Wartales - Preview @ RPS

[HiddenX]

Rock Paper Shotgun checked out Wartales:

Wartales review (early access): an ambitious and gritty RPG with real promise

"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.

[...]

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.

More information.

 

[wolfgrimdark]

Sounds like it does have potential. I am trying to resist another EA but may end up getting sooner than planned.

 

[Giovanni1983]

I will not buy into the EA version but I saw a couple of brief videos of the gameplay and I am sold. Looks really good.

 

[Heckle]

I finally broke down and bought this one. It’s a good game and I enjoy the combat and crafting. However it seems a little light on content outside of combat. So far the game is almost entirely of the “go here and kill x” variety. There are story moments but they are a little too simplistic for me. I’ll stay general to avoid spoilers but you are basically put in the middle of two groups who are on opposing sides of an argument. While there seems to be some merit to both sides but you get no choice of brokering peace or a middle ground of some kind and instead simply get to choose who to kill. The skill trees aren’t fully implemented yet either and the economy seems a little barebones. I wish I would have held off on this one for a while and would recommend everyone let this one bake a little more before diving in. It has the potential to be a great game but it’s not quite there yet.

 

[wolfgrimdark]

That is good to know Heckle ... will wait a bit more I think then and see what updates bring.

 

[FurtiveNyctophile]

That sounds like they have a really good framework/foundation for their game because this is what I am hearing too; that the combat and UI/systems are really great, but the story isn't fleshed out yet.

As far as I'm concerned that is exactly the time to do your EA - here, we have a finished framework that we think is fun; we want input in the last part of this project to figure out how we could make it MORE fun. (And then flesh out the story, etc as needed. )

 

[rjshae]

Then again, Battle Brothers didn't have much of a story either.

 

[Carnifex]

Battle Brothers may not have had much of a focused story, yet the combat and mechanics are pretty darn great. If Wartales can come even close to that level, it'll be something to play for sure.

 

[rjshae]

One of these days I'd love to see a Fantasy General meets Battle Brothers, with the graphical style of Wartales.

 

[Heckle]

I love battle brothers and while I would agree that it doesn’t have much of an overarching story I don’t think it can be dismissed as not having any story. I think the story is really all about the personal journey of your brothers themselves. They start with a little background flavor, some personal quirks/skills, and then you get to see them evolve over time with scars/injuries, perks, etc. I become rather invested in each of my brothers and feel something when they get killed by that brigand or live to see retirement. There are even little randomized story events which pop up and impact their development. I think BB nailed what they were trying to do and I think it’s genius.

Regretfully Wartales just isn’t there yet. Yes there is some kind of story you are trying to progress in each region but you aren’t invested in it. And your mercenaries are devoid of any backstory, personality, or flavor. They are just sword guy, archer, mace guy, dagger guy, etc. I do like Wartales art style and think that it’s got huge potential. But it’s not ready to be compared to Battle Brothers.