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

[vazha]

I looks good, but I low key dont want them to succeed more than B&B, because that will inevitably bring more dumbing down to the genre as a recipe for success.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/wartales-review-early-access

Wartales review (early access): an ambitious and gritty RPG with real promise
Ratses to ratses, Tusk to tusk




“Play against type,” Sin Vega advised in her well good piece on getting the most out of strategy games. I’m sorry Sin. I failed. Tactical RPG Wartales gave me the opportunity to promote a wild boar to the captain of my troupe of wandering mercenaries. I did not. Instead, I fell back into stale, boring habits like “entrusting the lives of my comrades to someone with ambitions outside of ‘moar acorns plz’.” Not a moment goes by that I don’t wistfully consider what might have been.

I’d recruited that boar in the first place by knocking it out and tying it up with a length of rope I found on a dead bandit. Wartales did not inform me this was a possibility until the moment it happened. The game bristles with texture like this; lovely emergent gemstones that form when small details from different systems bear down on each other. Don’t worry too much about all that, though. Most of your day to day worries in Wartales are about where the next bag o’coin or leg o’lamb is coming from, and whether you can get your favourite archer healed up before that nasty shiv wound contracts everyone’s least favourite plague: the plague.

Wartales gives you a welcome sense of freedom in how you pursue these objectives in its open world setting, so here is a story about beans. You need to keep your troupe fed as you prance o’er hill and dale for a spot of strenuous boar-napping, so I got into the habit of making sizable investments in BeanCoin at the market. As you travel, you’ll encounter other groups wandering around the world. There's a touch of Mount and Blade about it, as groups will move around and occasionally attack each other dynamically. Some of the groups are refugees. The game lets you feed them beans in exchange for prestige, which you can then spend on haggling contracts, revealing quest markers, or recruiting and promoting mercs.

Brilliant, said I, as I was immediately transported back to when I first discovered those miniature individual swiss rolls at Tesco that cost 15p each. At the time, I had wild ambitions to fill up a bin bag with hundreds of them and creamily swirl my way down the highstreet chucking out fistfuls at pedestrians, like a big bountiful cake lord. So I stopped killing things in Wartales for a bit and became a roving bean philanthropist, greedily farming prestige. Through this act of self-servingly conspicuous charity, I realised with no small amount of horor that I had accidentally become what the Daily Mail thinks charities are actually like. Then I realised that, no: the end justifies the beans.


Still can't believe I wasted the opportunity to make my boar captain...

Spoiler

Eventually, I ran out of money, so it was time to get back to some profitable violence. You’ve got options here. Hang around the woods hunting wolves. Sell their teeth. Make wolf sausage from their sausagey bits. Use their leather to make clothes and sell the clothes back to the blacksmith. Or, sod the wolves, mine some iron ore through a delightful minigame, smith some lockpicks, and go crime-bezzling wheat from locked chests owned by poor farmers, if you don’t mind hiding from guards for a spell. As we’ve established, though, I’m the kind of coward who shuns boar leadership. So I opted for the structured comfort of contract killings.

Wartales’ turn-based tactics have a focus on positioning that has you thinking more laterally than your average cover 'n' flank-fest. Melee engagements, for example, forces participants into locked combat, and disengaging from said lock means the other gets a free opportunity to attack. This means you can engage an archer so they’re forced to use their useless fists or eat a free attack, for example.

A turn counter lets you know which foes are up next, too, so you can lay down an overwatch cone with your spearman to halt the next attacker in their tracks. There are also bonuses for fighting side by side with allies, or surrounding foes, but this applies to your enemies as well. As a result, letting your squishier daggerchaps get isolated will end badly, very quickly. Ultimately, you’re rewarded for considerate navigation of otherwise flat and terrainless spaces, for bulwarking and backstabbing, buffing and debuffing.


