(ThyBlackMan.com) Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is finally here. When the game started five years ago as a Kickstarter project, developers promised a lot. They vowed to bring big changes to the genre. After spending about four years in Steam Early Access, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem still feels like an incomplete project. With heavy inspiration from several other action RPGs, this game brings some promising changes, but it lacks so much in terms of performance and gameplay that players feel lost when they reach the end of the game.
A large number of players complained about the game’s responsiveness. Considering the number of players who joined the game when it was released, this was bound to happen. But the sad part is that the game has some serious technical issues which cannot be ignored and you will come across many of them while playing the game. After a few sessions, some players believed that gameplay issues that they were facing were caused by their own PCs. However, the game performed almost the same even on well-built PCs.
Inventory items take a long time to respond, and that too after multiple clicks. This becomes frustrating when collecting loot items as you can’t figure out which one is what until you check all of them individually. Some parts of the game are fun to play. Boss battles are interesting and the diversity in their attacks is something that makes the game challenging. During fights, you sometimes get less time to escape or to protect yourself from attacks which makes the need for quick response critical in this game as most of the time it’s sluggish.
One of the major setbacks in Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem is the use of offline mode. This particular mode feels out of place as you can’t use your offline characters online. There’s no way to merge the two characters or to take your offline characters online. Lack of this feature hurts the gameplay experience since you can’t put your best character from offline mode against your friends online.
In some cases, especially in places where internet connectivity is not so great, having offline mode is a good idea to let players enjoy the game without having to deal with unexpected input lags due to slow internet speed. However, there’s still a lot of potential and so much can be done if developers can merge characters players create offline and online.
It’s bad for a game that attracts thousands of players on the day of its launch and also kept them hooked to it for more than four years. Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem has the potential to do more. It is a game that doesn’t put too many restrictions on players. Unlike other action role-playing games, Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem lets you freely explore new playstyles and experiment with skills and different weapons. At some point, you may want to explore the vast area wielding a pistol and at some point, you may want to use blades and arrows.
Wolcen is a game in which players can choose and change their approach for battles at any time. All you need to do is to collect resources (cost involved) and upgrade your character with new skills and attributes. Using resources to rebuild your characters to match with your style isn’t very demanding and it is undoubtedly fun. The best thing about this much flexibility in gameplay is that you can start from scratch at any point and can do things you want.
Lastly, there’s a lot of room for improvement. Technical problems can be fixed and issues, like bringing offline characters online and improving the stability of servers, can also be given the right treatment as needed. Some reviewers have criticized the developers for not taking another six months to polish the game, one should not forget the fact that a small team of indie developers worked on this $40 game and have also promised free content which will be released in the coming weeks.
Staff Writer; Corey Shaw
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