Warhammer Warhammer: Chaosbane - action RPG set in the Old World, from How to Survive dev

[Kruno]

As long as the game is progressive and doesn't feature CIS gendered hetero males it will pass the feminist seal of approval given by Infinitron.

I really hope this game lets me play as an armless warrior. I want to fight abelism!

 

[Ranarama]

Looks like diablo popamole garbage.

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam page:

In a world ravaged by war and dominated by magic, you are the last hope for the Empire of Man against the Chaos hordes. Playing solo or with up to 4 in local or online co-op, choose a hero from 4 character classes with unique and complementary skills, and prepare for epic battles wielding some of the most powerful artefacts of the Old World.

• THE FIRST HACK AND SLASH set in the Warhammer Fantasy world, told through an all-new story written by Mike Lee (a Black Library author) and featuring a soundtrack composed by Chance Thomas.

• FEROCIOUS BATTLES: from the sewers of Nuln to the ruined streets of Praag, fight your way through monster hordes using over 180 different powers. Activate your bloodlust, a devastating skill, to escape the most perilous situations.

• 4 CHARACTER CLASSES, each with unique skills and customisation: a soldier of the Empire who can take heavy damage, a Dwarf specialising in melee combat, a High Elf who deals ranged damage by manipulating magic or a Wood Elf who lays deadly traps and wields the bow like no other!

• AN XXL BESTIARY with over 70 monsters aligned with the Chaos Gods and unique bosses. Battle Nurgle's minions, Khorne's spawn and waves of other vile creatures!

• OPTIMIZED FOR CO-OP: solo or with up to 4 players, local or online, the class synergy and interface have been designed for co-op. Combine different skills and powers to create even more devastating effects.

• HIGH REPLAY VALUE: Story mode, a boss rush mode, countless dungeons and regular updates offer a rich and varied gaming experience. And with 10 difficulty levels, you can find the right challenge to test your abilities.

 

[Aemar]

Too few classes for a modern hack and slash game, by far. Having two similar melee classes seems pointless. They should have chosen warrior priest instead of captain, or even a witch hunter, much more interesting gameplay that way. If they wanted to keep the captain, they should have gone for Dwarf thunderer/irondrake/engineer, a ranged character that seems more fun to play as.

What about other characters that don't exactly share the ''good'' trait? A Vampire Blood Knight that can fight alongside humans too if needed (a la Abhorash), a necromancer on a personal quest to get a better understanding of chaos sorcery, one of them Orc Boyz or a Dark Elf Assassin. Why not including them into the class roster? Evil lives matter too.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[LESS T_T]

Out in June 4th:

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

I appreciate the fact that the characters have names. It always bugged me how games like Diablo and Path of Exile didn't name their characters. Just have the player name be separate from the character name.

After all it is not like these games have custom player characters like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights.

 

[Chippy]

This looks interesting - do you need autism to play it? Or has someone developed on of those mice yet that does auto-clicks at about 10/sec?.

 

[PulsatingBrain]

This looks interesting - do you need autism to play it? Or has someone developed on of those mice yet that does auto-clicks at about 10/sec?.

Doesn't look any more demanding than Diablo or Torchlight or whatever. What makes you think you need that kind of click rate?

 

[Chippy]

The action RPG usually has diffeent levels of repetitive strain injury levels, I don't play them enough to be able to tell from the movie. As a rule of thumb - I could manage Diablo, but hated Van Helsing. Then again I played Diablo about 20 odd years ago when games were all new... could be that I just don't have the patience these days for the clicking.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

I think this game uses a controller for inputs since they are releasing it for consoles. I know this will sound like blasphemy but I actually think that a controller is better for an action rpg then a mouse and keyboard.

I remember getting Torchlight for the Xbox 360 and really liking the feel of it better than the mouse and keyboard.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Magellan]

Well the primary problem with making a WHFRP game is that WHFRP is p. shit if you aren't playing a one-shot joke game using the giant career book and totally random character generation so you end up with a party of hobos, drunkards, dung collectors, and such

I have only played 2nd edition WFRP (though I've owned 1st and got the new 4th which I'd like to try) but I don't agree at all that it's bad except for joke one-shots. I think WFRP is pretty great, and can easily accommodate different types of games, serious or comedic (or somewhere in-between) and one-shots or lasting campaigns (or somewhere in-between). Just my 2 cents.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/122041-warhammer-chaosbane-previews-2.html

And on the text side of things, here's PC Gamer:

