Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem: Everything just stolen?

Phew, the launch of Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem, the development team from Nice would certainly like to forget, or at least would have liked to see it a bit smoother. Not only that a version not released for testing first made the round and was only revoked shortly before the release. In addition, there were also countless problems with the servers at the launch weekend, which would surely have thrilled joy for inclined Hack & Slay players. We, too, understand why we are only now bringing the test to the debut of the studio.

Wolcen has been in development for several years and originally started as a kickstarter project called Umbra. After some time in Early Access on Steam, the developers have now taken heart and officially released the game on February 13th. A rather bumpy start, however, the servers did not play for a long time, it was hardly possible to start a game session and, moreover, the pleasure, when you came to the server, was immediately decorated with some bugs.

In the meantime, everything is running a bit smoother and despite the rather unsuccessful start, the developers may not be blamed so much. Serious start problems have also resulted in much more experienced studios. Even Diablo III was anything but smooth in the first few days. In addition, the studio is unlikely to have expected such a rush of players. Player numbers in the six-figure range are also rather surprising for a rather "small" crowdfunding title.

So let's take a look at the game itself. Your self-made hero turns out to be the foster son of Inquisitor Heimlock, who primarily competes with everything supernatural in the game world with his troops and has taught you and your "siblings" Edric and Valeria pretty much everything that concerns fighting. Demons and magic, as you can guess, are frowned upon and that's exactly what your problem will be. Because in a battle you take on a demon, awakening supernatural abilities in you.

From now on you are on the run, but you also have to face the demonic activities behind the scenes of the game world. The city of Stormfall will become your home and will serve as the basis for your excursions in the next three acts and the endgame, always accessible via teleporters, which you can gradually unlock, as well as city portals, which you can activate more or less at any time. You know well enough from genre forefather Diablo. The campaign keeps you busy for around 30 hours and is told with surprisingly well-staged cutscenes along with fine English speech with German subtitles. The story is particularly entertaining at the beginning, but flattened noticeably in the third chapter and ended abruptly with a kind of cliffhanger. A sign of upcoming content or have you run out of time and money?

The linear course of the game sends you through mostly rather tubular passages and more open sections. Here too, clear bonds can be seen at Diablo & Co. The design is relatively varied and, thanks to CryEngine, well worth seeing, especially as far as the sometimes very chic illumination of the levels is concerned. However, the Deja Vu feeling never lets go of you in the surroundings, even if some of the characters at Warhammer, especially for the characters, provide a reasonably unique look.

Otherwise you can expect what you can expect in the genre: loot and level, and plenty. A difference to most genre colleagues becomes clear after the somewhat sparse character creation: there is no strict class system. At the beginning you choose an archetype (fighter, magician, ranged), but you can convert at any time using loot and an open skill system.

You discover active skills primarily as loot items from slain opponents, designed for those three archetypes. In addition to the standard attack, up to six skills can be equipped and changed at any time. One on the right mouse button, the other on the keys 1 to 5. Equipped skills are leveled, but in Stormfall they can also be pushed using "primeval affinity" if you want to try something different. Leveling up has the advantage that you can apply different perks to each skill and reinforce it.

Of course, you also level your character very classically using experience points through quests and shot enemies. Four attributes are available, namely ferocity, toughness, agility and wisdom, which can also be reset for collected gold. For each level-up you also receive one point for passive skills in different orientations, which can be flexibly distributed using a system similar to that in Path of Exile. All this gives you a lot of freedom, especially since the combination of certain branches of arms and associated skills also allow mixed gameplay.

Tank (sword and shield), bat (two-handed or two-handed), rogue as a close-range fighter with daggers or long-range fighter with a bow or pistol (sic!) As well as magicians in different play styles are very classic. You can, for example, also combine a one-handed sword with a pistol or a magic catalyst to use melee and ranged combat or magic in parallel. However, the balancing could still be fine-tuned.