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Stuck in the backlog of games

Living in Korea, blogging about games, TTRPGs, and other things I want to fixate on.

PFP credit to: https://twitter.com/Seharuuchan


Warhammer Chaosbane Store Art, featuring a very angry dwarf with two axes.

Another previously completed game, though this one will have a few less screen grabs since explaining the game wasn't that hard. Much easier to describe an action RPG with loot than a 'card based tower sim magic school'.

(Perpetual thanks to This post for the template idea)

Summary

Warhammer: Chaosbane is an action RPG in the vein of Diablo or Torchlight. If that doesn't immediately tell you what sort of game you are up to, you will control a character in an angled topdown view, going through semi-random areas and killing a lot of monsters with various skills and powers. Monsters will drop loot for you to increase your characters power, and various customizations will be available to further allow you to change how each character is played.

For the story its rather...lacking. The intro storybook tells how your characters were part of a huge campaign for an important lore character in Warhammer Fantasy, a big overlord was defeated, and now you rest...and then something bad happens to said lore character. Now your character has to save them. The story is entirely an excuse to go to four regions, beat up four different themes of chaos, and be adjacent to Warhammer Fantasy storylines. For the player though, it definitely feels like all the cool things happened before the game started, and you're just doing the sidequest before the next cool thing in story.

There are several characters on offer, and the playstyles differ quite a bit. All the major meta-types of play are here, the paladin type with a sword and board, the archer/rogue/druid, the mage, the berserker, etc. If you are looking for new and innovative characters, the closest is the dwarven engineer who tends to blow herself up with steam. Don't expect much innovation, but each character plays well enough in their own niche, and nothing feels out of place.

For customization, you initially get skills, which are seperated into various tiers. You only have so many slots available, and each skill beyond the most basic costs skill points to equip. You can have 7 passive and 7 active skills. Active skills generally encourage you to have at least one basic skill (which generates mana) and other skills that use it. Each character also has a unique ability that is usable at any time (the elf rolls, the berserker yanks himself forward with his axes, the paladin shield charges, the mage can attract certain spells to spots). Overall the skill variety for each character felt unique, and considering I had to play all of them, I never felt any were too similar.

Gearing in the game is very straightforward, especially early on. While gear has some substats, there is a helpful mouseover that just tells you how much better an item is in offense or defense. Oddly, there are no shops that sell gear, gold has an entirely different purpose. Until at the very end when you get unique and set gear with special bonuses, every piece of gear is interchangeable. If the number is green, just swap it. No different weapons for characters or the like.

Each characters skill tree is a bit lackluster, given most of the nodes are just 'bonus % to X'. You have some nodes that are unique bonuses, like 'more summons from skill', but mostly you are just filling in the spots to get to those. Nothing here as dramatic as a Diablo 2 or Grim Dawn skill tree.

There's also the usual little additions, a blessing system using gems to add random enchantments to items, which you don't really use until you hit max level. Since you don't use gold to buy items, you don't sell them either, you donate them for permanent bonuses from a vendor.

The story of the game itself is quite short, and if you play the game most will be spent in the max level / post game systems. There is a prestige system after you hit max level which gives you absolutely tiny bonuses. There are systems where you spend gold to run maps / bosses / randomized places at higher difficulties for better loot. If you like to get more powerful and kill enemies to get more powerful, there is a solid post game loop.

The Good

Solid gameplay While the game has a bit of jank, especially around stairs, it is a solid fun action RPG. Not AAA or the top of the tier of similar games, but a good B+ entry. I enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay.

Post Game Content Finish the game, do optional challenges to get better gear, beat super-leveled bosses, get lots of colorful items to drop. If murdering hundreds of enemies looking for legendary gear to kill even bigger enemies sounds like fun, this game does the post-story loop well.

The Bad

Samey-samey Even with different chaos god flavorings, all the enemies are basically the same. The only major differences are the lesser demons and champions, and sometimes they're more annoying than fun in the difference (Tzeech demons just leave fire that does too much damage and is more annoying than interesting).

Absolutely Bland Story The story is utterly useless. It entirely serves to allow you to kill minions of the four chaos gods in four different zones, ending in four different demons.

The Meh

If you don't like post-game grinding... This game doesn't have much for you. The story is maybe 5 hours long, and they clearly spent most of their time on the systems to re-use the content.

Jank There is a small amount of jank in the game. It eats up too much memory for how it looks, and sometimes clicks don't register where they feel they should, and shots get caught in ramps. Not terribly often, but it was noticeable at times. There is a lack of polish at times.

The Completion

The game had three big hurdles to completion. You have to complete the story with every character, which is a lot of sheer time, even if you crank it down to easy mode. You have to beat every boss on one of the higher difficulties, which isn't terrible, but you do end up just cheesing them instead of treating it like a strong challenge. Then you have to just do a large amount of post game content (mostly relic hunt), which once you've done everything else you just crank it down to easy and steamroll to get the numbers up. Not the worst game I've ever completed, but time consuming.


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