Wartales

Great game, the only downside being no proper endgame - you don't get to see any kind of credit roll, and some simple slideshow showing you what you achieved. Sooner or later, as you have achieved everything you wanted, all that is left is to leave the game without any closure.

Excellent exploration / tactics RPG game. The game immerses you in an atmosphere of a medieval era where you're a nomadic mercenary group taking on morally grey tasks near and far.
I played on Extreme difficulty in 2 game clears, and am in the middle of an Ironman Extreme difficulty.
What I like:
- The profession system where crafting is rather simple / straight forward (could even be expanded upon) and facilitates a certain type of build.
- The combat is punishing, yet fun. It teaches you to be very confident in your moves. There's also a skill AoE / damage prediction tool that is useful and easily understood.
- The valor points system is great as a resource to use combat skills where your party shares a pool of points. You can regain temporary points by doing certain actions to let your greedy high-impact builds spend them later.
- You can respec your class so long as you save gold to do so, so nothing's really too permanent in that regard.
- You have "Talent trees" essentially that facilitate types of gameplay. For example, if you wanna commit tons of crime via theft and stealing from merchants, this gives you points towards a Talent tree that facilitates that. You wanna trade a lot? same deal. Fight a lot? Sure! Explore and craft? Got you covered.
- Random events in camp that lead to attribute point awarding for one of your members, or random encounters with wolves, as well as intuitive trait unlocks randomly based on what you do with a member - gives it a sort of "anything can happen today" kind of vibe.
- Dungeons can be explored and you can find legendary equipment doing so.
- Fight in Arenas for legendary equipment too.
- Expansions have decent content, like being a pirate steering a boat, creating a tavern to try to grow it as a business (that you can later funnel funds from to your troop :), or even fit in some grisly pits (I haven't done this yet!). Pretty gnarly.
- You eventually get the ability to remove headpiece passives as "stamps" that can be placed on any new headpiece, so the build facilitating passive skill you had on there can be passed on to the new headpiece without worry.
Things I don't like:
- The tavern menus can get encumbering, and sometimes it's hard to see the forecast of what specialties your employee has in some tabs (Like the staffing menu for Kitchen or Cellar employees making food or drink, respectively. Hard to choose which to keep on shift, send out to do dirty missions, or to fire, because you can't tell if it's the guy that has the "Versatility" specialty, which is super good)
- Some overglaring bugs happen like the trader by your built trading grounds. He (used to) softlock the game if you spoke to him and picked a certain message. These bugs get fixed though, but some are still present. A softer bug is sometimes you can't pick up a resource, or use one of your pitons, because the terrain is weird, but it looks like you can just simply access it.
- No information about how a unit scales, or a preview of what an upgraded skill will look like until you learn the first level of it.
- Rare item gives stats like Willpower, or critical hit chance, but the Legendary variants are simply plain Armor stats, even though they have higher values. Makes for less interesting build choices. I hope this changes in the future somehow.
I'll edit if I can think of more. It's a very fun game. Try it!

You guys should release a Mercenary Guild DLC next and let us run an adventure like guild where we can send extra party members off for side missions or to accept contracts to assist wars and protect villages from raiders and bandits. Or even better release a DLC that lets us build a Mercenary Outpost or Base of operations as a main hub or settlement for our crew.

Really good sandbox CRPG that you may grow bored of as time goes on. The major gripe I have is that battles can become incredibly long and boring, especially when it's something like 20 vs. 20.
I liked the game overall though, and the dark, gritty tone. Yes, unlike many mainstream RPGs, you can be make your band of mercenaries into really bad guys if you want, ambushing merchant wagons and keeping prisoners. Or you can be noble, chivalrous mercenaries. It's up to you.
The game is separated by regions, each with a mini-campaign and sidequests. The story is nothing to write home about, but exists. I 100%'d the campaigns and the majority of sidequests in 140 hours. I did not play the DLCs.

DON'T SAVE IN A CAVE!
I chose the 'limited saves' option when I started my first playthrough. Thouroughly enjoying the game. Unfortunately, I finished a session in one of the ancient ruins, and now my saves won't load. Infinite loading screen. 50+ hours progress lost. Really don't feel like starting again. Maybe in a while.

There's way too many factors that peaked my enjoyment for Wartales that I find it difficult to pick the best topic to start off for this review. That being said, I can say I love every single aspect of the game so far EXCEPT for the Rhythm mini games for the bard profession but that's simply because I really really suck at it.
Now I found there's a bit of every aspects of games that I like in Wartales. From Runescape's movement, Fire Emblem's combat, Point and Click Indie game puzzle solving, Bannerlord's traversal, Progression systems of JRPGs, Conan Exile's capture system, Resource Management, Troop Management, Base Management, World Building management, Side stories and Exploration. There's probably many more that i've yet to discover since I've only 100%'d one area of the world so far. That still doesn't include the DLC's I can definitely see myself going over 500hrs in total in Wartales with this amount of replay-ability.
It's a tough game, for me at least. I'm playing on the Normal Difficulty and it's already been a challenge. You can basically play however you want like so far I only tried leading a team of 4-8 characters looks like we can definitely add more as there's no indication of any limit. You can be nice to everyone or be a dick it is completely up to you.
Story wise? there's stuff going on in the world sure but you and your team isn't in the center of it. Like you can participate in conflict and help each side on different battles and that's the beauty of wartales. My friend says the way I describe Wartales is that it's a sandbox game. Doesn't feel like it, but I understand why it comes across that way.
Will update once i try out the DLCs but for now this review is solely on the base game 100hours in.

