“Should we stop and fight for a second?”
“Yes, I’m starting to feel stupid, this is like the third level we just run past everything.”
“Fine, here we go then.”
“Let’s see if I remember any of my combat abilities.”
Warhammer: Chaosbane is a perfectly standard ARPG set in the Warhammer universe. You can choose from four playable heroes, each with their unique abilities, skill trees, and usable items.
There is an incredibly bland story, there is “something something chaos“, you click on things, advance on the map, click on more things to kill, click on NPCs to get the mission, repeat, you know the type.
The Good
Well, the combat itself is dynamic, I’ll give the game that. Looks good on the screen, somehow it found the balance of over-the-top particle effects and grim dark… past. The only thing that’s missing is some minimal level of challenge, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here! The characters in general are fast and easy to control. The boss fights are actually OK, there are usually some fun little mechanics sprinkled on the top, and it can even be somewhat challenging.
We do like the setting, but had it not been Warhammer, we would have stopped playing a long time ago. It’s just when you have the same exact miniatures on your shelf, there is some emotional connection, weird as it sounds. Yes, I know, that is how all IP-based things work, that’s how they get you.
And finally, the big one, this is really cool, check this out: if your character is in the inventory, and the other player moves, you start following him automatically while browsing your skills! Amazing, right? You know how you can’t imagine ever living without cool inventions like sliced bread, once you try it? Same feeling here. I sincerely hope every game will start using it. (And just to clarify: this is not sarcasm, I really think it worked great.)
The Bad
One of these days I’m gonna write an article about what is wrong with almost all the ARPGs. (There are precisely three acceptable ARPGs at the moment: Diablo II – hallowed be its name – and Van Helsing Parts 1 and 2.) Time and time again, we play ARPGs, which are supposed to be fun fantasy epics, the co-op is really easy to implement, and time and time again the best we can do is bored, so I think it would be beneficial for the sake of humanity to conceptualise that boredom we all feel. Also, we would save us a lot of time, because pretty much all the ARPG reviews could be just that article.
However, until then, we only have time for a very quick summary now. So these are things that make an ARPG bad:
- enemies are not memorable, they always approach in a large horde, and they have no distinguishable skills;-
- the game is not threatening, you either can’t really die, or if you do, you re-spawn without penalty;
- gaining a level is not satisfying;
- finding loot is not satisfying;
- it does not feel like you have any character-building choices because every decision is pre-made for you;
- story is bland, you don’t care about the NPCs.
Well, those are all really true for Warhammer: Chaosbane, not going to go into needless details for all of them.
Question is, what makes it a particularly bad game?
First off, the “not threatening” aspect is turned up to 11. I kid you not, we started playing, started fighting, and our health bar literally did not move as the enemies pounded on us. We had to check if it’s a bug, we put up the difficulty to Very Hard, and that was fun for a brief period, but then we started leveling up really fast, so the fun also diminished quickly.
Another thing that I find amazing in the sense that a game developer studio dared to risk it, is that the map is exactly the same. Every chapter has one fixed map, like a medium-sized area, and you waltz through that and kill some enemies, go back for a new mission, and it turns out you have to go back again. And again. And again. When we started we actually joked about how long the introductory sewer level is in the game. But as it turns out, that is the whole first act. One small-sized sewer level, over and over again. OK, slight exaggeration there, each act might have two or three maps, but you do visit each like five times. There is a bit when you climb a tower, and it’s the same one-room floor ten times, in from staircase on right, out on staircase on left.
So there is nothing new to see, and beating enemies is like stealing a lollipop from a chaos baby, so what does a gamer do? As mentioned earlier, we actually started to just run through the map, and managed to beat the final act in less than an hour this way. Now that part, not going to lie, was actually fun. My dwarf character can dash really quickly but the camera is stuck between the two characters (we were playing couch co-op, on a PS4), so we played only by the minimap, while the main camera showed the empty area between us. Playing levels of an ARPG blind was fun for us, but I think it should be a new level of humiliating for the game, had it had a morsel of self-awareness.
Monsters are blander than bland, everything repeats with a different skin. The four acts correspond with the four main chaos god followers, but literally nothing distinguishes them. There are these large Mutalith monsters, that are exactly the same every time, with a different colour. To be fair, the player characters are really bland too. I really hate when the loot does not change how I look in a game like this, considering that would be half the incentive for me. (Sue me for being so shallow.) You are a dwarf, with two axes, and you can only pick up axes, which look identical. All right, fine, you can dye your hair blond, if you want to. Ughh.
You can always re-talent for free, which is a terrible idea. There is no real talent tree to speak of, you have a talent list that you are free to pick from at any time. Not once, not a single time did I check out what my loot does, I solely relied on green / red damage indicators. I have literally never read an entire item description in this game. And there is a lot of unnecessary stuff with the blessings, which we tried once and never did again. That speaks volumes about the difficulty level of the game, because usually I love playing around in my inventory.
There are all the small nuances as well that show how this is not a proper AAA-game. I am really not sensitive to stuff like this, fine, the dwarf is a Scottish person again, whatever, but the voice of the female elf is really a huge miss. The character is supposed to be a young rebellious elf, but the voice is for some reason a middle-aged, courteous British woman. I read up on this, others found it weird too, and it turns out, a couple of lines are said in a male voice (there is a video on Youtube), so the character probably started off as a male and then the studio realised they should have at least one playable female character out of four (mind you, it’s 2020), so they chose the elf, did not need to change anything because he/she wears a mask and a hoodie, re-dubbed the character with a hastily found voice actress, and voilá, there’s your well-designed avatar.
And finally, one of those small annoyances that don’t seem so bad, you have to be there to appreciate: considering it takes a couple of minutes to run through a map, a significant portion of the game consists of finding the questgiver person. Sometimes he is on the street, sometimes he is in the throne room, sometimes he is in the other throne room, you finish a quest, talk to him, press X, and then he disappears, teleported somewhere else, so you have to find him again, just so you can press X again and skip the dialogue.
OK, that last bit wasn’t too punchy. I think reading it must have been a similar experience to actually playing the game.
The Co-Op
Credit where credit is due, you do have to quite carefully plan dying and reviving in a boss battle.
But other than that, there is no synergy whatsoever. I think it actually must have been difficult to design characters who have so little to do with each other’s combat abilities.
Also, it is not a good sign that we wanted to split up so we can finish stuff quicker, but the camera was stuck between us, so we chose to play blind…
The Recommendation
A resounding no from us. If you missed Diablo II, it might be too late to get on that harsh wagon. Van Helsing Parts 1 and 2 in that case. And stay tuned, because there must be a good contemporary ARPG out there, and we will find it!
Or, and this is true, for this amount of money, you can buy some Warhammer miniatures and paint them.
Info
| Release Year | 2019 |
| Genre | ARPG |
| Difficulty | Very Easy |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | 10 hours |
Rating
| Overall | Bad |
| Story | Terrible |
| Co-Operation | Bad |