Wartales (2023)

145 hours in Wartales and only half through the game. I start to feel bad that I haven't bought this but play it on Game Pass, 9,99 Euro feels like stealing at this point.

On the other hand, I am getting achievements less than 3% of the players got and they are not overly complicated to get, so I wonder how the game was received over all. On Game Pass 48% gave it 4-5 stars and 43% 1-2 star (love it or hate it is the theme here I guess), but a lot of the 1 star reviews seem to be for having issues at launch with lost save games, a cardinal sin, while I am playing a stable game without a single bug in 100+ hours ... I am definitely more on the 5 star side of things - patient gamers for the win!

I guess this will be a 300 hour game for me, because I love grinding in it and finding all the little secrets and I take my time with the turn based battles because I will not lose a single party member, not even that stupid wolf with a clear death wish.

This is a GOTY contender for me. I can only hope the game was enough of a success so the game studio behind this will make more games in the future, I might also have to look at their other games now.

I am still playing Wartales. 80+ hours and I have fun. I started a new run because this game makes me want to heavily min-max my party, so it is even 80+ hours with not much to show for when it comes to overall progress.

It does not explain a lot of things well and has its jank, especially in the movement of the group (I don't mind movement to be slow, the group just sometimes doesn't go where I want it to go), but everything else I really like.

The best thing might be how many options you have to make the combat as easy or hard you want it to be. You can choose a difficulty level overall, make the game adjust to your group's size and level or make it region specific so you can grind and overlevel your party.

You being able to decide how big your party is - the bigger the easier the fights (also effects the length of fights) and the harder to keep everyone happy, paid and fed - and how much you want the management part to be a thing, or if you want to be able to save everywhere, or only one save and autosave for the last visit of a city and more.

They really added a lot to the genre (including stuff you need mods for in other games), at least compared to games I know. There is also a lot of replayability.

I also like its dark setting. You can whip your party members to make them work harder or force them to canibalism to survive and a lot of your decisions are how war decisions are: Choose between the bad thing or the other bad thing.

I wonder how this runs on Switch, because it is very taxing on my PC but fine with Geforce Now.