Alright. I think it's time to talk about Wartales, one of the ultimate TRPGs you might ever see. Comically, I'm 200 hours into my playthrough and I still haven't finished the base campaign (although I am pretty close to the end at this point). I'd guess between the remainder of the main campaign and the DLC, I'll be closer to 300 hours playtime by the time I wrap it all up. And that should already be an indication of what you can expect from this game.
There are a lot of systems at play within the game, from the actual tactical battles to the overland exploration to managing your mercenaries, crafting, wrapping up side quests and area scenarios, and so on. And that doesn't even factor in the DLC, which adds more layers of gameplay to the experience. If you want depth in a game, this is that game.
Curiously, I still haven't gotten bored of any of this, which is a bit anomalous for me personally. Now, I do think my playtime is in some part a reflection of how much I'm enjoying the larger scale battles. The game scales to some extent the enemy numbers in battle to match or at least get close to how many mercenaries you have. And I have around 70, lol. Not all are combatants though. All but two of my horses (ponies) are pack horses. Two of them have the bloodthirsty trait though, and they do end up in the battle, lol.
So, let's talk about your mercenary company. You start out with a couple mercenaries and have the ability to recruit more from the various inns throughout the game. Each usually has three potential recruits, and they change as time passes. You can hire each for "x" amount of cash and prestige points (both are required). Each potential mercenary has a class and will choose a subclass as they level up. The classes are swordsman, brute, archer, ranger, spearman, crossbowman, warrior, and pugilist. All of them are very useful, and having a good mix of all of them is optimal. You will eventually choose a captain and three lieutenants from your crew, and there is an advantage to doing so, but mostly you will forget about that pretty quickly. You will also be able to recruit mercenaries from the prison in each land, and often, these are the best mercenary recruits. Beyond that, you will occasionally meet other potential recruits via completing quests or meeting at certain locations.
But that's not all, lol. You can also capture almost any enemy, and they can also be recruited into your troop. For animals, it's as simple as capturing them. They immediately join your troop. For human and certain inhuman prisoners, you have to travel with them for a while, and if you manage to keep them from escaping, they will periodically ask to join your troop as well. And typically, these troops have different classes than what I mentioned above. Such as Marauder, Macebearer, Poacher, and so on. They're kinda like stripped down versions of what you already have, with a focused and limited upgrade tree. There is a little bit of challenge in capturing some enemies, not because the act is difficult, but rather because you can often one shot certain enemies, and so if you need to capture something with a lower hit point total, you will need to go out of your way to have one of your weaker mercenaries do the deed. And this does factor into several quests where it is actually required to capture "x" enemies for whatever reason, so it's something to keep in mind. An enemy is only able to be captured when they're down to like 10% of their health total.
Speaking of upgrade trees, this is where the RPG mechanics start to factor in. As you level up, you will level up your stats (such as strength and constitution) but will also gain new abilities at certain intervals. You will generally have three to choose from, although occasionally four, and you can also learn new ones via scrolls that then become available as a selection as well. It's a fairly robust system, and there really is no filler at all in any of the class ability trees. Animals also level up, but they generally only have one or two abilities to choose from at various level intervals. No less useful though, overall. Additionally, a lot of abilities have a second tier that can be unlocked via the use of skillbooks which can be purchased from special vendors (trainers and black market merchants generally).
Crafting is also featured prominently in this game, and each craftable item needs to be learned first, either via knowledge points, which you earn through travel, encounters, exploration, etc...; or can be learned via recipe scrolls which can be found or purchased pretty much everywhere. Generally, vendors will have a couple specific ones each. For example, an alchemist will have a couple alchemy recipes. An innkeeper will have a few food recipes. Blacksmith for smithing recipes. But they are also given as quest rewards and can be found in some treasure chests or stashes as well. Crafting is important, in no small part because
You will often need to craft upgraded weapons and armor to keep your troop properly equipped. You'll find it advantageous to craft special items to buff your gear and stats. To heal. And most important, you will need to cook food for your mercenaries. Who will need to eat whenever you camp. And you will need to camp because there is also a fatigue meter. Camping resets your fatigue meter, feeds your troops, pays your troops every third camp, and as you progress and unlock more stuff, you will also use your camp to craft certain items, research rare books and artifacts found, actually cook your food, and plenty else besides.
There is another points system in the game which serves as an additional type of upgrade. These points are earned by achieving specific goals in the game. Such as picking "x" amount of lock. Killing the enemy leader first "x" amount of times. Finding new locations. And so on. This specific system is reminiscent of what you might be familiar with in games like Borderlands. Only, instead of small percentage buffs, the actual rewards are in four different categories, and have a variety of end results, such as getting better market prices, being more efficient while crafting, learning to be fine with eating the corpses of your enemies, and so on, lol. And each of the four categories can be leveled up to 12. These unlock certain quests at level intervals as well. For example, one category unlocks the ability to open a trade post in a major city, and as you level up, you earn the right to open more trade posts. Which have a couple functions, the main one being fast travel between cities.
Each land has its defacto capital city. Most are actually towns, but there is one actual city as well. And each land has its own story scenario, which will take the form of multiple quests designed to bring you to one of two outcomes, which concludes the story for an area. However, each land also has a lot of side quests to complete as well.
And I've already reached the character limit for a Steam review while only having scratched the surface of what this game offers. It's about as expansive and detailed a TRPG as you might find, and it mixes in a lot of simulation type stuff as well. If you like detail and enjoy diving into the minutia of multiple systems, this is definitely the game for you.
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