My main takeaway from this beta is that sigh of relief, repeated every time I see Chaosbane dodge a common pitfall. It's got lots of skills to spend points on but not so many it's confusing (I can tell already I'll navigate this by ignoring the ones geared for co-op play, of which there are plenty). It's got a slider for difficulty and any time you're in the hub you can tweak it as much as you want. Loadouts can be changed anywhere, and health is a represented by a bright red orb that's easily visible. These are low bars to clear, but after seeing so many games screw up the basics it's nice to see them done right. I can see myself sinking hours into this just like I did with Torchlight, clicking on monsters, comparing the stats on gloves, collecting armor sets, and killing a lot of tiny green brats.​

Polygon:

I may not be familiar with Warhammer but I am familiar with the appeal of a good dungeon crawler and Chaosbane fulfilled those obligations with ease. I felt powerful, charging headlong into a fight with continually improving gear buffed by a well blended skill set. Even something as simple as dialing up a fast attack while I was still in a power attack animation delivered a crowd-clearing combo slap full of green damage numbers. I could feel myself picking up good fundamentals as I played more. I just wish I had a little more of a coach at the outset.​

Digital Trends:

Let’s start with the basics. Chaosbane is a blast to play. The simple plot quickly brought me up to speed before letting me loose in a sewer to slay baddies gushing poison and chaotic energies. Enemies fell quickly to my attacks, which fluidly cut through opponents in a tornado of numbers.

I picked the Soldier class, one of two available for the beta, which I at first thought was a mistake. The mage certainly wins on pure spectacle. Still, I was won over by Chaosbane’s fluid movement and impactful attacks. Whirlwind was an early favorite. I love the way it chucks dead opponents through the air like party streamers.​

And Wolf's Gaming Blog:

Right now combat feels fine, but attacks lack a sense of impact. Whacking something with a hammer in the game’s current state doesn’t have the meaty thump you’d really expect, so some work on the audio effects and the animations could help improve the feel of combat a lot.

The pricetag doesn’t feel right, either. Right now you can pre-order it on Steam for a hefty £39.99, putting it up there with big-budget triple-A titles. Frankly, Chaosbane doesn’t feel like it should be sitting in that price bracket. £20-25 would be about right, based on the beta.​

​

 

[Fedora Master]

The beta files are out in the wild. Game plays like Dark Alliance, not like Diablo.

 

[Chippy]

So is it gud?.

 

[Fedora Master]

So is it gud?.

It is if you're a console shitter.
I mean, it's the first non-public beta of the game but unless they rework the UI and controls it's not going to be up to par on PC.
And you know how it is with the "B-But it's a beta!" argument.

 

[Chippy]

Eh, thanks. Another game I'll wait to pop up on sale and probably still never buy.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

I pre-ordered the game and got to play the closed beta. Game is like an improved version of the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games, which I personally loved. Don't expect Diablo 2 or Path of Exile. It is made for a controller, not mouse and keyboard.

Game is very beautiful, I was honestly really impressed with the detail of the clothing and character models even though it is a top down action rpg. I don't know much about the Warhammer universe but it really seems like a cool dark fantasy setting. Love the main menu theme too.

Konrad Vollen is your typical human soldier. Elontir is fucking hilarious. Dude is a total dick to all non-elves and extremely arrogant. Konrad is a tank with average melee damage, while Elontir is a glass cannon that absolutely destroys everything if you play him properly. There skills felt really good and powerful, it was a lot of fun playing as both of them. Other two classes weren't available yet, but I'm going to have fun trying all characters out.

Basically if you enjoyed the Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance games and Champion of Norrath titles you will like this.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

Just got done doing the second Beta and trying out the two new characters and seeing the improvements they have done.

I have to say based on this two betas this game is a fantastic action rpg, really glad I supported this guys by pre-ordering it. The characters and world they have created is absolutely fantastic and I love learning more about this world as I get further along in the game. Gameplay is really fun and fast and the abilities and character customization has a lot more depth then I originally thought. Loot right now is kind of basic but there are hints and potential for better things based on what is in the beta.

Before playing this game I pretty much knew nothing at all about Warhammer. I heard some stuff about the Warhammer 40000 setting, dark space magic with immortal Emperor in the future, but nothing about the Warhammer fantasy setting. Based on what I have seen from this game it is an interesting dark fantasy world. There are chaos gods that seem to serve as the primary antagonists of the good guys and lots of different races and armies that serve them. Overall, the music combined with the graphics really set a grim tone for the world and having classes like the Dwarf Slayer, whose entire goal is to die honorable in combat so they don't wear armor is pretty badass. The voice acting is fantastic in this game and gives all the characters a lot of charm and personality making them really fun to play. The guys who voice the bad guys are so over the top, you can tell they had a ton of fun doing the lines. Out of all the voice actors for the main characters Elessa is probably the one who stands out the most. Probably not for the reasons the developers wanted though. Elessa is supposed to be a young wood elf exploring the world so you expect her voice to reflect that. Instead she sounds like an old english noble woman npc who you would chat up in a castle taking her daughters to the ball. It is absolutely hilarious and makes her my favorite character by far. The character models in this game are absolutely gorgeous and I cannot stress how amazing they look. After beating the boss monster for Chapter One, I actually ended up finding a video on youtube on a tutorial of painting the figure of the creature I fought. The fact that there are actually physical models of how these creatures and characters look probably contributes a lot to why everyone looked so detailed and good.

