WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes - turn-based tactical RPG on WW2 Warsaw Uprising - now a free game

[Abu Antar]

Released.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

From the negative Russian reviews I learned that Russians unironically think Poland was the aggressor in WW2.

 

[Black]

Germans shot first, I swear.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

One of the recent negative reviews on steam:

I purchased this game because I thought it would be good to experience the War from the perspective of a Jewish human being because many of us, thank God, will never know what it was like (it seems every game is from the American heroic perspective). I new that this game would provoke emotions, but I had no idea that I wouldn't be able to make it through the intro without tears. For that reason, this game is unplayable. I am glad that the game is not sanitized and hope it sheds light on the horrors of hate for many more.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

fun fact:
before WW2, poland was populated entirely by Jews.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

Fun fact: it hardly changed after WW2.

 

[Reinhardt]

So is it gud or too much polska stronk?

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/news/122894-warsaw-reviews.html

Metro 6/10:

Extremely rough around the edges but even in its current state this is an engrossing and tension-filled strategy role-playing game that offers a very different perspective of WWII.

PC Invasion 6/10:

Warsaw is challenging at times to the point of harsh realism and it has an assortment of foes to take out. But, with mechanics that are downright arcadey and odd, Warsaw's missteps mar what could've been a brilliant look at a major event in Poland's history during World War II.

Rock Paper Shotgun Scoreless:

Would I recommend it? Not quite yet, no. Brilliantly named developers Pixelated Milk have already released a content roadmap for October. While some of it looks like bonus story events and the like, the sort of thing you’d expect from traditional DLC, there are also entire new systems and difficulty levels, changes that look like they’ll alter and enrich the game dramatically. It speaks to care and generosity on Pixelated Milk’s part, sure, but also makes me think Warsaw dropped a month shy of being ready.

That said, I can see myself returning to it after that month. Each character class I’ve found so far has been really distinct, and I still have a few to encounter. Warsaw has the makings of a genuinely fascinating, unyielding tactical game with a lot of heart and reverence for the events it’s based on. Still, as is, it’s currently a hard sell unless you’re really intent on a challenge that, while thematically resonant, often feels more arbitrary than it is complex.

OnlySP 3/5:

Five hours into a session, the player could be forgiven for thinking that only half that time has gone by. WARSAW has an addictive quality that comes from sublime gameplay and a pervasive feeling of desperation. ‘Just one more mission,’ goes the refrain. ‘Just one more’ until the final mission is complete, and the game comes to its shattering end. WARSAW may be short, but as an engaging history lesson and an engrossing game, it warrants any number of replays.

Game Rant 3/5:

All in all, Warsaw is a solid foundation, but the balancing issues may make it difficult for players to love. There are a lot of interesting ideas present here, though the execution, in some instances, has been flubbed. Still, the hand-drawn art style, challenging battles, and interesting backdrops are enough to make it worth experiencing in most cases. There are other, better challenging games out there this fall, Like The Surge 2, but Warsaw will be a good experience for those with lots of patience looking for a challenge to overcome, so long as they can get passed its multitude of issues.

Cultured Vultures 8/10:

Warsaw is a good installment in the dungeon crawler genre with its historical theme, excellent artstyle, and atmosphere carrying the experience. However, it can feel tedious at times with the slow responsiveness of skills during combat and some grindy situations in combat.

Screen Rant 2.5/5:

It might be wise to watch Warsaw’s post-launch progress, because a better tutorial, some tweaks here and there (weapon accuracy is a serious problem, with countless 85%-and-up shots missing their target), and general stability updates could make this the exact type of game a very particular player will appreciate. Beyond that, its subtle history lesson concept is fascinating and thorough, and may even move some to read up on the Warsaw Uprising of 1944. For now, though, it’s going to need a bit more work to live up to its inspirations.

 

[Rahdulan]

What a weird overhaul to commit to post-launch. How did experience system work prior?
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1026420/announcements/detail/1693852269282309449/

"Żmija" part 2 - Bootcamp
New Progression!
Ding, ding, ding!

The progression update is here!

Because this is such a big change to how the underlying systems of the game work, we've made a new Feedback topic for these changes exclusively. You can find it here. Please let us know if things now feel better, worse, easier, harder or anything else you can think of!

We'll be tweaking the balance of the new XP systems in the upcoming days, before the patch goes to the public branch to make sure it's balanced well.

So here's what you get in this patch.

Experience Points

• Your characters now gain XP by completing certain tasks in the game, like fighting enemies or completing Missions.
  
• XP can be spent on acquiring new Skills and Perks.
  
• Characters no longer have to follow a randomized progression tree. All Skills are available for purchase from the get go.
  
• XP is unique per character. That's a nice, powerful Franek you have there. Shame if something would happen to him...
  
• Commendations can be used to grant additional XP points to any character you want, even ones that did not participate in a given mission.

Challenges

• Two optional challenges are now generated in each battle you fight
  
• These are small objectives like achieving victory without moving, avoiding a certain type of ammunition, prevailing in a set number of turns, etc.
  
• Completing these optional challenges will net you additional XP for all participating characters

Perks

• Characters can now buy Perks by spending XP in addition to Skills
  
• Perks confer passive bonuses to attributes, like Accuracy, Health, Resilience, etc.
  
• There are over 20 perks available to buy for each character

In additional to all that we have also fixed the bug with Steam achievements popping up only after the game is closed.

Enjoy and let us know what you think!