A gripe here, and one I find is true of a lot of games that feature turn-based tactics as just one feature among many: sometimes, fights can run too long. I once fought around 15 rats. Fifteen! In the early game, lower level characters have few abilities to spice things up, and so the drudgery of move/attack/wait is felt all the more keenly when the ‘wait’ portion means waiting for fifteen rats to move. Fifteen! That’s too many rats, man! Happily, weapons feel very different from each other from the outset, which does negate some early game plodding.


Rat-diculous, I tell ya!

Alongside the combat, Wartales offers a sort of faction-based RPG/strategy layer, where you’ll be making decisions to guide the direction of quests. Characters and dialogue aren’t especially interesting, but I found myself quite invested in the actual decision-making. It’s all very "thief steals a sack of swiss rolls to feed their starving family" stuff, but there are some reasonably fleshed out moral conundrums between the haves and have-nots. And there’s something about grimy low fantasy that just makes this stuff sing.

It’s somewhat of a survival game, too. Less the type of survival that has you single-handedly hatcheting the homes of scores of woodland animals to firewood, and more the essence of carving out a space for yourself. Of making you live in the world you’re inhabiting; planning routes, packing provisions, thinking about the return journey, and creating your own mini-objectives because sometimes it's worth just deviating from the critical path to stock up on a particular resource. The routine pleasures of a cyclical existence on the edge rather than a straight shoot to glory measured out in quest-journal ticks.


The world is divided into regions, with each having you complete a number of main quests to advance.

Here are some general complaints that I imagine will likely be fixed while the game goes through early access. Quite a few of the ability descriptions are still in French. I kind of appreciate the romance of making life or death tactical decisions based on cool sounding French words I can’t read, though. Le overwatch? What the hell is that?! Also, battles in my review build could be quite stuttery. I never had a crash, but I did frequently think things were about to.

The start can be quite rough until you figure out what you’re doing, too. Some of the nuance, such as working out exactly what keeps your companions happy enough to not desert, is opaque. Although whether this is a true negative depends on how you look at it. It’s a time investment, sure, but I’ve started seeing this sort of approach to design as a value proposition recently: the added bonus of a one-time-only discovery tour while you poke around a fresh world where everything is new and most of it is dangerous.


It’s for this reason I decided to start the game again after a good chunk. To try more thievery, to play a bit less cautiously. Promote a boar or two. And it’s here that I discovered just how excited I was to start again, to really clinch an optimal first few hours. Wartales nails the restart, and not all games can claim that. I could point to the depth of systems or an approach to design that trusts the player enough to let them discover things themselves. These are both true to some extent. But I think the most useful thing to impart about Wartales is that it just has, well, a certain special something. Maybe there’s some cool sounding French for that that I’m forgetting. The fact that it’s far from finished has me very interested indeed. Moar acorns, please.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://whatifgaming.com/wartales-review-a-gigantic-medieval-rpg-sandbox/

Wartales Review: A Gigantic Medieval RPG Sandbox




8
OVERALL SCORE


SUMMARY
Manage a band of companions and explore the vast world of Wartales. Recruit different mercenaries from different regions and create the best roster of fighters and become a well-known force to be reckoned with. Be an ambitious adventurer or a most wanted outlaw. This is an RPG sandbox game that every medieval strategist has ever dreamed of playing.



From the developers of Northgard, Wartales is a game released by Shiro Games and it’s a turn-based RPG with a mix of RTS exploration. Play as a group of mercenaries exploring the vast Celtic and Roman-inspired universe.

Head on to town, influence other mercenaries to join your party, do bounties from the innkeeper, buy or steal from merchants, claim rewards – rinse and repeat. The game’s atmosphere immediately felt like it was inspired by Mount & Warband or even Ni No Kuni.

So let’s take a deep dive into this mundane but exciting early access review of Wartales.

Spoiler

The Plot
Wartales takes place a century after the Great Plague ravaged the world and there would remain struggling survivors. The cities still standing cautiously eye their neighbors, as roving raiders stalk travel routes in hopes of plundering valuables from unsuspecting travelers.

Honest work is difficult to come by in this age, but in such dark and dangerous times, hired blades are always in high demand. So this is where your mercenary lives begin.