The way all the different classes play and how you can customize them is absolutely fantastic. As you level up you gain skills points which you can then spend on both active and passive abilities. The active abilities go in your various button slots, while you have three slots for passives. As you level up you unlock new versions of your active and passive abilities that cost more skill points but change the skill, both stat wise and in the visual appearance and effect of the skill. You have a limited number of skill points so it requires you to think about what you want to sacrifice and specialize in, in order to optimize the type of character build you want to play. You go up to level 25 in the beta, but it looks like the max level will be 50 in the actual game. Another area of customization is the Celestial Map that contains a constellation based on whatever god your character worships. It's kind of like a combination of Grim Dawn's constellation system and Path of Exile's grid. In order to fill it out you need a divine favor point from leveling up along with various shards that you collect from enemies while killing them. With the max level presumable being 50, you won't be able to fill out the whole constellation, so you have to plan what path and specialization you want to go down. However, if you decide to respect it comes with a price, as you will have collect more shards from enemies in order to refill your constellation. See Blizzard, that is how you do respecting, have it come with a price and so it rewards players who think and plan ahead. But yeah this has waaay more depth then something like Diablo III, but it isn't Path of Exile levels (though I don't think anything is in the action rpg space.) As for using these abilities in gameplay it is absolutely fantastic. They all feel different and each pack a huge punch. Each class plays very differently and it adds a lot of replayability since your going to want to play through as each one, they are that fun. Bragi, the Dwarf Slayer, is a barbarian who gets in the thick of combat and just destroys everything in glorious melee. He takes a lot of damage like Konrad, the human fighter, but doesn't have quite have the level of tankiness he does. In order to make up for this he seems to do more damage and has abilities you can choose that boost his damage output at lower health. Elessa, the wood elf scout, is the second ranged character after Elontir the high elf mage, and like Elontir is a glass cannon. With Elessa you will be mowing down enemies in large swaths while making sure to keep a safe distance and dodging ranged attacks. She can also surprisingly become the game's summoner class with the right active and passive skills. I did this and had loads of fun with her. Health globes drop occasionally from enemies and picking them up not only heals you but also charges up your bloodlust meter which will allow you to enter a bloodlust state that lets you destroy everything that moves with your bloodlust ability. In order to prevent you from just hording your bloodlust meter and unleashing it when you reach a tough enemy the game provides you with a juicy incentive to use it. Every enemy killed by bloodlust drops shards, the things you need for your Celestial Map, so it actually is best to use your bloodlust to kill large swarms of weak enemies rather than a few strong enemies. It is a very clever way of encouraging the player to use their bloodlust often instead of just hoarding it and forgetting about it.

So far the loot in the beta consists of just magic and rare items that boost your basic stats for your character. Things like damage, health, and armor while sometimes offering additional bonuses like extra gold, movement speed, and loot. You know the drill if you have played an action rpg before. The game does indicate that uniques or legendaries will be in the game at the collector's guild but they aren't implemented in the betas. If these legendaries provide bonuses to certain skills, which I'm pretty sure they will, then it will make loot and grinding a lot more fun. Can't confirm this though until I play the final game. Speaking of the collector's guild, it is the games interesting take on selling items. Rather than sell items for gold you "donate" items to the collector's guild which slowly raises your rank with them. As your rank increases you unlock new passives that you can use on your character or get bonus shards for your celestial map. You can also apparently enchant your gear, but this wasn't enabled in the beta so I can't really comment on how it will effect your gear or grinding.

Overall, this is looks like it is going to be a fantastic action rpg and I am probably going to be sinking a ton of hours into it. This presentation of the Warhammer universe is absolutely fantastic and it is one of the most gorgeous rpgs I have played in a long time. The characters are an absolute blast to play and the game offers enough customization to allow unique and varied builds that make things interesting. The loot is pretty simple right now but from what is hinted at in the beta there is going to be a lot more stuff to make things more interesting. Based on what I have seen so far in the betas I highly recommend getting it when it comes out. I really want these developers to do well and be rewarded for their efforts.

 

[rashiakas]

nice plant

 

[Ranarama]

So what's the gameplay? You click on the moles to pop them?

 

[Neanderthal]

Dwarves in WFRP don't sound Scottish, they're Yorkshiremen born and bred, strong in arm, thick in head.

There is a few clans up near Chaos Wastes that were supposedly Scottish but I think they're mostly gone.