Recent reviews by Bane of Fringe

Alright so I've put in enough hours to understand the basics and some of the more advanced things about the storyline and gameplay mechanics of this game and I'll just start off with how I'd rate this game. It's somewhere between okay and really good, around a 6/10 possibly worse.

I'll start off with how the game starts and how it presents itself. This is mostly done well with the beginning starter area, and the story is done okay. The game feels fluid and so does all the keys/combat if you experience it here. The voice acting quality is ok but you notice right off the bat that they didn't voice all the lines and this leads to off-putting dialogue between voice and text where it's not even and this will bum you out. You should just turn off the voice volume in the settings as it's much more immersive just reading the text.

The base story is ok. You learn some things around the starter town, can get a lot of loot (enough to get started with what you need, with good weapon choices) and some starter tips from a few NPCs. You'll feel a sense of freedom right off the bat which is kind of refreshing. The story will tell you what your mission is if you feel like following it and you can go from there. Upon leaving the city you have a few options on how you want to complete this task (which is time sensitive) and you are left to your own devices on reaching the goal. I believe through scrounging you can actually meet the goal without leaving the city, however there is an easy option by going to a nearby beach and finding someone who will help you reach the specific goal of the mission (not spoiling.) Left to your own devices, you will probably fail the first mission of the game with has a permanent consequence. Your own opinion on this might differ per person, but many of the few quests in game have permanent consequences just based on how you answered dialogue or depending on the time in which you completed the mission. This one can be pretty disastrous for someone who planned on using the starting town as a base (Cierzo) so this could hurt your gameplay early.

You'll notice by playing the game that death is very easy and the game leans to being pretty difficult. Learning how to fight early on with the gear and tools you are given typically ends in you being defeated, and being forced to start in a specific instance depending on where and how you were defeated. You typically always spawn low health/stam/mana and severly injured, leading you to have to find a bed which might be in a town across the map if you didn't spawn in one. Your progress is supposed to be saved (your progress being what you have in your bag) since the most important thing are the possessions you have acquired. There is no experience system, difficulty never scales, you can and will get bodied by end game wild life or bandits early game if you end up in their way. Lucky for you most of them can't outrun you. You are mostly free to pick and choose your fights whenever. There are a few actions that can lead you to being defeated twice in a row and losing you backpack, which is sort of like losing the game depending on what you had in there. Assuming you lost your early game house (either at the beginning or through another event later on in the game, WHICH CAN cause you to lose all the items you stashed in it if you used it as your base of operations, huge issue right now), you might be forced to carry EVERYTHING you own because the other houses have to be unlocked through one of the three faction quests. Which leads to the next thing..

Factions Quests: So far I have seen all but played through one, and I have good and bad things to say. The bad being, that some are fetch/travel quests which lead you through multiple zones which is literally 30 minutes of walking, so if you don't have the debug cheat menu on enjoy walking across a lot of empty space. This isn't anything to interact with along these journeys besides randomly spawning mobs that you can outrun, and some that might body you early game with no chance of killing them. Overall the writing for the one quest I did is actually great, and the way the quest progresses and has permanent effects on the game, you, and your faction is actually pretty cool. The writing is still minimal and there are only 4 quests. All faction quests end in one quest which is more or less the same for every faction just colored differently. The base game has very few quests altogether as there is only one side quest for each faction, and it will more than likely be very over your level when you first get it.

Which leads to another gripe. Making money in this game is an absolute ♥♥♥♥♥, because the best way to make money if picking up ingredients or items in dungeons and carrying them to town, which is time consuming in itself, and given how inventory space is limited to what you can carry, extremely arduous and monotonous. You will spend HOURS just trying to purchase the skills and saving up for a player house or gear (if you don't find any) because you have to transport it back and forth. If you do not use cheats I pray for your sanity.

