Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem Review (MGfreak)
Because of the new update I decided to give the game another chance. Turns out it remains incredibly frustrating and I really can't recommend the game to anyone.
First of all, the game lags throughout. Even with a very low ping this is very noticeable. It takes up to five seconds between clicking on the merchant and opening the menu. With a ping of 30.
The lag is also clearly noticeable in combat, especially when using a healing potion. In the HUD, you can clearly see how the empty life bar is filled, then falls back to its original state for a fraction of a second, only to be filled again. It's so much fun when a fatal hit kills you thanks to this lag.
Speaking of death, once you die, you have three respawns. Resurrecting is only allowed for a short period of time and the game always respawns you at your corpse. Once you revive, you are immediately vulnerable to damage again. This can (and will!) lead to you being revived in a poisonous cloud and dying again immediately.
The game has no animation cancelling. Short explanation what animation cancelling means: If you are in an animation (e.g. casting a spell), but then suddenly want to dodge an attack, the spell is canceled and the character dodges. This function does not exist in the game. Meaning that every animation, no matter how small and unimportant, is played to the end before a new input by the player is accepted. There are constantly situations in battles where the game tells you that you should dodge an attack, but you can't because you're already casting a spell or your character has to finish his walking animation first.
In the end, the game feels extremely laggy and unresponsive.
After almost three years we finally have the last chapter of the story (lol). Of course, at this point I have no idea what it was about and just skipped through the dialogs. I just dont care anymore. So i cant review the story
But looks visually nice, like the rest of the game.
The gameplay of the last chapter, however, I can review. And it is a disaster. There is hardly any pure story gameplay compared to the other chapters. Instead, the mechanics of the previous endgame have been reworked to stretch out the gameplay of the last chapter as long as possible.
Instead of going from area to area like in the previous chapters (and all other diablo likes games). You now have to research the next story mission on a map. To advance this research you now have to empty random dungeons. Basically the research of new Missions take for example 3 turns, and one dungeons is a turn.
You can accelerate the research and unlock other buffs by other researches, but these also take turns. This was the old endgame and it is obvious this was reworked to rush out the story chapter.
If you have finally researched the final boss, you can now research debuffs for the boss. These are enormously expensive (gold and other resources) and are done by the same research mechanic.
So you invest a lot of gold and time to weaken the boss, run dungeons, get better gear and try to enjoy the gameplay. But there are two huge problems:
1) At some point, the game forces you to start the fight. You have no other choice.
Several battles with different tasks follow. And hopefully you knew exactly which debuffs you were researching. Because:
2) If you die in this battle (because you weakened the wrong attack or a buggy mechanic killed you), all your progress is gone. All buffs and debuffs are deactivated, your gold is gone of course and you are back to square one. Now you have to waste a ton of time again, have to spend hundredthousands of gold again and hope you get him the next time.
Yeah it could be cool rogue lite feature, if the gameplay would be fun. But sadly it isnt. Its frustrating.
I gave this game many chances. But the gameplay issues since day one, the chapter 4 mechanic that just an insult and Diablo IV and Path of Exile on the horizon i dont think i will every enjoy this game.
And i didnt even mention the bugs (and there are so many!), the boring gear system, the uninspred skills and the pseudo deep character progression.