Mordheim: City of the Damned

The first time I gave the game a try, I played for almost 40 minutes before I had contact with my Skaven opponents. I had to leave the game due to real-world responsibilities, whereupon I found there’s no option to save in progress, and I had to let the game finish saving before I could get out of it. My next play I again found myself wandering for an extended period before contact with the enemy, the Sisters. The Sisters all did around 1 1/2 times the damage I could dish out. At one point I successfully used the Ambush State on a Sister, hitting her with an arrow as she came on-screen. She then jumped down to the ground, ran over to my archer, and got a surprise attack…on the guy who ambushed her…and watched as she ran up to him. Shortly after that a Sister triggered a trap, which only damaged a character of mine across the plaza. A check of the log showed it wasn’t matter of the Sister and her allies making the save. She activated the trap, but the game log said my character had activated it…while the Sister was moving on her turn. After the Sisters defeated me I played a mission where both sides were to have their characters randomly scattered on the map. The game, however, spaced the characters so one of mine was attacked by two Skaven immediately. During the course of that debacle I discovered you can’t choose who you attack in melee, always auto-targeting the last character who hit you. Being unable to focus on one combatant in hopes of bringing it down to a 1-on-1 fight made things worse. I need to also mention the Beacon system, which is meant to allow you to mark things on your area map, so they’re highlighted on your tactical map. For reasons unknown marking wyrdstone on your map with a beacon counts against your five beacons, but does not actually show on your tactical map. This is more infuriating because wyrdstone can be hard to see, so you can walk right past it. There is more I could say, but none of it is good.

This game is very, very hard. There is no manual. Even after doing the tutorials you have to rely on long sessions to understand the key mappings, the map symbols, etc. Then, as with most Warhammer games, the hand of fate is stronger in this game than most other games you will play. I am a huge Warhammer fan, but I cannot recommend this game.

The design alone makes you want to quit from the start. They make it near impenetrable to find how to jump into a game and when you do it seems as if they've just added a text prompt to the start of a skirmish game to explain the setup and then all the "warband" is dropped randomly across a map(one you can't see), And you are meant to turn by turn wander aimlessly hoping to bumble into an enemy who likely already knows you're location. It's frustrating and awful. No thank you.

... title is all you need to know.

I think not enough people give this game a fair shake. If you want a fantasy version of xcom this is the game for you, but be prepared for the rng to not favor the player like in xcom 2. Mordheim is not so hard once you've figured it out, but it will punish any mistakes you make with a vengeance. After awhile the gameplay is a bit grindy, and some of the campaign missions are pretty janky, but it's still worth grabbing on sale. I got it for free via gog and felt the dlc was worth it on sale. Just fyi, the gog version does not support multiplayer which may or may not be a dealbreaker for you.