I have been following this game since its first announcement in 2015 or so. All the negative reviews and reports about bugs and glitches and other problems kept me away from buying it. Finally, around Christmas 2022, the game was so cheap that I risked it. And I had quite some fun with Wolcen. I had like zero performance issues and only minor bugs. The controls can be a bit unresponsive at times if you activate skills too quickly after each other, but I got used to that. The game has an interesting skill system where you can freely build your own class with different skill trees. The skill trees are arranged on three rotating circle platforms that can be rotated, so that you can mix and match different skill sets. On top of that there are four attributes that can be upgraded after each level up.
The rest of the game isn’t as innovative though. It’s your standard klick and kill Diablo-like gameplay loop where you kill monsters in mostly linear stages, collect and sell loot to get stronger. The graphics are still pretty great and the sound effects have a lot of punch. Which makes fighting the demon hordes satisfying. The art style reminds a lot of classic Warhammer but with even more hideous looking over-the-top armors and colorfully glowing weapons. Luckily that can be toned down in the transmog-system that lets you choose how your character shall look. There is also a wide range of unlockable dyes for even more customization.
So far, so good. But there are some severe problems with the game. Acts 1-3 were fine, nothing special, but fun for a sucker for Diablo-likes like me. The spectacular boss fights towards the end of each act can be some serious roadblocks though. And the options to level up your character are pretty limited through Act 1-3. So prepare for some potential grinding to get rid of the chapter bosses.
The game falls apart in the final Act 4. It feels like the developers lost their vision here where they want to take the game. Suddenly you are in some (very lite) rouge-lite mode with ultra-repetitive missions, that all scale to your level, that sometimes only take a few minutes to complete. There is some weird city building meta which feels fun at first but pretty much leads to nothing substantial and feels like something straight out of a mobile game. And the worst thing: All of a sudden the game became buggy for me. Mission events not triggering so that I couldn’t finish dungeons. Crashes to desktop. And the worst part, which tipped me over to giving this a lower rating: A bugged final boss. I tried the boss two times. The first time the game crashed to desktop with 10% Boss-health left. So I had to replay the dungeon before the boss, and then he didn’t do anything in its first phase. “Well, that is some poetic justice”, I thought to myself and hacked away. Just to get him down to 50% in the second phase again. Then he flew away … and just didn’t return. He literally let me stay there and I waited for five full minutes for him to return. But he was just gone. Fine, I considered this as a win, watched the ending cutscene on Youtube and uninstalled the game.
The rest of the game isn’t as innovative though. It’s your standard klick and kill Diablo-like gameplay loop where you kill monsters in mostly linear stages, collect and sell loot to get stronger. The graphics are still pretty great and the sound effects have a lot of punch. Which makes fighting the demon hordes satisfying. The art style reminds a lot of classic Warhammer but with even more hideous looking over-the-top armors and colorfully glowing weapons. Luckily that can be toned down in the transmog-system that lets you choose how your character shall look. There is also a wide range of unlockable dyes for even more customization.
So far, so good. But there are some severe problems with the game. Acts 1-3 were fine, nothing special, but fun for a sucker for Diablo-likes like me. The spectacular boss fights towards the end of each act can be some serious roadblocks though. And the options to level up your character are pretty limited through Act 1-3. So prepare for some potential grinding to get rid of the chapter bosses.
The game falls apart in the final Act 4. It feels like the developers lost their vision here where they want to take the game. Suddenly you are in some (very lite) rouge-lite mode with ultra-repetitive missions, that all scale to your level, that sometimes only take a few minutes to complete. There is some weird city building meta which feels fun at first but pretty much leads to nothing substantial and feels like something straight out of a mobile game. And the worst thing: All of a sudden the game became buggy for me. Mission events not triggering so that I couldn’t finish dungeons. Crashes to desktop. And the worst part, which tipped me over to giving this a lower rating: A bugged final boss. I tried the boss two times. The first time the game crashed to desktop with 10% Boss-health left. So I had to replay the dungeon before the boss, and then he didn’t do anything in its first phase. “Well, that is some poetic justice”, I thought to myself and hacked away. Just to get him down to 50% in the second phase again. Then he flew away … and just didn’t return. He literally let me stay there and I waited for five full minutes for him to return. But he was just gone. Fine, I considered this as a win, watched the ending cutscene on Youtube and uninstalled the game.