Shape Your Medieval Fate
At the start of the game, you’ll be treated to a starting number of companions and you have the option to create their origin story. Plus, you also have to assign one perk and flaw for the mercenary group.

This is the first screen that you will see once you enter a new game. Regions are unlocked while you progress further into Wartales.
Once you spawn in Tiltren County, you’ll be met with hoodlums and other sorts of threats. Wartales doesn’t really give you a formal tutorial in-game as it just lets you immerse immediately but the mechanics are pretty easy to pick up.

Later on, you get to unlock other regions through your explorations so when you start a new game, you won’t be limited to Tiltren County as a starting state, giving Wartales plenty of replayability.

From what we’ve noticed, every time you start a new game (in Tiltren County), there will always be a group of bandits ready to attack your party so you always have a turn-based refresher.

Become powerful warriors, rich nobles, well-known explorers, or even most wanted outlaws, the choice is yours! If you want a crazier challenge, go alone, but I doubt you’ll even survive an encounter.

Choose from the following paths to become the best band of mercenaries the world has ever seen. You can focus on one or do everything at once.

• Power and Might – focus on forging the best armor and recruiting the best companions
• Trade and Wealth – focus on becoming the richest band of mercenaries through trading commodities in different regions
• Crime and Chaos – focus on becoming the best outlaws through lawbreaking and assasinations
• Mysteries and Wisdom – focus on exploring uncharted lands

Being a criminal outlaw in the game also has its perks such as having access to a black market. The possibilities are endless on what you can do here.

Mix and Match Your Mercenaries
What I liked about Wartales is that the classes are pretty diverse and you’re not limited to using only one class.

From swordsmen to brutes, archers to rangers, you’ll never get bored of creating your perfect party. As your mercenaries level up, you get to unlock a couple of skills that will give you a greater advantage when fighting against hordes of enemies.

You can even assign them professions – some can be a tinkerer, an alchemist, a blacksmith, or even a thief. However, should you choose to switch to another profession, the experience you get from your previous job will reset.

For example, you have a Cook assigned to your party and you want him to go fishing. Once you change him into an Angler, he will lose all his progress as a Cook. The addition of minigames on some professions was also a nice touch.

Fishing Minigame

Mining Minigame

Forging Minigame
According to the devs, you also have the chance to encounter unique companions with specific skills. However, if they die in battle, you might not be able to recruit them again in your playthrough.

Another interesting take in Wartales is that I like how the camp area feels like you’re playing Diablo – even the way that the inventory and each mercenary’s equipment are displayed, the aesthetic is there!

When you’re out of energy from exploring the world, set up camp
There’s no kingdom management but your mercenary camp can serve as one already. The camp also has its own workshop where you can craft items that kind of remind me of Valheim.

As your character progresses, the more skills you have at your disposal to creatively dominate your opponents. Once your character hits level 3, this is where the real fun begins as you’ll be able to equip stronger armor.

If you’re looking for top-notch voice dialogues like in Elder Scroll’s Online, then this game fails in that department. But we got to commend Wartales for creating an easy-to-learn but hard-to-master combat system and mercenary roster management.

Simple Turn-Based Combat Mechanics
Place your mercenaries like chess pieces at the beginning of the battle. Scan the battlefield for any spears lying around as this will become advantageous to your fights.

For the turn-based mechanic, the game uses a flexible grid movement instead of hexagons that you’ll see on other turn-based strategy games. They said in their latest community Q&A over at Steam:

“WE WANTED THE PLAYER TO FEEL FREE IN THEIR MOVEMENTS, WITHOUT LOOKING FOR PIXEL-PERFECT MOVEMENT WHICH IS OFTEN TEDIOUS. WE BELIEVE THAT BY ADDING A FLEXIBLE GRID, WE GIVE THE PLAYER THE OPPORTUNITY TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES WHILE MAINTAINING CONTROL.”

And we couldn’t agree more. Action points are gained if your party had a decent rest or if you fulfill certain steps to fill up your points depending on your selected mercenary’s passive skill.

