Wartales Switch Review
Wartales is another shadow drop from the most recent Nintendo Direct, and I think it’s a shame as there was no lead-up or marketing so it released with little fanfare for those who stick exclusively to console gaming. Why open with this statement? Despite its problems on launch, I would confidently say that Wartales is one of the best games I have ever played, creating a Dungeons and Dragons style gameplay, survival elements, strategic combat, and an impressive world we haven’t seen since the likes of the Witcher 3. Due to the scale of this massive game, this is easily the longest review I have ever written, and after spending 20 hours playing the campaign, it’s safe to say, that I have only scratched the surface of Wartales.
Wartales is a very unique game that sees you manage a warband of mercenaries. It employs unique survival elements including crafting and ration management, as well as paying your troops to keep them happy as you navigate a vast medieval world full of conflict and strife. The amount of depth and management is easily Wartales’ strength as you can level professions, employ new mercenaries, and choose your alignment by either helping people or becoming a scourge, preying on traveling merchants and ambushing them from the cover of forests. Be careful though, as you gain fame or notoriety, people will either seek you out or hunt you down.
The game is gorgeous on the Switch, with the overworld being detailed and showing the movements of merchants and troops. Visiting shops, buildings, of landmarks results in a highly detailed isometric view of your surroundings, allowing you to carefully trawl the area for essential supplies or resources. Units are detailed and gear reflects their appearances on both the overworld and the field of battle. This is all complimented by a haunting and immersive score, with violins and horns really adding to the atmosphere of the game. Most dialogue has excellent voice acting as well, further making it easier to get lost in the game.
Managing your Mercenary crew boils down to effective leadership and professional assignment. Almost every action you take leads to working toward unlocking new skills and perks. Assigning jobs helps balance out your crew’s ability to tackle problems in different ways, or simply loot and steal more. Having a blacksmith in your crew allows you to better equip your units early on, a cook helps stretch your rations out further, and a miner can save precious krowns by mining your own iron ore. It doesn’t matter if you stumble on a more valuable profession later on, as you can re-assign jobs on the fly, while resetting job progress to zero, it’s a good strategy early on to figure out what you need in your team.
The survival aspect is a great feature of the game as well, allowing you to hunt for food to keep rations up. If your crew doesn’t eat well, happiness drops and the morale of your troops does too, leading to relationship breakdowns, and even troops leaving. To stay on top of this, you need to feed your troops well, pay them on time, and check your friendly fire in combat. Your troops can also form relationships that unlock new skills and abilities, and expand on the story. Do you brag about your combat exploits after battle which gains a few action points? Or do you commend your team, adding happiness? These choices, as well as choices in the overworld, will shape you and your troops into the heroes or villains you will become.
Combat is a turn-based affair, similar to the Xcom series. Moving troops together means they are supported, adding bonus effects, and surrounding and flanking enemies also gives attack and stat bonuses. Stacking up isn’t always the answer, however, as some troops cleave in a cone pattern, making placement strategies an essential aspect of combat. As you progress, you also can appoint Captains and Luitenants that provide bonus buffs in combat, helping rally your troops with things like retaliatory attacks, or bonus action points for that turn. Some combat can be avoided altogether, by bargaining before entering the combat phase, or quickly moving to dismantle the hierarchy of enemy warbands by taking out their leader, resulting in a chance to scatter the remaining combatants on the field. While you may be tempted to not let them run, you have to decide whether you can bear the resource cost of repairing armour and healing troops by extending the fight. It’s this sort of risk/reward approach that adds so much more depth than most other games. If someone is downed in battle, you may be able to patch them up with first aid to stabilize them, or lose them altogether due to the permadeath nature of combat.
Multiplayer is also included, but due to the early release nature, I was unable to test it myself. Multiplayer sees you manage separate units in your Warband, on a fresh save, and explore the overworld freely. Your mercenary group shares resources, but each unit also has its own inventory. Communication is essential for combat and camp management, and it seems like it could be a great addition if you have 3 other friends with the game.
The game includes some great accessibility options, such as increasing the text size and contrast, as well as colorblind options for vision-impaired gamers. These options can be easily toggled in the options menus, and difficulty can also be scaled to ensure you enjoy your experience with Wartales. Collectibles on the map are also outlined, making them easier to distinguish from the environment around them.
Unfortunately, in its launch state, Wartales suffers terribly from performance issues that can really break immersion. The game crashes to the Home Screen every hour or so, and there are constant hitches when you perform a finisher move or lightning strikes in the overworld. There are also random framerate drops while navigating the Overworld as well. I have no doubt these issues will be fixed in an upcoming patch, but early adopters be warned. I recommend setting your save game mode to free, allowing generous autosaves and manual saves. By default, your game only saves when you camp which could lead to losing an hour of gameplay or so. There are also UI issues, including being unable to drop items despite the icon being there. This game would easily be one of the highest-scored games on What’s It Like without these issues, and I will update this review when the post-launch update drops.
These problems aside, Wartales is still one of the most engrossing, unique, and outstanding games I have had the pleasure of playing on the Nintendo Switch, and I sincerely hope that Wartales sees success in the Nintendo Community. It’s not often we see a game that presents new and interesting ideas that culminate into a sprawling epic that will take 100s of hours to finish, and keep you engaged the entire time playing.
So What’s it Like?
Wartales is a cross between Divinity 2: Original Sin, and X-Com 2.
