I keep coming back to this game at least once a year, because somehow I always remember the good parts and start thinking that the bad parts aren't that bad after all. And every time, I'm proven wrong. I've played this game for 200+ hours and I've never finished even a single campaign, because every time I just end up uninstalling it in disgust after a short while. Having just aborted my most recent attempt to enjoy this game, I felt compelled to write a review to hopefully help save others from my tragic fate.

The problem is that the core of the game is good. While it may be a bit overly complex and confusing to some people, for those who can push beyond that the main gameplay loop is very enjoyable. Customizing your warband, fighting tactical battles to earn loot and experience, and using those to improve your characters and grow your warband's power is a very addictive (if highly repetitive) concept. But why would this be a problem? Because everything else about the game is so bad that you start to hate the game for being so addictive.

First there are the random missions, which you will have to do a lot of because for every story mission you'll have to do multiple random missions first. The issue with these is that they're insanely repetitive. While there are a few different optional objectives the game chooses from, those hardly matter since the main objective of every random mission is always to simply rout the enemy warband. And since the AI isn't very clever and there's a serious lack of map variety, these missions all tend to blend together into one endless grind. But surely, if the random missions are boring at least there are story missions to liven things up? Unfortunately, there are only a small handful of story missions that are shared across all factions, and these missions take place on some of the worst designed, most frustrating maps ever imaged by human minds. If you can play through the Library map and not feel a seething hatred for the loathsome subhuman creature that designed it, you're probably a better person than I am. While not all story missions are quite that bad, there's not one of them that I'd actually call good. In short, there's no fun to be found in the story missions either.

And it's not just the missions that are bad. The combat system suffers from an extreme reliance on RNG. If you're the kind of player who loses their cool at unexpected disaster in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, I can guarantee this game will drive you completely insane. While RNG-based combat isn't exactly a novelty in this genre, Mordheim takes it to an extreme not just in the combat itself, but also in the outcomes of a mission. A unit who gets downed during combat might be perfectly fine after the mission, or he might just drop dead instantly. Or, more likely, he'll get some variety of permanent injury which in most cases is basically the same as being dead, since you'll want to replace him anyway. And Sigmar protect you if you ever decide to play as a Chaos Cult, which gets "rewarded" with random mutations that can and will ruin your builds. Your finest archer will grow a knife on his arm so he can't hold a bow anymore, your heavy tank will grow a face on his chest so he can't wear armor anymore, etc. And to add insult to injury, enemy warbands will never ever suffer from this because every mission just generates a perfectly fresh warband that automatically scales to your level, so the injuries and deaths you inflict on the enemy never matter while evey death and injury inflicted on you is permanent. No matter how well you're doing, you will never feel that you're actually making progress because of this.

I guess I could talk a bit about multiplayer here, but that's irrelevant since it's long dead. Though I will say, the game is less awful when you know that the enemy warband is another human being who's most likely getting screwed over just as hard as you are. Misery shared is misery halved, and all that.

I'm usually more tolerant to games where the odds are stacked against you, but I've never played any other game where potentially good gameplay gets ruined this much, by what I can only describe as the developer's intent to prevent the player from ever having any fun.

I keep coming back to this game at least once a year, because somehow I always remember the good parts and start thinking that the bad parts aren't that bad after all. And every time, I'm proven wrong. I've played this game for 200+ hours and I've never finished even a single campaign, because every time I just end up uninstalling it in disgust after a short while. Having just aborted my most recent attempt to enjoy this game, I felt compelled to write a review to hopefully help save others from my tragic fate. The problem is that the core of the game is good. While it may be a bit overly complex and confusing to some people, for those who can push beyond that the main gameplay loop is very enjoyable. Customizing your warband, fighting tactical battles to earn loot and experience, and using those to improve your characters and grow your warband's power is a very addictive (if highly repetitive) concept. But why would this be a problem? Because everything else about the game is so bad that you start to hate the game for being so addictive. First there are the random missions, which you will have to do a lot of because for every story mission you'll have to do multiple random missions first. The issue with these is that they're insanely repetitive. While there are a few different optional objectives the game chooses from, those hardly matter since the main objective of every random mission is always to simply rout the enemy warband. And since the AI isn't very clever and there's a serious lack of map variety, these missions all tend to blend together into one endless grind. But surely, if the random missions are boring at least there are story missions to liven things up? Unfortunately, there are only a small handful of story missions that are shared across all factions, and these missions take place on some of the worst designed, most frustrating maps ever imaged by human minds. If you can play through the Library map and not feel a seething hatred for the loathsome subhuman creature that designed it, you're probably a better person than I am. While not all story missions are quite that bad, there's not one of them that I'd actually call good. In short, there's no fun to be found in the story missions either. And it's not just the missions that are bad. The combat system suffers from an extreme reliance on RNG. If you're the kind of player who loses their cool at unexpected disaster in games like XCOM or Fire Emblem, I can guarantee this game will drive you completely insane. While RNG-based combat isn't exactly a novelty in this genre, Mordheim takes it to an extreme not just in the combat itself, but also in the outcomes of a mission. A unit who gets downed during combat might be perfectly fine after the mission, or he might just drop dead instantly. Or, more likely, he'll get some variety of permanent injury which in most cases is basically the same as being dead, since you'll want to replace him anyway. And Sigmar protect you if you ever decide to play as a Chaos Cult, which gets "rewarded" with random mutations that can and will ruin your builds. Your finest archer will grow a knife on his arm so he can't hold a bow anymore, your heavy tank will grow a face on his chest so he can't wear armor anymore, etc. And to add insult to injury, enemy warbands will never ever suffer from this because every mission just generates a perfectly fresh warband that automatically scales to your level, so the injuries and deaths you inflict on the enemy never matter while evey death and injury inflicted on you is permanent. No matter how well you're doing, you will never feel that you're actually making progress because of this. I guess I could talk a bit about multiplayer here, but that's irrelevant since it's long dead. Though I will say, the game is less awful when you know that the enemy warband is another human being who's most likely getting screwed over just as hard as you are. Misery shared is misery halved, and all that. I'm usually more tolerant to games where the odds are stacked against you, but I've never played any other game where potentially good gameplay gets ruined this much, by what I can only describe as the developer's intent to prevent the player from ever having any fun.