This cutscene screams fatality!
Another nice touch that Wartales puts in their combat system is their Mortal Kombat like fatality cinematic once you deliver the final blow to your opponents. It’s not as bloody as MK but you get the idea.

Grindy Resource Management
This is where Wartales has its pain points especially when you’re starting out. It might take you a couple of playthroughs to get your mercenaries into shape to the point that you might just give this up.

There are plenty of things to worry about once you’ve set foot in Tiltren County: food and money for your mercenaries as well as happiness. The challenge here is making sure that you have enough food to feed your mercenaries and paying their wages once you set up camp.

Failure to pay their wages will result in making them unhappy and eventually, leaving your party. On the other hand, failing to feed your mercenaries will also lead them to their death. It might be a good idea to stock up some ale to keep your mercs happy.

Make sure you have enough food and Krowns (gold), otherwise, it’s game over for you.
The game’s over once you’re entire party leaves or has been wiped out by your enemies. So it’s best to do backup saves if ever you do something wrong in your encounters.

Some might get impatient with the resource management mechanics of Wartales but it gets easier the longer you immerse yourself in the game.

To save you the trouble of playing around with deciphering the resource mechanics, we whipped up these tips below to make things a bit easier on your first playthrough. Or just skip this part if you want to figure everything out on your own and head on straight to the verdict.

After all, the devs over at Shiro Games designed Wartales to be a blank canvass for you to paint on and it’s up to you to figure out what you want to do in this immersive RPG just like with any sandbox.

Tiltren County Crash Course
I’ve had almost five playthroughs just to figure out how to manage resources well and find the right mercenaries. Wartales personally gave me a challenge.

But fear not, we’ve gathered some beginner tips for you so you won’t have a hard time playing this game. As we said, Wartales doesn’t have a decent tutorial, so you would have to point and click your way through.

Here are some helpful tips for you to get started on Wartales and save you the headaches of constantly dying.

• When you arrive at Stromkapp, go to the inn. Talk to the emissary and try to take on the Easy quests first before diving into the Average quests. Make sure that your party is at least Level 2 if you want to take on Average quests.
• Stock in some raw materials. You’re going to need this a lot when repairing your armor. Your base health won’t be enough during enemy encounters.
• The region procedurally generates resources, so you can gather as much as you want and sell these to traveling traders for Krowns (gold).
• Make sure you have enough food and Krowns to pay and feed your party.
• If you want to grind for your party level, try and look for enemies in forest areas.
• Get Cannibalism early on so you can feed on human flesh just in case you can’t afford to buy food from the merchants.

For the rest of the tips, we leave them to you, since we don’t want to spoil everything.

Plenty of Regions to Discover
Almost eight hours of playtime and I barely left Tilten County just because I felt like exploring every nook and cranny of this region. The map is pretty huge, I felt like the more I get hooked into this world, the more I wanted to know what regions are there for me to discover.

One obstacle that you would need to overcome is the need to generate a steady supply of Krowns. This is because if you want to cross the border to the next region, you will need to pay a one-time fee of 200 Krowns for safe passage to the other regions.

Once you go to the border gate you’ll be met by a merchant and a border guard.

Pay 200 Krowns or get a border pass, if you want to unlock the other regions.
Meet traveling merchants and traders along the way and get some rare weapons, armor, and stock up on food supplies. If you want to choose the criminal path, you can even steal from them, as long as your party level can handle the carnage. Meet refugees, rescue people from outlaws, recruit from different inns, and more!

The Verdict
Wartales immediately pulls you through this mundane gameplay loop that would make you feel frustrated at first. Restarting a couple of times just to get the right combination of rosters and resources ain’t no joke.

At least the relaxing soundtrack made the suffering a bit bearable, still immersing you in the aftermath of the Great Plague. Once you’ve gotten the hang of taking care of your mercenaries, the grinding becomes easier.