Combat is the saving grace of this game. NPCs typically do well in 1v1 even if their code is simple, and cheesing honestly isn't that hard nor does it break the atmosphere. Magic is one of the best systems in this game and is better than many other games by FAR. Classes mix well with each other and you can typically find good ♥♥♥♥ in most of them and they all seem to work well if it fits your style. The biggest issue minus all the ones I've talked about before is the fact that you have 8 quickslots. For some reason every idiot fan of this game thinks that makes it more hardcore, but just severely limits the gameplay. Mercenary class is actually kind of bad because you can't quickslot your bandolier of pistols since you need to use them for other things too. It makes being a mage nearly impossible, and people will defend this because they think it makes the gameplay more hardcore by not being able to use skills your character knows. You can literally fix this by adding a button that switches between two quickbars, and it would work on both console and PC. This actually might make this specific review a no. All mods fixing this break every patch, and have bugs themselves with switching gear etc.

JUST ADD A BUTTON TO SWITCH BETWEEN HOTBARS SERIOUSLY WHY THE ♥♥♥♥ ARE WE STILL WAITING ON THIS YOU'VE RELEASED TWO DLC AND HAVEN'T DONE THIS, IT DOESN'T ADD DIFFICULTY TO YOUR ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ GAME IT JUST LIMITS THE POSSIBILITIES AND I'M TIRED OF THE LACKLUSTER PATCHES BREAKING THE MOD.

Overall thought the game has a lot of heart put into it, the music is phenomenal, the armor and gameplay is top tier, and it has a lot of original ideas. You'll actually be blown away by the game starting out but certain issues have arisen and it's a shame that the devs decided to move on with DLC content releases besides fixing some serious issues with the game.

I can assume things will only get better in the future, if you can get this game on sale I would snag it for sure as the current $12 that it's going for is actually a huge bargain.

Alright, here we are again. The game is broken and has too many bugs. I just can't recommend it after running into a bug in bookworm that forced me to abandon the battle, which cause half of my crew (all my best warriors and heroes), to have injuries that completely ruined them. WHY WOULD YOU FORCE IRONMAN ON A GAME THAT HAS THIS MANY BUGS?? Hours down the drain on a warband because the game forces you to play ironman (due to the games multiplayer mode that uses your singleplayer warband) when you run into this many bugs. None of the guys who got injuries were even in combat, they were all locked out of the portals because of a character dupe bug that locked the portals from being entered, dooming my character inside the portal and locking the other ones out. Then every single one of my characters got a debilitating permanent injury that stopped them from ever being combat effective again (severed limbs, skull fracture etc).

The game does have heart and soul into it, but the way it plays (each battle takes ages the way the ai and you move, single turns out of a 15 turn match can take up to 5 minutes), along with the bugs, some of the storry map layouts etc will drive you nuts. Another example is where an item is locked behind a leap agility check, where multiple of your characters fail a 70% check forcing you into 10 more turns to get back up there.

There is one thing about being faced with in-game difficulties, and another with bad map design, game combat (not the mechanics, but the time wasting way the game is played), and bugs causing hours of time to go down the drain. I might even still play the game myself, but I will 100% not recommend anyone else put up with it. It's way too upsetting (ran into the game breaking portal bug both times I played that mission, and had it happen a few times before which blocks pathways or loot).

//// Old review

Going back on my review, I am no recommending the game. This is less because the game got better or even because it's a really good game, but more so because it's the only turn based strategy game with a story for warhammer fantasy, or at least the only one with depth.

Idk if this was fixed recently, but it seems now that your heroes have a chance to loot the battlefield afterwards, kind of invalidating that complaint in my first review below.

The game still has a lot of difficult points, but I've come to accept it, for the sake of having a warhammer turn based game that doesn't look like a mobile gacha pos. The game is hard, it takes some time to learn, and every move makes or breaks your game.

//// Old original review

Alright, I tried to give this game a chance, but it's terrible, reasoning below.

So first of all, the whole 90% chance to hit and miss is because after a chance to hit is calculated based on him being capable to not swing/shoot his weapon like an idiot, there is a chance for the enemy to dodge, which is generally pretty good, especially when there is a stance. It's actually a decent mechanic, and I'm glad it's there.

