Mordheim: City of the Damned

Controls and interface are terribly designed. AI clearly knows where all your units are at all times and has obscured bonuses that render game mechanics absurd, so weapon strikes suggesting they have a 90% chance to land will miss four times in a row; and this is a regular phenomenon and widely attested. The movement in the game is hilariously bad, and the environment is so absurdly complex with fences and buildings you need to climb alongside a character development system where you need to train skills to prevent falling off a fence. A hodgepodge of bad ideas that seems cobbled together in a rush. It seems as if there was at some point in development an interesting game ot be had, but this isn't it.

I want to love this game, great ideas, nice looking, cool ambience, etc. But I can't give it a better review because of some basic design decisions: - Can't position your units, it's random (strategy gone) - You are forced to pay stone, so if you have bad luck your company is lost (not because of death or bad gameplay) - Navigation and general view is horrible - Terrible warband balance - Too much space between characters, so you are looking for wide spots all the time. Can't make a good melee

Good Game ! Free code - I own the game so I give my free game / code from giveaway to you : 6C9A2-23F8E-42D48-3311E

I started a game on an easy mission. Here is what happened : My Caster got jumped upon and hit 3 times while his only attack, of course, missed. Same with the axe-wielding henchman, his counterattack, of course failed, dodge stance didn´t do anything for time, enemies _always_ hit for high amounts of damage. The camera is very close to the floor and maneuvering is a pain in the butt. I as left with a caster and two archers, wich hit all the time but with minimal damage. All that was left to do was alt-F4, uninstall, done. Other than that it looked interesting at first but the balance is a desaster. Not recommended, not even for the actual 1,99, except you are a masochist.

The gameplay loop has two conflicting objectives. On one hand: In-level, your primary goal is to win the battle, which is a great strategic challenge like you'd expect from a good Warhammer title. Out of level you manage troops, direct their development, deal with injuries or training periods which remove troops from the squad, and so on. This is the part that resembles X-COM, and I definitey enjoy it. On the other hand: In the spirit of Lethal Company, the premise of the game is that you are harvesting warpstone (everything is Empire-perspective and it gets called wyrdstone for some reason) to ship out to your faction leader. In-level you need to gather resources, looting the ruins, the fallen, and the chunks of warpstone in order to gather the resources necessary to fulfill your quota. These goals don't need to be in conflict (X-COM did a decent job of making resource gathering a major mechanic), but unfortunately the implementation is frustrating. You lose a lot of the initiative and control over combat encounters if you prioritize resources, and you lose access to the vast majority of resources if you don't take the time to scavenge while you play. To be clear, you essentially lose your save file if you fail to meet a quota too many times - you NEED to devote a significant amount of your focus to resource gathering, or it's game over. In spite of this one major caveat, the game really does succeed at creating a fun tabletop-like experience. The resource management and combat mechanics are balanced reasonably, there's a bit of depth to decision making, hedging your play around risks and unknown factors feels reasonable, and different factions have identifiably different playstyles, strengths, and weaknesses. It takes a tabletop amount of time to play a scenario, though (at least on my 2016 gaming laptop).