Pro-tip: Don’t be like me in taking the Rat Infestation quest too early, trust me, you’re gonna regret it.
The game’s economy can be so unforgiving if you don’t do it right. I almost gave up reviewing after a few attempts. But luckily, I was able to sustain an average of 300 to 400 Krowns, enough to pay my current mercs and still continue to explore the game.

For an early access title, Wartales is one of those gems that you would want to root for. This is probably a game for those who want to watch this for the long haul. The paths are surprisingly comprehensive that you want to achieve every title. Not sure that the current price is justifiable but then again, they did a great job with Northgard so

Some players might get bored because of the huge map size and the repetitive quests, but if you’re a medieval fan and you’re patient enough to uncover every area of this Roman/Celtic-inspired universe, then it might be worth your time.

As the team said in their community Q&A, the environments of Wartales are strongly inspired by Scotland and North England. It’s not Age of Empires, but this game makes you feel invested in your mercenaries that you want them to survive for the entire journey.

We hope you enjoyed this Wartales game review. Get this on Steam if you want to add this game to your growing library and support its early access course until it fully releases in 2022.

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[OSK]

Mini-games? Why!?

 

[cyborgboy95]

 

[Shrimp]

Store page has changed the release date to the 2nd December.

It's available now although at an extortionate price. €35 for an early access indie game

 

[gogis]

Holy shit the price. It's looks really fishy. Like shittier version of Battle Brothers for a price of AAA title? I pass

 

[Teut Busnet]

Store page has changed the release date to the 2nd December.

It's available now although at an extortionate price. €35 for an early access indie game

This is from the guys who made 'Northgard', too. So in addition, expect a DLC for every new type of clothing or weapon at a silly price.

Get the new 'Sword' expansion, only 8.99€!

 

[jackofshadows]

Moreover, they fucked up regional prices

"Admittedly, we messed up a bit here. Not through intentional malice or greed, we just miscalculated quite badly with our regional pricing.

We have adjusted this submitted the actual regional pricing to Steam and are waiting on them to validate it. Please bear with us, and thank you all for your feedback and patience here."

So over here I see it almost for a "full" AAA price as well. Either way, ridiculous.

 

[Infinitron]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1527950/view/3111420482785466278

Wartales is out now!
Early Access Release

Attention Mercenaries!

We are proud to announce that Wartales has now entered into Early Access and is available to buy now on Steam!

Well, what a whirlwind of a few months it has been!

From the announcement of Wartales earlier this year, to the mad dash to pull together a demo for the Steam festival, to the recent closed beta and final stretch of develoment before release, to right here, right now, orchestrating the release of our FIFTH game as a company...

First off, we'd like to thank everyone who joined us on our journey from the very start with the demo earlier this year, to have had such a positive reception and to see a community of dedicated and helpful players begin to form around the game at such an early stage was incredibly ecouraging for all of us here at Shiro.

Secondly, a massive thank you to everyone who took part in the recent closed Beta, your feedback and suggestions have been incredible and it is largely down to you that we are now able to release Wartales into Early Access with pride.

A lot of content and features have been added since the demo and the beta, and throughtout Early Access we will continue to develop, expand, iterate and improve every aspect of the game, alongside all of you with your help and support.

New regions, units, items, quests, features, functions, mini games and much more are well underway internally, and will be making their way to the game over time, and we can't wait to hear what all of you think! And we are all ears for any ideas and suggestions you might have that will help us realise the best possible version of Wartales.

There is no firm roadmap available at this time, as we’re still finalising a lot of our plans and working out the logistics in terms of timing but this is something we are discussing internally and hope to share with you all very soon.

Now it's time for you to write your story in the Wartales, and we hope you'll enjoy your journey throughout the Edoran Empire!

Shiro Games.

 

[Reinhardt]

At this price i can get Battle Brothers, Troubleshooter and have enough money left for something that on sale. And it's not even full game.
But seriously. Fishing?

 

[KateMicucci]

Uninspiring art direction. Dreary. Looks like a collection of stuff from the Unity store, or Mount and Blade Warband mods.

