take skills the last 9 yards is reasonable, for example. It's just, when you take it all together, it feels like you're spending most of your time traveling, managing inventory, grinding some tertiary skill that doesn't appeal to you, and generally fighting the UI. While some of the traveling and inventory issues are reduced as you have more resources available, everything else becomes more tedious to make up for it.

All that said, there really is a lot to like the game. If you don't think the things I described above would bother you, then I would say to give it a go. However, If you like modern interfaces and conveniences, or at least don't want inventory management and traveling to be the main focus of your game, then you should probably give it a pass.