Wartales - turn-based mercenary band RPG by Northgard developer - now with Skelmar Invasion DLC

[C.H.A.R.L.I.E]

The game is only about trying to minimize armor damage nothing else. Even that is pointless because repairs are dirt cheap. If there is ever a tough battle u must use same cheese like in BG3 of healing guy who can take 1 hit before death over and over again

 

[Slaver1]

I am enjoying this game. A bit of exploration and a bit of not that complex but fun TB combat. And everyone has legs and graphics are pleasing enough.

Legs are overrated, I LIKED my team of potatoes.

It's a very tantalizing prospect to consider the framework of Battle Brothers with spruced up production values though. BB alone does so much right on nearly every front but just imagine it with high resolution 2d Infinity Engine style art, exhaustively detailed and animated sprites, a central storyline with more personality injected into the mercs ala Jagged Alliance 2. Could also add neat choice and consequence and politicking with all the settlements/trade routes and mature role-playing themes.

That's a very plausible dream game which wouldn't break the bank to make. Unfortunately we keep getting drowned in a sea of mediocrity. I don't want to eat the flavorless pap a dull generation keeps delivering along a disposable Netflixesque games conveyor belt. Even the "better" games like this are as bland as cardboard as The Wall articulated so well. They might kill some time but they don't comprise a total package, an all-round feast for the senses.

 

[ArchAngel]

Lol I found a lvl 4 white bear in a jail and I can get him out and part of my group for 400 gold.. the thing has 300 HP LOL LOL LOL
For my lvl 4-5 party and kind of enemies I fight, this thing can probably solo most encounters :D

Thats a problem if you pick non scaling mode, animals gets too good early , if you have a pack a wolves their pack bonus will shred them, overpowering anything with quantities since the numbers dont scale. But if you pick scaling exploration, they are not so good , bear really arent op, and the enemies party scale to the number you bring, in this case you better have small party optimized.Animals arent so good compare to a fully geared human.

I hate level scaling in all games.
As for animals, I got a nice animal kingdom in my part atm. 2 Bears, 2 Alpha Wolves and 2 Dominant Sow. Plan is to have 3 Alpha Wolves but none attack me in new area I went to (one where two Lords are at war) so I cannot capture the 3rd one.
I wonder if I can capture Ghost wolves.

 

[agris]

I don't want to eat the flavorless pap a dull generation keeps delivering

DarkUnderlord solid forum list tag right there

 

[Mortmal]

The drawback to using animal companions is they will eat you out of the house.
My regular human companions eat 3 pieces of food per rest. Basic wolves eat 4, alpha wolves eat 8 and bears eat 12. It adds up pretty fast.

You have a perk to unable eating corpses , and in the version 1.0 , i cant say i am running out of gold or food anymore. I think it was more difficult than this before.Also was bleeding buffed? It's devastating and if you can apply it and run with archers its guaranteed win without getting hit once.

 

[Mortmal]

Somebody said in this thread that this was half as fun as Battle Brothers. Pretty apt, but would trim that down to one third as fun, that would be more accurate. Battle Broths has atmosphere & character in spades, this one is like the dimwitted younger sibling.

BB is more fun and more fluid to play ,almost everything you have for battle in wartales you have it in BB too. The big differences are first ,a much bigger battleground making movement and terrain lot more important .A beautiful 3D environment overrall a better presentation and more pleasing to the eyes for the mainstream players, some interactable 3D backgrounds and mini dungeon,mini games (not a plus tbh) and the use of light and darkness.
Both are great games, but wartales sometimes gets a bit repetitive as combat can drag for too long, combat encounters you already did before too many times. Still no reasons to not get both, especially when so cheap.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Action economy in this is weird. If I'm willing to spend enough Video Game Points I get to just kill whoever. "Oh, I can stab him, kick him, throw a knife at him, and finally execute him, all in one turn, because we went camping the night before? Sure, okie dokie."

I also agree that making basic attacks weapon-specific is dumb. There shouldn't be a sledge hammer that only allows me to do charge attacks, that doesn't even make any sense. Have you ever tried to run with a splitting maul? Did it feel like a particularly natural and smooth use of the implement?

 

[Jrpgfan]

I think at this point BB has become the benchmark for this type of game. Wartales alone is proof of it.

Hopefuly Overhype studios' next game is gonna be an improved version of BB, even aesthetically.

 

[oasis789]

if only rad codex would make a battle brothers

 

[Reinhardt]

BB alone does so much right on nearly every front but just imagine it with high resolution 2d Infinity Engine style art, exhaustively detailed and animated sprites, a central storyline with more personality injected into the mercs ala Jagged Alliance 2. Could also add neat choice and consequence and politicking with all the settlements/trade routes and mature role-playing themes.

i'm glad overhype didn't chose feature bloat path. throwing every single thing you think is cool into pot won't make perfect food. battle brothers is great game as it is.
don't need more except more cultures for armor/weapon porn.

