Curious if anyone here was playing the Early Access? It's gone live today. It intrigues me greatly, but thought I'd check here to see if anyone has played it and if so, what they thought of it.
It's been on my list forever...maybe I, like you, will pick it up now that it is launched.
Quote from: Gusington on April 12, 2023, 11:23:15 AMIt's been on my list forever...maybe I, like you, will pick it up now that it is launched.
I don't buy things these days day 1 of launch. I wait for other poor saps to review games for me :uglystupid2:
I just wish they'd do a straight remake of Darklands.
It has amazing Steam reviews at over 90% but apparently it scales so if you recruit lots of mercenaries as you can do the mobs you face get much bigger. That may bother you or it may not.
Like Gus it has been on my wishlist forever but I have yet to jump in.
Be aware it has quite tough survival mechanics with a need to pay your band every 3 days and money and food being quite hard to come by after the first easier region (there are now 6)
No random maps btw.
.
Additionally, and I just remembered this - Northgard (also by Shigo) was less than kind to me.
I wonder how similar the gameplay is here and if it can be equally as frustrating.
I've got it. It's pretty cool, but haven't spent a lot of time with it yet.
I played it a fair bit a few months back but eventually I hit a wall where I had to find a key to the next region and it was just really blasted hard. The game is hard overall once you get past the beginning and has mechanics that promote acceleration once you start going backwards. It was fun up to that point but ultimately frustrating. I'll pick it back up at some point but I'm going to give it some time to mature first.
Just to be fair to Wartales the 30th March and release day updates have changed things very much for the better.
There are now options to play with or without scaling difficulty and the admin burden of paying your band now takes place every 3 rests rather than every 72 hours which was less easy to keep track of.
Love the face you can take a cannibal perk and at a pinch eat your fallen comrades when things get desperate (so remember to loot their dear departed corpses :grin: )
May have to give this one a go.
Not only has a lot been added but the Dev team seem super responsive and a lot of further development and dlc's are planned.
I've got my eyes on this game as well. The only thing keeping me back is the fear that Wartales will end up like that game Battle Brothers. Insanely difficult just for the sake of being difficult.
Quote from: W8taminute on April 13, 2023, 08:03:00 AMI've got my eyes on this game as well. The only thing keeping me back is the fear that Wartales will end up like that game Battle Brothers. Insanely difficult just for the sake of being difficult.
Ditto. Battle Brothers is great fun for a while and then your group gets wiped. Maybe some Dark Souls expert or other people that love insanely difficult games get puzzle out the way to obtain some kind of long-term success, but it's past me.
I had a little more success with Wartales, although it did take quite a few playthroughs to get to the point where I'm supposed to go to the next area, but I tried a few times to get there the only way I could figure out and got summarily disposed of each time.
Owned since Early Access, waited to really play until full release. Spent the last few days with it non-stop. Fantastic gameplay. Real sense of ownership over your company.
Real echoes of The Black Company (Glen Cook).
Everything I have experienced gives me sense of incredible amount of deep emergent gameplay, replayability, and fun.
Quote from: GeneralHawk on April 13, 2023, 05:05:37 PMOwned since Early Access, waited to really play until full release. Spent the last few days with it non-stop. Fantastic gameplay. Real sense of ownership over your company.
Real echoes of The Black Company (Glen Cook).
Everything I have experienced gives me sense of incredible amount of deep emergent gameplay, replayability, and fun.
Great to hear !
Thanks for the impressions .
I am so conflicted...some posts make it sound good, but then I look at reviews and some are luke warm:) Very tempted...
I've given it a go several times and really do enjoy the mechanics. My problem is it turns into a grind just to be able to provide food. There are skills that alleviate this but not enough for me to enjoy everything else going on while trying to keep everyone from a mutiny. The battles are great fun though.
The Black Company you say, eh?
Dammit :/
I'm also hearing even on a normal difficulty this game, while entertaining, is a grind. That puts me off. I'll wait for a deep discount or when things get fleshed out a bit more.
It sure does look purdy though :ThumbsUp:
I recently played the game after its full release. It has improved quite a bit since early release.
I didn't spend a ton of time with it, but I did get a strong open world RPG feel from it. There is a certain grittiness to it that is atmospheric.
I walked away thinking it was a good solid game, that I want to keep playing.
Ok I broke down and bought the game over the weekend. I'm about 4.9 hours into it and I like what I see so far.
One thing I quickly learned is that for some of those really tough fights you may run into to there is an option to bribe your way out of it. Well worth doing that when your band is just not quite up to snuff yet to take on these fights. Those kind of fights, for me at least, have so far been few.