 

[Infinitron]

More previews:

https://www.gamereactor.eu/wartales-early-access-impressions/
https://techraptor.net/gaming/previews/wartales-is-gritty-medieval-mercenary-rpg
https://culturedvultures.com/wartales-preview/

 

[Alienman]

Weird timing with releasing a pricey EA game after a big sale. Hard to justify 30 bucks, when I only had to spend 20 for several dlcs and 2 games.

 

[RNGsus]

1 hour gameplay video in glorious Germano lengo:

 

[Fargus]

Battle Brothers with legs. Seems cool, but kinda overpriced for a buggy early access game.

 

[gogis]

So far I meh'd and bought it.

Combat system is interesting but everything else is very subpar.

Map is static. For no apparent reason they haven't learnt from pause system of vanilla BB - once you reach your destination, game is not paused.

Graphics is cheap dreary assets. Music is meh. In this department the game is way way way worse than BB.

Also I have no idea how games like that runs like shit and fry my CPU.

I have no hope for this game, even Sands of Salazar looks better if you are into M&B/BB sandboxes

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/wartales-is-a-very-serious-mercenary-sim-where-im-making-an-army-of-hogs/

Wartales is a very serious mercenary sim where I'm making an army of hogs
Bacon can kill you.

Wartales is a gloomy low-fantasy mercenary sim that prides itself on being tough. Because of this, but also because it's in Early Access, it's also obstinately opaque. The dearth of explanations, muted colours, sad people and gruelling fights mean that trying to earn a buck in this depressing world isn't exactly a joyful experience. But happiness can be found in even the most unlikely of places.

Despite the level of difficulty, most of the disasters that have befallen my squad of unlucky mercs have been down to Wartales' inability to even break down the basics, let alone its more complex systems. While I don't think Early Access is a good enough excuse to have a shitty user experience, I'll admit that it has also been the source of some fun surprises. Like when I discovered that I could recruit animals.

My squad started out as a group of boring human pals setting off on their first adventure. They mostly suck at everything, but with every turn-based fight survived and every new item crafted, they get slightly better. As well as having combat classes, they can pick up professions, like fishing and smithing, using these skills to make food, gear and, through hitting up merchants, gold. They're fine, I guess.

At some point, my squad got their hands on some rope. Maybe from a dead bandit. There are a lot of them. Rope can be used for climbing, apparently, which I've yet to do, but more importantly rope can also be used to bind animals. I discovered this randomly when I was beating up some wolves. While one of my lupine foes was engaged with an ally, a new ability appeared on the hotbar of one of my mercs. I could knock out and capture the wolf, it informed me. Obviously I had to do it.

Given that this wolf had been stabbed nearly to death and then kidnapped, it was surprisingly quick to join the gang. It had no complaints. It did have some dietary requirements though. Next to gold, which is required for plenty of things, but especially wages, food is Wartales' most important resource. Your gang will demand frequent breaks to rest and munch, and failing to fill their bellies will lead to desertion pretty quickly. Adding more members to the team means you need more food, and sometimes specific kinds of food. Wolves like meat. As do cannibals and, it turns out, people infected with the plague.

During my first few days in Wartales, I hated needing to constantly concern myself with grub. It's hardly glamorous. But now I'm at the point where I have so much food, I keep having to sell it to wandering merchants or in town. I'm perpetually overloaded with carcasses, pork chops and allegedly edible rats. I had to buy a donkey to help carry my burden. He's great. Fighting a single pack of wolves is going to give you days of food, as well as resources that can be sold, or crafted into stuff that can be sold for even more. Food's no longer an issue for me now, even with more animals joining the crew, but I've yet to reach the point where I'm not desperate for cash.

Wages swallow up most of what I earn pretty quickly, even now that I'm actually trying to turn my loot into profits and not just relying on quest rewards. This is one of the reasons I'm a big fan of critters, as they don't even know what money is. Sadly, they don't know what tactics are, either, and just do their own thing during fights. That's why my little wolf pack didn't last for very long. But I wouldn't let that setback stop me from living out my dreams.