However, the bad part of this game comes from the campaign. There is no multiplayer community on it anymore, so don't even try and buy it if you want to play against someone else. The battles and scenarios are extremely repetitive, you will have played the majority of the game in 4 battles alone. When you get into a battle you sometimes have the option to deploy your guys, unless the scenario decides to say you were scattered for some reason, cucking either one or both teams. After which you have to somehow position your guys to try and find and kill the enemy. Pray your ranged or leader didn't spawn with 3 bad guys around him, otherwise watch as they all charge/go and instantly kill him before he can do anything, because the turns per character are random, leaving you with 3-4 guys you can move in a turn, or 3-4 guys the enemy can move, allowing some people to just get yeeted as soon as the battle starts.

Ok past that, the missions that show up get much more difficult really quick. If you picked one of the trash factions like mercenaries, then expect to get pissed on by witch hunters, or have your guys be feared for 5 rounds in a row because there is a vampire nearby, even tho they surround him 3v1, causing them to lose action points and never be able to attack. The game tries to provide a feeling that sometimes ♥♥♥♥ just sucks, and despite your best efforts life is hard in Mordheim, unfortunately not even the best possible positioning and plays can you save you when going up against better geared warbands repeatedly only 4 turns in. The chances in the game are based mostly on stats and the enemy becomes statted against you really quick, and god forbid one of your guys who you have been playing with for 10 turns dies because now you have to grind another one out who will miss repeatedly over and over, until he hits for no damage.

Now, all of this could honestly be forgiven. I could look past some of the insanely weird ♥♥♥♥ and campaign losing losses (think of XCOM 2 which didn't share the same leniency as XCOM 1 did, causing you to lose the entire campaign after your 2nd loss or for sure your 3rd.) It's actually easy to make the first two shipments because of the high amount of gold you're given, but even through winning treatments for wounded pile up, and then losing your only decent fighters seals the deal as there is really no time to train a second set of warriors. But we could look past that..if half your time in battles wasn't spent waiting for your turn. Idk why it takes more time for the AI to make a decision then it would a human player, and it should just be instant if you can't even see the enemy unit. Spending 7ish min every battle waiting on the enemy to make a move gets old really quick. Playing the same maps over and over again get old really quick...you can't just shift the playing field a little to teh left or right and expect players not to know, it's the exact same few maps over and over with different starting positions.

There are a few other things I could probably rant on about the game. Paid heroes that are 10x better than whatever you're originally given...unbalanced factions...another thing to mention is that if you DO win a game, you can't loot warpstone or the surroundings. I've had some of my guys like a turn away from looting stuff but then the enemy fail a rout check and boom, dozens of warpstone or gear lost, even tho my guy was practically standing on it. The enemy doesn't have to loot you in the game tho to steal all your gear. It just magically disappears after the battle, so rip to that. You have to stream line and be slick to somehow pick up warpstone on the map without leaving half your team to die. As you get more members available to have in party it sort of helps, but then the battle times get unbelievably long waiting on the enemy to move and then you have to get through your entire party as well..

If you like ♥♥♥♥ and ball torture then buy it on sale.

The best MOBA on the market. Will ruin or improve your life, you'll figure it out.

The entire concept of this game is great, and if it was executed right it would be amazing. The right amount of punishment (it could back off, rn it's too easy to grief new players,) and the right amount of player intervention in the map. Some player factions can do things like block off passes with their walls, if they made walls harder to make this would have been a great idea. PvP and PvE could have been slightly better, but understandable for the scale they were trying to push.

However the issue was with the hacking and breach against the developers that had all our account info stolen. On top of that, none of the issues above are being pushed at all by the commanders. This game could have been one of the best hardcore survival MMOs. The gaming community needs one, but this one couldn't pull it together. Hopefully one comes in the future, one like this one that punished death just as hard, and had a world that you could explore. Only local chats, etc etc. The whole premise of this game was great, just turned out to have so much bad ♥♥♥♥ against it. (Another annoying thing was mounts getting bred to the point that they were too glitchy, should have been caps on speed being insane, would have totally been fine with getting trampled by massive mounts.)

ROCK AND STONE, BROTHER!