 

[Maxie]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1026420/view/3657538376245882576

Hey everyone,

For the past year or so we have been approaching WARSAW with ideas on how we can deliver on expanding the game in significant ways. We always felt that the deep and engaging gameplay, numerous colourful heroes to choose from and adherence to realities that Warsaw inhabitants faced during the tragic months of 1944 were strong basis, but wanted to be able to build upon them.

Feedback we received from players, media and creators helped us understand how the experience shaped their knowledge of Warsaw Rising, but also made it very clear for us that the story of those days is not commonly recognised both outside of Poland and abroad.

With that in mind we went back to work on further enriching the game with historical information, tied closely to the game itself, and allowing everyone who plays WARSAW - to have a better understanding of what happened between August 1st, 1944 and October 3rd, 1944 in Warsaw, Poland.

We hope to be able to share the details of what this really means with you very soon, but in the meantime we would like to ask everyone to REFRAIN from buying WARSAW going forward. We feel that the changes to both the game's contents and the pricing will be to everyone's favour, but in order for you to best take advantage of that - we would like everyone to not buy the game until the next time we post the message here.

It will happen much sooner that you think.

Thank you for your patience and stay tuned,

WARSAW team

 

[Ol' Willy]

Can you play as member of Dirlewanger brigade or RONA?

 

[Lord_Potato]

Can you play as member of Dirlewanger brigade or RONA?

Only if you purchase Subhuman DLC.

 

[Maxie]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1026420/view/3658665545021151424

Five years ago WARSAW launched. A game focusing on a history of the city and it’s history that is not as widely recognised as we felt it needs to.

WARSAW reached hundreds of thousands of players on different platforms and was included in the Polish history books, was recognised by German Digital Culture Foundation as a valuable educational tool to teach about World War II and received a lot of attention from both the players and gaming media from more than 40 countries that covered both the game and the theme of Warsaw Rising.

We always felt the story of WARSAW deserves to be shared with many more players and we partnered with Institute of Polish Remembrance (IPN) to expand on the historical aspect of the game, to enrich WARSAW with new historical events, characters, missions, cutscenes and Warsaw Rising day by day diary with support both from IPN and Warsaw Rising Museum. The end goal is to make sure the game can be a learning tool for students of Polish history both locally and abroad.

The new version of the game removes the strategic layer that we felt did not support the more narrative driven elements of the game, as well as adds new enemy characters, a new playable Hero and a Polish native narrator on top of numerous other text based additions and factual revisions.
All these changes deserve a new title of the game and we present to you WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes, that the game will from today be called.

But what’s most important is from today, WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes becomes a Free game. Available for everyone to download, enjoy and experience the Warsaw Rising as they never have before.

This wouldn’t be possible without IPN’s support as WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes officially becomes a title joining other historical games – Cyphers Game and Szybowcowa 82 to allow players to learn about Polish history.

Thank you for your support,

WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes Team

 

[Infinitron]

Weird move. Looks like it made people mad, so they did this: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1026420/view/3658665545023862800

Accessing the Legacy Version
How to enjoy both WARSAW RISING and the Legacy version of the game

Hey everyone,

Yesterday’s launch of the new Free version of WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes was a technically challenging affair. Switching the game live, from one version to another, with a major overhaul of the features and content, Steam page assets, the name of the game and the price tag was not without its challenges and we had all hands on board for this.

It was never our intention to remove the access to the original version of the game. Unfortunately due to the technical challenges outlined above we ran out of time yesterday and didn’t make it available for the launch of WARSAW RISING. Sorry!

As a result we’ve prepared a Legacy Version branch where everyone can access WARSAW as it was before August 23rd and experience the original version of the game.

In order to access the Legacy Branch of the game please select WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes in your Steam Library, right click on the title, select “Properties” and then “BETAS” tab. Choose “Legacy Version” which should automatically update to the version of the game from before August 23rd.
Moreover, we will continue to iron out the bugs and hotfix both the WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes version of the game, as well as the Legacy Version. Our aim is to introduce the existing Bootcamp Branch changes (controller support, patches, etc) into the Legacy Version after extensive testing in the near future. Please note that the Bootcamp improvements are already available in the WARSAW RISING version of the game.

Thank you for your patience and understanding while we were working out the best way to move forward after yesterday’s launch. We want to make sure that you can enjoy both WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes and have a chance to come back to the Legacy Version, if you feel like it.
WARSAW RISING focuses more on the historical accuracy when compared to the 2019 original. It was important to get the events, places and people right. For this to work, we had to adjust the strategic layer of the game. We achieved this by removing the "momentum" system and the random mission generation, because they allowed for unpredictable and unhistorical progress of the uprising (ie. Śródmieście falling in the opening days of the struggle). The game now follows a more linear but also a more authentic timeline.

The rest of the strategic layer, however, remains intact. Random calendar events, hero recruitment, inventory, character progression, hospital are all still in the game. In addition to historical missions, the game will present you with randomly generated ones, similar to the 2019 original. This way the campaign retains replayable elements instead of being fully "on rails"

New features of WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes

- New playable hero
- Two new enemy units
- New storyline, complete with animated and voiced cutscenes
- New, authentic Polish narrator (with complete subtitles)
- New soundtrack
- New location type to interact with on the map
- Tons of new entries for the codex including photos, posters and newspapers
- Console improvements (Bootcamp branch) are now available in the PC version, including controller support
- UI, visuals and gameplay improvements
- Huge performance improvements for the city map

Thank you for your support and understanding

WARSAW RISING: City of Heroes Team

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Is this why game can't be found on GOG any longer?

 

[Dickie]

They removed the strategy layer? That was the part I was hoping would get the most attention with the new version. Looking at the recent reviews, this game is getting more blasted than ever.