Following the death of my furry friends, I mixed things up a bit by capturing a bunch of boars. They don't seem to be much more effective than wolves on their own, but now one of my humans has learned how to command beasts, designating targets for them. Things are starting to come together. Many bandits have been gored by boars. I don't know if there's a limit to how many animals you can keep—I've managed to capture five so far—but I ain't stopping until I reach it.

The thing is, they aren't even that great in a fight. Their tusks are nasty, but they've got nothing on a massive warhammer, and they mostly just rush at enemies and chip away at their health pool. But the sight of a bunch of dumb boars merrily attacking bandits, knights and wolves never fails to entertain me. Now I just need to learn how to keep them alive for longer—it turns out that not wearing any armour is a real issue.

I should also add that humans can be captured, too, should you have manacles, and then handed over to the authorities for a reward. I'm yet to do this, however, because I ain't no cop. My morals are usually flexible in games, but this world is facing problems evocative of our own troubles, namely a plague and a refugee crisis, which makes being a dickhead a less-than-fun prospect. It's tough though. I immediately decided I'd help the refugees over the arseholes moaning about them, protecting them from thugs and helping them find places to live. But in their desperation some of them have turned to banditry and violence, killing and thieving to survive.

Wartales lives in the grey area, then, where picking the ethical choice is far from easy. It makes decision-making more interesting, but I do wish the options weren't so arbitrary. When I agreed to drive off some bandits who were stealing from and killing travellers, I was given a chance to show mercy at the end of the battle. Unfortunately, my only choices were giving the bandits some items I didn't have, or killing them. I couldn't just let them go. In reality, then, I only had one choice: kill some people I thought deserved to live.

Of all the things I'd like to see developed the most over Early Access, aside from the need for some tutorials or guidance, this is at the top of my list. There are loads of roleplaying opportunities available, letting you become a nasty villain who steals from poor farmers, a Robin Hood-style folk hero or just the owner of lots of hogs, but Wartales seems far more interested in the systems themselves than the stories they might generate.

This is never more clear than when you're managing your mercs, who don't even have the glimmer of personalities. There's a real dissonance when you're ostensibly playing as a group of mates—you can also choose a group of deserters, some bandits and a few other starting configurations, each with advantages and disadvantages—where anyone might quit, never to be seen again, because their wages were a day late. I'd love to see relationships introduced, like friendships and rivalries. And beyond the mercs, Wartales is in dire need of some more colourful writing. It's all just very sparse and very plain at the moment. The world might be bleak, but that doesn't mean the quests and conversations shouldn't be flavourful.

A lot of what Wartales does can already been seen in Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, but with the added bonus of being able to conquer kingdoms and lead proper armies. And if you're looking for something with a smaller scale and more focus, there's Battle Brothers, which launched in 2017 and has been well-supported since then. There's definitely room for more medieval mercenary sims, and this is a decent start, but I recommend waiting to see how it grows before forming your own band.

 

[Tyranicon]

From the news thread.

Here are my first impressions and also final impressions until the game is further into development.

TL;DR: If you're looking for Battle Brothers in 3D, prepare to be disappointed. Otherwise, it's promising.

Overall Wartales seems like a decent 3D RPG in the same vein as Battle Brothers (or a turn-based Mount and Blade), although I'm hard-pressed to list anything it does better than BB, outside of the 3d preference.

Technical

Firstly, the game is very light on graphical settings, but that can be semi-forgiven as it is in Early Access. Resolution seems locked to 1920x1080, and there's no option for text size, which is absurdly small (or maybe I'm just old). The zoom is horrendous. Using the mouse wheel to zoom in only does so by the barest amount (why even bother?), so expect to squint at your characters both on the campaign map and battle maps.

The game itself seems to run fine, save for some microfreezing when loading into a battle.


Character creation

There is no character creation, outside of choosing what starting group of mercenaries you have, and what bonuses are applied.


