Wartales is currently in Early Access on Steam. It is developed by Shiro Games, the French studio behind the Viking RTS Northgard. And it took much my time this month.
Lots going on inside Wartalesmany influences are lumped together and swirling around each other, so it’s the best (or at least most succinct) way I’ve seen it described: “Wartales is a medieval open-world role-playing game with turn-based combat in which the player leads a group of mercenaries.”
It’s basically mercenary management. With some fights. And a story. It’s like the management side of XCOM added the feeding and resting needs of a survival sim and then decided on a little RPG adventure. I’ve heard people say there are mountain and blade Here. Others say that is very near battle brothers.
I could go on. But instead of continuing to confuse you and bury you in references to existing video games, just check out this release trailer instead:
I’ve been playing the game all week and – this part is important –what i played was fantastic. The turn-based combat, while not exactly new, works well enough. Your journeys are filled with story-driven quests filled with morally ambiguous choices that, as anyone who’s played RPGs with medieval roots will tell you, are the best kinds of choices. Your party’s survival management, meaning anyone can die and you can hire replacements, is the same fire sign, XCOM-y pull it always does when a game entrusts the life of a (digital) human to you.
Great for work or play
This laptop features a 15.6-inch touchscreen, an Intel Core i3 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB SSD, a webcam, and more. It also has a variety of ports for connectivity, giving it versatility as a display or even a desktop replacement.
know why i am loving but the game? It’s that point of view. While the camera zooms in for battles and conversations, most of the time is in Wartales you spend wandering through an isometric overworld as your party weaves through forests and mountain passes and pretty little country lanes.
It is known here that I am a lover of good isometric video games, and this is one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen. It’s a whole game based on these scenes in community of the ring where you will see everyone striding across mountains and grassy plains. The combination of lush landscapes, slow pace and wide horizons makes this game seem like it largelike it’s a world so big and full of possibilities that you’ll lose yourself in it, but it’s also so picturesque and immediate with its concerns that you won’t mind walking around and taking in the sights for ages.
It doesn’t feel like a stage or a level or a map. It feels like one World.
I emphasized “what I’ve played” earlier because it’s from a lot of people’s accounts that are much further into it Wartales as I am, everything that makes opening times such a blast – the sense of vastness, the constant resting and eating to keep your soldiers happy and breathing, the overworld battles – becomes a bit of a chore later on.
Maybe it does, and if this game leaves Early Access and I get that far, I’ll see if that’s actually the case. But now, about 15 hours later, The open-ended mission structure, which lets you accept contracts at will, means that despite its potential as a day waster, it’s actually perfect for a fairly busy part of my life since I can jump in. Complete a contract or two, set up camp, save the game and check it out again at the next opportunity.
Wartales is now available on Steam.
