Wartales — RELEASED

[rusty_shackleford]

Is this game any fun if you're not a fan of Battle Brothers?

[Fargus]

I'd say yes. But i like both.

Wartales is less autistic with builds and not a min maxing nightmare. Unlike in BB the world is not randomly generated but consists of multiple hand crafted regions, not all regions are fun tho, Ludern is fucking tedious. The grind is a huge issue part of it just like in BB. The gear is leveled unlike in BB, but only the one you buy or find, you can craft weapons and armor of certain level yourself depending on your blacksmith skill. Roster is not limited the way it is in BB but if you play with level scaling huge roster would just make the fights super tedious. You can capture animals and use them in combat, can capture and sell bandits, can recruit prisoners. There are unique quest lines for each region but you will be doing run of the mill contracts a lot to pay off wages and buy stuff. Minigame cringe for activities like smithing, alchemy etc.

I'm biased because i like merc sims, party management and turn based shit. For me this game is highly addictive.

[Zoner]

From what I remember all combat has guaranteed hits, removing RNG for that bit. Not sure I enjoy that personally that much, I like my chances and 97% misses.

[Acrux]

Reading more about this today, it sounds like there's the worst kind of level scaling - enemies keep up with your level and will increase their party size as you increase yours. What I'm reading is that this second part happens even if you pick "region locked" which is supposed to be the non-scaling alternative.

[rusty_shackleford]

Started the game up, new game, first party it suggests for me has a woman.
What is this shit?

[Fargus]

remove woman

[Galdred]

Started the game up, new game, first party it suggests for me has a woman.
What is this shit?

I have been more triggered by the lack of helmet. There is no Matt Damon under the helm. What is the excuse? It breaks my immersion even more than having lots of warrior women.

[Fargus]

People including me asked them multiple times to add helmets. They don't seem to give a fuck. Next update will be full version and i really doubt they will include helmets in it, but who knows?

Helmets would come in handy to cover those hideous hags too, although you can just not hire them or have like one or two in party with decent face models.

[rusty_shackleford]

I like it a lot more than battle brothers tbh.

[Galdred]

I like it a lot more than battle brothers tbh.

Oh? Why is that? I didn't play it much, but it seemed to suffer from similar issues (with a huge emphasis on taking minimal risks), while Battle Brothers had helmets (but no legs).

[Dead]

Helmets

[rusty_shackleford]

I like it a lot more than battle brothers tbh.

Oh? Why is that? I didn't play it much, but it seemed to suffer from similar issues (with a huge emphasis on taking minimal risks), while Battle Brothers had helmets (but no legs).

It's more like a traditional RPG except full party creation rather than battle brothers sandbox-style tactical gameplay. Comparisons between battle brothers feel a bit off, might have been more accurate in earlier builds?

[edit]
Just remembered what it reminds me a lot of: Expeditions: Vikings.

[Fargus]

Helmets

Jun 23, 2021... Obviously not important enough for them. On the other hand they've added warpaints that you can get in Ludern.

[Dead]

Helmets

Jun 23, 2021... Obviously not important enough for them. On the other hand they've added warpaints that you can get in Ludern.

A bizarre decision. The characters look like shit.

[rusty_shackleford]

I like all the various items you can find in the location scenes. Don't forget to rotate your camera.

RPG side of characters feels a bit weak though. Not enough stats, no called shots, injuries appear to be randomly picked rather than related to what caused the injury. The way you get traits & titles related to what the character does is neat, however.
So is the bond system. For example, I used my ranger to kill an enemy — who was engaged in melee combat with another one of my mercs — from behind(with a nice finisher animation closeup of him sneaking up behind and slicing his throat), and his friendship rating with the other character he helped increased.
The melee 'engagement' system is an interesting, more of an advanced form of AoOs featured in many games now.

Finisher animations are nice — quite brutal. Not enough blood though.
You seem to be able to tame a wide range of animals, but the only animal I tamed was a wolf alpha and ponies. Wolf alpha was very strong, I used both my ponies just for carrying things but they have a 'war pony' upgrade path which makes them usable in combat. I feel like there's probably going to be more human classes either not yet released or not available in the early game.

Also, the character's faces look quite good to me. Maybe they were worse before?
From what I played, very solid game. I'll wait until it fully releases to play it again, but I'm definitely intrigued. I'm leaving a lot out, would suggest playing it if you're the least bit interested.

[Fargus]

The biggest issue for me is that half of the combatants are femoids in otherwise dark and low fantasy medieval game. This just looks retarded and gets on my nerves. Otherwise pretty well designed and addictive game which is more than i can ask from something that was made in current year. Can get repetitive but there is a lot to do here.