Party management/Classes

Seems pretty robust if somewhat standard. Companions are separated into classes, depending on what weapon they wield (haven't played enough of the game to do a deep dive into class balance). You can rest via a campfire, which is also when you feed and pay your mercs (which isn't automatic, you have to do this manually). Unfortunately, companions have no real relationship mechanics or anything to set them apart from being meatbags for combat.

Items also locked to classes, or non-combat "professions" that your mercs can get. Very little character customization at all outside of equipment.


Combat

Ooooof. Here is where the gripes come in. Keep in mind that I love Battle Brothers and I develop systems similar to BB (in a weird hybrid dnd 5e + FF tactics way).

Combat is distressingly gamey, as opposed to simulationist. The set up phase is barely there. You get a small number of arbitrary spots where your companions can load in, and that's it. Put all your melee in the front, ranged in the back, and that's all the flexibility you get, regardless of how you meet/ambush the enemy.

The turn order is also different. Wartales uses an Open Turn Order, where you can choose any unit that hasn't taken their turn yet. I don't like this system because it's just... too easy.

Engaging an enemy in close quarters "locks" you into melee combat, sort of like DnD. However, "disengaging" will trigger an opportunity attack. This is bound to be confusing for some based on the wording.

A lot of weapons are AOE, and they also do friendly fire. You can normally aim the attack cone, except when you're locked in melee combat, then the cone is fixed. There is NO option for non-AOE attacks with weapons such as two handed swords or axes (lol wut?).

Spears and polearms push enemies back with the "impale" attack (lol wut? x2).

So just with these basics, you can see how a typical combat encounter could be gamey and cheesed, rather than somewhat simulationist/realistic like BB.

Combat overall is extremely easy to anybody with experience in these types of games. Enemy AI is sufficient, but I haven't seen anything too spectacular or challenging. Most early games mobs are just the standard bandits.

Action economy is also similar to DnD. You get movement, one attack action, and some bonuses. Some of the "bonus actions" for the lack of a better word, are very strong and this is balanced by [resource name that I forgot].


Crafting

Lol, I didn't do any of this. Or the minigames, as they seemed tedious.


Campaign

Similar to BB. You can go to towns (which have buildings with interiors) to pick up missions and talk to NPCs, etc. After picking up a mission, your map is marked. Random mobs and be interacted with (usually just attack, steal or leave). Doesn't seem to have much in the way of faction systems at this point, outside of Reputation.

There does seem to be more depth in some areas, but I haven't played enough to find out.

Wartales in it's current state is the definition of what's wrong with Recommended/Not Recommended review systems. It's a 6/10, but according to Steam, it's 87% positive. Tbf, the devs did put their work in and it's very promising. While it doesn't rival Battle Brothers at it's current stage, it may one day.

 

[gogis]

Unless people don't get it from reviews (and I missed to emphasize that) - it's not open world sandbox like BB or M&B in it's current state. It's 100% railroaded, clear zone by zone, static map, same quests (bar random murder X band sidequests), zero replayability mess. It's really just a standard CRPG with shitty blank characters and bad writing. Free roam/sandbox marketing from developer is 100% scam.

 

[Shrimp]

Devs posted a roadmap of what they allegedly plan to do in future updates. Seems like it's meant to address common complaints such as level scaling, the static map etc.

 

[BruceVC]

This is something I will definitely consider once the Devs keep adding features like in the roadmap

 

[Horselats]

The all-time ingame peak for Wartales eclipses Battle Brothers by nearly 800 players.

 

[Teut Busnet]

This is something I will definitely consider once the Devs keep adding features like in the roadmap

I don't know. The game has so many stupid things going on, nothing they'll add could make me want to play it:

• Every attack is an auto-hit - because skill, evasion and defence in general is apparently not a thing
• There are different classes, limited to specific weapons - never liked it in rpg systems, it's even dumber in an open world tbt/rpg
• No helmets - you know, the most important piece of armor
• Random unit placement, seemingly mixed with the enemy - is that supposed to be an improvement over the fixed formations in BB?
• Terribly bland and generic look without character

Was looking forward to Wartales, but now I have no idea how this has the same STEAM rating as Battle Brothers (88%)