BTW the game is also on sale right now to celebrate the launch...25% off, or $26.24 US. Throwing it into my cart to think about it a little more :justice:
Quote from: Gusington on April 17, 2023, 02:05:07 PMBTW the game is also on sale right now to celebrate the launch...25% off, or $26.24 US. Throwing it into my cart to think about it a little more :justice:
If you like idea of an open world RPG that lets you manage a band of medieval mercenaries in a turn-based tactical combat setting, you really can't go wrong for that price (IMHO).
^I like all of the ideas you mentioned, greatly :tophat:
Quote from: Gusington on April 17, 2023, 02:05:07 PMBTW the game is also on sale right now to celebrate the launch...25% off, or $26.24 US. Throwing it into my cart to think about it a little more :justice:
You just had to say that, didn't you. I got it. Now when the heck am I going to play it?
:Party:
I have not bought it yet but may tonight.
I bought Wartales about a year ago when there was only one area. I played it for a while and stopped shortly after they added a second area. Overall I liked the game (with a few reservations) but decided to put it aside until it was finished (i.e. I didn't like it enough to suffer through its growing pains).
Understand that I am a big fan of the combat in Battle Brothers, but was always dissapointed in how small and repetitive the strategic game map was. I probably got Wartales because I was hoping it would fix the few things I didn't like about Battle Brothers. Early Access Wartales improved on a few things a lot, a lot of things somewhat, but had one glaring weakness that I doubt will ever get fixed. Overall it was a fairly positive experience once you got used to an annoyingly unrealistic game convention in the combat system.
At the time (and I doubt that it's changed) when you started a combat your available deployment slots were scattered all over the battle map. There was no possibility of an advance to contact, and grouping more than one or two of your characters in any kind of formation was very difficult or almost impossible.
I'm going to wait a couple of months past the initial shakedown period before trying the game again (things always come to light in the code when thousands of new people start playing, and many of the inevitable fixes tend to break saved games). Having said all of that, I liked most of what I saw and the game is certainly worth buying at a discount.
Well stated Philippe.
I do understand what you are referring to with respect to combat placement of troops. I'm ok with how the system works in this game, maybe even forgiving that limitation to some extent.
I say that because of my absolute frustration with Battle Brothers. Battle Brothers for me was an enigma I couldn't solve, despite over 40 hours of gameplay. The majority of my time with the game was pressing restart after losing my party on the second mission on easy because I got stormed by a pack of monsters several levels above my own men. That and the random generator of hitting the target where if the computer wants you to die you will die no matter how probable your men can hit targets.
Wartales does not have such nonsense. In fact I have completed the first area without losing any of my human characters, although I did lose a couple of captured wolves and boars that were in my team. All of this on easy.
Easy is easy in Wartales but Easy is nigh on impossible in Battle Brothers.
How's it compare to Mordheim? I enjoyed that one quite a bit in spite of the brutal difficulty and clunky interface.
Just by chance, I happened to be reading Dan Jones' historical novel "Essex Dogs," about a company of English mercenaries fighting for the "Black Prince" during the Crecy campaign in 1346.
Dan Jones is an accomplished medieval historian, so "Essex Dogs" has plenty of gritty detail.
Anyway, "Wartales" and "Essex Dogs" synched pretty well together to get me into the mood; a great time.
Quote from: Silent Disapproval Robot on April 20, 2023, 04:55:07 PMHow's it compare to Mordheim? I enjoyed that one quite a bit in spite of the brutal difficulty and clunky interface.
I don't know as I've never played
Mordheim.
Apologies for digging up this thread but I got this in the sale and I think it's a really great game. I've been playing it solidly on the easiest difficulty level, which is actually challenging -so 'normal' must be quite tough.
I really, really like this game. The battles and squad growth is like X-COM and I find the game highly addictive. I guess the state of the game has evolved since this thread was started?
Quote from: Ian C on March 18, 2025, 02:05:35 PMApologies for digging up this thread but I got this in the sale and I think it's a really great game. I've been playing it solidly on the easiest difficulty level, which is actually challenging -so 'normal' must be quite tough.
I really, really like this game. The battles and squad growth is like X-COM and I find the game highly addictive. I guess the state of the game has evolved since this thread was started?
Totally agree!! I bought this on sale a few months ago and it has almost everything that I love in games these days. I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't tried it yet!
NOTE: I liked the game so much on PC I also bought it on Switch, and the Switch version performs pretty bad compared to my PC (which hasn't had impressive specs in like 3 years).
Quote from: Ian C on March 18, 2025, 02:05:35 PMApologies for digging up this thread but I got this in the sale and I think it's a really great game. I've been playing it solidly on the easiest difficulty level, which is actually challenging -so 'normal' must be quite tough.
I really, really like this game. The battles and squad growth is like X-COM and I find the game highly addictive. I guess the state of the game has evolved since this thread was started?
Better posting in an old thread than starting a new one! I bought this over a year ago, but have never played. Now, maybe I will have to.