Also you should try taming a bear or some dungeron creatures.

[rusty_shackleford]

Also you should try taming a bear or some dungeron creatures.

I only did the first area and the bit of a second area before I stopped. I had 'region-locked' on and I think I went to the wrong region because everything was far above my level, but I already spent my border pass getting there...

[Fargus]

Paying gold (200 something) is alternative to border pass.

► Show Spoiler

If remember it right you can get to Ludern region through Tiltren mountain pass without having papers. But you will have to fight bandits or pay them some gold. Not sure if other regions have backdoors like that.

Spoilered that shit in case people would want to find this through exploring themselves, more fun that way.

It's also useful to have enough climbing hooks to avoid guards or descent from the mountains to save travelling time.

[rusty_shackleford]

If I had a major complaint about the game, it would be that every merchant has an unlimited money supply. Including traveling merchants you find on the road. I was heavily strapped for cash and those guys have money printing machines

[GothGirlSupremacy]

I like the little finishing move animations they have and being low fantasy/medieval focused immediately made me interested but that dreaded "Early Access" shit hangs like a dark cloud and I despise investing in a game that isn't complete. Is there an actual release date planned or is this going to be one of those goddamn forever-EAs?

[rusty_shackleford]

I like the little finishing move animations they have and being low fantasy/medieval focused immediately made me interested but that dreaded "Early Access" shit hangs like a dark cloud and I despise investing in a game that isn't complete. Is there an actual release date planned or is this going to be one of those goddamn forever-EAs?

It's supposed to be releasing in the not too far future. This was the last update prior to their release update according to their roadmap.

► Show Spoiler

[rusty_shackleford]

Paying gold (200 something) is alternative to border pass.

► Show Spoiler

If remember it right you can get to Ludern region through Tiltren mountain pass without having papers. But you will have to fight bandits or pay them some gold. Not sure if other regions have backdoors like that.

Spoilered that shit in case people would want to find this through exploring themselves, more fun that way.

It's also useful to have enough climbing hooks to avoid guards or descent from the mountains to save travelling time.

Didn't realize climbing hooks were manually used until a lost NPC group asked me for one to scale down the mountain and decided to try it out.

► Show Spoiler

Ended up finding a backdoor from the western province snow area to the starter province snow area that uses climbing hooks.

[cpmartins]

There are several places that you can only reach with pythons. They're also very good shortcut-makers in several places, especially when you're doing the mining tour.

[Fargus]

Paying gold (200 something) is alternative to border pass.

► Show Spoiler

If remember it right you can get to Ludern region through Tiltren mountain pass without having papers. But you will have to fight bandits or pay them some gold. Not sure if other regions have backdoors like that.

Spoilered that shit in case people would want to find this through exploring themselves, more fun that way.

It's also useful to have enough climbing hooks to avoid guards or descent from the mountains to save travelling time.

Didn't realize climbing hooks were manually used until a lost NPC group asked me for one to scale down the mountain and decided to try it out.

► Show Spoiler

Ended up finding a backdoor from the western province snow area to the starter province snow area that uses climbing hooks.

I'd keep enough pitons in inventory to use whenever you want to create a "shortcut" and descent from mountains. You can craft them but i wouldn't waste any iron on them at least early on. Better to buy.

[rusty_shackleford]

heh, one of the ruins has a lord of the rings easter egg

► Show Spoiler

the bucket

[rusty_shackleford]

feel like the game can't decide if it wants to tell you a story or wants you to be a mercenary company
you often only get parts of a feud/story, which is fine considering what your company is, but then they drop bits of the story afterwards that make it sometimes seem like you made a bad choice but there wasn't enough story info given to make that decision

really good tho

[rusty_shackleford]

arena boss fights are just puzzles, kind of boring. I hope the rest of the bosses aren't like this.

[Fargus]

The only arena i remember was in Vertruse. Disappointing and short. But being able to buy training dummy blueprint and build it to passively train new recruits is pretty useful.

[rusty_shackleford]

The only arena i remember was in Vertruse. Disappointing and short. But being able to buy training dummy blueprint and build it to passively train new recruits is pretty useful.

Did they have the big city in the game when you played?

[Fargus]

The only arena i remember was in Vertruse. Disappointing and short. But being able to buy training dummy blueprint and build it to passively train new recruits is pretty useful.

Did they have the big city in the game when you played?

Goosenberg update was in October, i played it a bit since then, but never visited the city itself.