 

[Alienman]

I also agree that making basic attacks weapon-specific is dumb. There shouldn't be a sledge hammer that only allows me to do charge attacks, that doesn't even make any sense. Have you ever tried to run with a splitting maul? Did it feel like a particularly natural and smooth use of the implement?

Yeah, some of the skills are baffling. I mean, I understand why, this is very gameboard:y compared to BB, and you are supposed to synergize the skills more between mercs. But you get into these positions where you can't do anything on a individual basis, because the basic attack does not work, or will hit all of your fellow mercs or something like that. I think setting fire to the ground should be a special action, but it's not, and it gets ridiculous when you face a couple of archers that can only do that. I'm getting Dos Divinity 2 flashbacks at points where the whole world constantly turns into a blazing inferno.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

i'm glad overhype didn't chose feature bloat path. throwing every single thing you think is cool into pot won't make perfect food.

Piratez might be the only exception which has succeeded with that approach.

 

[Reinhardt]

Piratez

iz it gud?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Piratez

iz it gud?

Depends how much you can tolerate old X-com UI.
and boobs

 

[hivemind]

this looks quite bad compared to battle brothers

am I correct in my assumption?

 

[Slaver1]

BB alone does so much right on nearly every front but just imagine it with high resolution 2d Infinity Engine style art, exhaustively detailed and animated sprites, a central storyline with more personality injected into the mercs ala Jagged Alliance 2. Could also add neat choice and consequence and politicking with all the settlements/trade routes and mature role-playing themes.

i'm glad overhype didn't chose feature bloat path. throwing every single thing you think is cool into pot won't make perfect food. battle brothers is great game as it is.
don't need more except more cultures for armor/weapon porn.

Yes, they executed everything within their means perfectly, visuals and artwork included. Don't you agree the framework and mechanics they laid out are a perfect foundation for a high budget 2d CRPG? If a handful of guys can execute such a precise vision why can't a larger team with more resources do the same? All depends on the kind of person(s) you have working on the game since even one drooling soy addled individual can ruin things pretty quickly.

 

[Alienman]

Captured a crypt zombie. Now he does all the woodcutting for me.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Captured a crypt zombie. Now he does all the woodcutting for me.

It's not forced labour if they're already dead.

 

[Alienman]

It's not forced labour if they're already dead.

The American corporate dream.

 

[Barbarian]

this looks quite bad compared to battle brothers

am I correct in my assumption?

I don't think the games are comparable, besides having tb combat and being about running a mercenary company.

I prefer Battle Brothers, but I can see how some people might find this better.

 

[jungl]

I'm enjoying it so far. The combat system is not bad more entertaining then battle brothers most time. Battle bros combat is fairly hands off or legs off heh. Equip appropriate weapon type to whatever enemy you fighting and there you go. The mini games are okay. The content feels more varied then battle bros.

 

[Reinhardt]

can i see some not hobo-tier armors?

 

[Shrimp]

Despite the fairly basic and straight-forward gameplay I'm honestly having more fun than I had expected. I'm about 20-25 hours in and I think I'm about 1/3 through the game's regions - at least if the remaining ones are about the same size as the ones I've been in so far. I fully expect to grow weary of the region formula before I've explored every region, but I still ended up sticking around for longer than I originally had anticipated.
The game has lots of various additions that feel like they're underdeveloped such as the companion relations (do they even do anything?) or rather pointless additions like the mining, woodcutting and fishing minigames which I don't feel add anything substantial to the game.

Some of the varied things that I came across were an arena in which you could fight four back to back battles with a smaller sized party. The arena I fought in had a gimmick where the floor gradually got covered in poison as enemies triggered traps in the ground. I assume the other region's arenas will have different gimmicks? There was also an option to rematch the arena on hard mode although I didn't try that.
The game has some abandoned ruins that you explore by moving between dark rooms locked in an isometric camera angle. I whipped out a pen and paper to draw a map of the dungeon since I was expecting a maze, but unfortunately the dungeon turned out to just be five rooms in total. This was in the game's first region so hopefully the next ones are larger. That being said the combat encounters in these dungeons make use of the darkness and requires you to have torches to navigate and the non-combat rooms have lots of small secrets and treasures which is pretty cool. Reminds me of old point-and-click adventure games.

The game could be pretty good if they worked on fleshing out the existing systems already present in the game, but I have a feeling that post-launch support or future expansions/DLC likely mostly will consist of new regions since the game's formula seems to set this up as each region is a fairly self-contained adventure.

 

[Barbarian]

can i see some not hobo-tier armors?

I like brotherhood armor(which is Landsknecht esque). Alazarian armor added in the last update also looks cool:

 

[Reinhardt]

can i see some not hobo-tier armors?

I like brotherhood armor(which is Landsknecht esque). Alazarian armor added in the last update also looks cool:

can i see something not-brown?