The Dwarves is a fantasy role-playing game with a strong story and tactically challenging real-time battles. 15 playable heroes, each with individual skills, are to be deployed cleverly. Take on superior numbers of orcs, ogres, älfs, bögnilim, zombies, dark mages and many more foes, to give them the low-down.
Based on the bestselling novel “The Dwarves” by Markus Heitz you’ll experience a fascinating tale revolving around the coolest fantasy race ever: The Dwarves!
Tactical real-time battles: You’re fighting hundreds of foes with just a handfull of heroes. You can pause anytime to tactically plan the next smart move.
Crowd Combat: All creatures on the battlefield are rendered with physical complexity – that’s why the battles feel especially dynamic and “real”, and enabling a lot of tactical finesse.
Steam User 12
Fantastic story filled with great characters, top-notch voice acting and memorable music; The map exploration music is really something else.
The combat is just deep enough to be fun but not overwhelming; and there's enough variety in the objectives to keep things fresh; It's not just "kill X number of enemies.
It's not a tough game once you get through the first few battles, I know a lot of people dislike Real-time-with-pause, I for one enjoy it; and once you unlock more abilites you can really start mowing down dwarves and it's super satisfying.
Fair warning though, the game gets VERY buggy in the second half and it's super obvious this thing was rushed without enough polish. I had to replay 4 battles because the game bugged out and I couldn't control any of my characters.
The bugs weren't enough to warrant a negative review and I don't think there's really anything on steam that captures this game's mood. Maybe it's the music, but it feels so wholesome and heartfelt.
tl;dr
Great writing and music, fun battle system that's just deep enough, but very buggy in the second half!
Steam User 5
I got this game through a humble bundle awhile back and was itching to play something different, so I downloaded it and gave it a shot.
Pros / Cons for the first 4 hours of gameplay:
Pros:
• Great voice acting
• Fun storytelling
• Good animations and graphics
• Dwarves!
• No crashes or game issues.
• Twin Dwarves!
Cons:
• Combat is a little wonky at times
• UI could be polished more, but it does it's job fine
Although if I hadn't have gotten this game through humble bundle, I don't think it would have been on my radar at all. If you are into dwarves, solid voice acting, an interesting world and fun storytelling, then I say pick it up on sale!
Steam User 4
As someone who knows the novels. I would love a sequel.
Steam User 1
I recommend this game but I think it is fair to say that it may not be for everyone. The game is based off of a book by the same name by German author Markus Heitz and I really want to buy the books and start reading them now - something I plan to do tonight.
It took me 10 hours exactly to finish the game - there is some repeatable content like battle modes but combat isn't the strong part of the game. Story is. I kept the combat on easy mode and I didn't have trouble with most of the encounters. I struggled a bit at first and when you get the hang of it you can notch it up to normal or hard and still have a good time. The collision based combat is fun as you can throw enemies around and it is a cool experience.
The story is overall good - I have one or two gripes about it, an off screen character death and a romance that is probably better explored in the books. And there are a few twists and turns that I found pretty interesting. I also found the characters to be enjoyable and I had some investment in a lot of them. The protagonist is an outsider and this allows the game to really do some superb world building which I enjoyed.
The game had a few hiccups, maybe two or three character animation glitches and once I had a character get stuck in terrain, as well as a challenging bug at the end where my health potions didn't show up as consumables - but luckily you have a few characters and abilities capable of doing healing so it wasn't a game breaker at all.
Some of the reviews mention it feeling unfinished - I feel as though this is because they are unaware this game covers the first book in what is now a 4 book series. So yeah, the ending has a bit of a cliffhanger and gets more combat heavy because it is the climax of the book.
I also found the graphics to be enjoyable and the aesthetic in general.
Who do I recommend this for?
- Fantasy genre fans
- fans of games that are story rich and story heavy
- fans of Dwarves which are often under-represented or play a minor role in fantasy works (looking at you, Tolkien).
But thanks, King Art I'm buying a new book and following a new author because of this fantastic game.
Steam User 2
I have not played this style of tactical RPG game before. I thought I would give it a go and was surprised how much fun it was. There is so much story! I finished the main story but I can go back and play it again trying a different route.
The graphics, game play, music really well done! If you like fantasy medieval with story this is worth playing!