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79 people found this review helpful
25 people found this review funny
3
Recommended
0.0 hrs last two weeks / 64.2 hrs on record (64.0 hrs at review time)
Posted: Apr 12, 2020 @ 1:18pm
Updated: Apr 12, 2020 @ 1:20pm

Overall Score: 8.4 / 10

⚠️　This review refers to the single-player experience.

　
Quality
　
　
8.3/10
　
　
　 　 Quality product; minor flaws
　
Performance
9/10
Flawless in 1080p @ ~120 FPS on High;
smooth with rare lag spikes in 1440p @
60 FPS on Very High; extensive graphic
settings; runs fine with cloned monitors
Utility
8/10
Occasional glitches and minor bugs but
nothing game-breaking; the developers
took a dedicated break from working on
new content for fixing known issues tho'
Controls
8/10
Intuitive, simple controls similar to those
of MOBAs / other ARPGs; customizable
key bindings; bare-bones, outdated loot
management: no loot filters, no "loot-all"
feature, no inventory organization tools
　
Gameplay
　
　
9.3/10
　
　
　 　Addictive, Diablo-esque ARPG
　
Challenge
10/10
Well balanced default difficulty, yet also
offers an easy mode as well; increasing,
customizable difficulty of the endgame:
choose dungeon lvl and game modifiers
(modifiers are rolled out randomly tho'!)
Content
10/10
~12 h story mode; extensive endcontent
with loads of unlockables and new loot;
high replay value thanks to a big variety
of builds and endgame progress shared
among all characters; 100 h+ to "100%"
Diversity
9/10
Lots of different locations, enemy types
and item models; various active skills to
choose from accompanied by a gigantic
passive skill tree; lots of RNG elements;
builds offer a wide variety of playstyles;
endgame mode is grindy & lacks variety
Immersion
8/10
Genre-typical, addictive gameplay loop:
kill, loot and optimize character stats by
choosing the right skills and gear; huge
enemy hordes to bash and its fun, fast-
paced combat make it hard to put down
for both fans of the genre & newcomers;
DIY / community character class system
　
Design
　
　
7.6/10
　
　
　　 Great effort for an indie team
　
Visuals
10/10
Rich, visually pleasing battles thanks to
detailed skill / character animations and
strong visual hit feedback (option. gore);
creative, versatile enemy designs; neat
gear design (customize colour & model);
enviroments look great and offer a nice
variety for the endgame RNG-dungeon
maps due to versatile, timeless themes
Sound
7/10
Decent voiceovers; good SFX; matching,
rather subtle, immersion-friendly BGM,
which is not especially memorable tho'
Texts
5/10
Mediocre story with poor pacing, which
interrupts the game flow too much, but
is easily skippable at least; cute vendor
NPC chats; English texts are very good,
but the German translation is hardly un-
derstandable and sounds like a Google
translate result (especially crucial stats,
item & skill descriptions are messed up)
Mapping
7/10
Linear maps with some sidetracking for
rare spawns, special chests or extra XP;
RNG-dungeon mode with a wide variety
of themes whereas the maps are always
rather small and have a similar structure
Interface
9/10
Well designed interface overall and lots
of options to customize your HUD & UI;
simple menus which fulfill their purpose


Additional information:

👯　Highly reminiscent of Diablo 3 and Path of Exile.

💎　At first overhyped and now underrated due to...

→ 　crash of the online servers at the launch weekend
→ 　teething problems of press review / launch version
→ 　various problems and issues with the online mode
→ 　♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ by upset fans about nerfed meta builds


Tested with:

melee, ranged and mage builds
glass cannon and 0-death builds

1080p @ 144 Hz (single monitor)
1440p @ 60 Hz & 60 Hz (cloned)
Low, Medium, High / Very High

Windows 10 Professsional 64-bit
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (12 x 3.80 GHz)
Asus RX 5700 XT (8 GB GDDR6, PCIe 4.0)
32 GB DDR4-3200 RAM; NVMe M.2 SSD


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6 Comments
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TribalSouljah Apr 21, 2020 @ 3:14pm 
I wrote a similar review for the game. I feel that it has a good foundation to start from and they can build on it. Many of the early reviews are about server issues, which I pointed out in my review that if you complain about server issues on launch of an online game you might as well go outside and apologize to every tree in a square mile area for making oxygen for you to complain about something so mundane and expected. It's a good game, and I'm glad to see another objective look at it. I have about 100 hours between the beta and 3 characters that have finished the story.
Spliffi Apr 17, 2020 @ 3:40am 
@ talha: Delighted to hear you liked it that much. Ty also for the positive feedback!
TiteFleur Apr 13, 2020 @ 3:27pm 
To be honest, gameplay is excellent. Not too many hits to do, but still enough to make it dynamic. Compared to a Grim dawn, for example, it was way better. Storywise it was nice, albeit a bit slow. Graphics were excellent and some scenes epic (Vault, anyone?).

But yes, trouble was on the servers at the beginning. The guys were not expecting that many people on it. Slightly too linear, and drops on bosses could be better. I personally enjoyed the boss difficulty. Reminded me of old times.
TLH 38 Apr 13, 2020 @ 7:37am 
That's the review i was looking for. You described this game snappy from every aspect. I'll wait for sale to buy it. Thx dude.
Spliffi Apr 13, 2020 @ 5:10am 
@ stargazzer811: Ty for the friendly feedback and glad to have been of help. :steamhappy:

...and that's pretty unfair reasons to write a negative review about the entire game indeed. I personally also wished for the story to be a bit catchier or more woven into the gameplay (e.g. more audio-dialogues while moving or some interaction in the form of decisions), but you can skip every cutscene / dialogue right away! Thus you CAN blow through the map if that's your preferred ARPG playstyle. So that particular rant of people is even completely pointless and down right ignorant.

I personally enjoyed it a lot, also as a big fan of the Diablo series. So I'm happy to have inspired you to give it a go after all and hope you'll enjoy it as much as I did!
Stargazzer811 Apr 13, 2020 @ 12:10am 
This is honestly a good review because you pointed on the two reasons this game has so many bad reviews: 1. the online server crash and teething issues with just that, and 2. the butthurt crybabies who wanna play it like its Diablo and blow through the map instead of stopping to enjoy the story.

I doubly enjoy that this is a review about the single player experience; unless I'm playing with my closest friends, I could care less about online. I would even say I would have prefered this didn't have online at all. I'll still wait for a sale on it to buy it, but I think one day I may add Wolcen to my collection, partly because of this review.

Cheers