Wartales

Wartales is slowly becoming a staple among the sparse list of games I play for extended periods of time, put away, forget about, and bring out again. It scratches that itch that games like Mount and Blade 2 or Age of Wonders 4 failed to, it's a nice RPG-sandbox hybrid with well thought out combat, extensive array of activities and a not-completely-uninspiring quest system. Compared to similar titles in the genre, Wartales seem to stand head and shoulders above the rest in quality. However, it still has a lot of room to grow, lots of content to be added. I'm giving 4 stars for now, because I see some balancing issues especially with the leveling system, and the mid-late game is too grindy to be enjoyable with the current amount of content. I also find the price tag for the DLCs a bit steep, but I undertand that indie projects need a lot of support to grow so I don't consider it a negative, just a personal opinion.

Love this game. Been playing a few days and it is just fun. The battles, the world it is in. Just want to play it more. Only thing is it took a day or so just to figure out some of the basic so google is your friend

Fun little game if you enjoy managing a party, turn-based combat, and survival aspects. Starts out pretty slow, lots to learn, and can be unforgiving at times. Ultimately very enjoyable and seems to have a ton of content!

Much appreciation to Shiro for making Wartales (hereafter referred to as WT) available on GOG. Before going on, I just wanted to give thanks for publishing on this most important platform. WT is an insanely good game. It saddens me to not be able to throw it firm 5 stars, but I just cannot due to various bugs, one so bad that an important quest cannot be completed (black screen preventing quest completion). Upon submitting a bug report, it was noted many other players have experienced this very issue for some time and it does not seem to have been fixed. Also, WT has performance issues, even on powerful hardware. For instance, after completing battles the rewards screen is often very slow loading to the point of freezing for a time. Others have reported this as well. Overworld optimization could be better as well. That aside, I have in rather embarrassingly short order logged 100+ hours in WT and regret not a single minute. You are rewarded with compelling emergent gameplay, challenging battles, and professions that are a joy to level. Exploration is fun and progression across the board is very rewarding. Capturing prisoners and recruiting them (or turning them over to a warden), being a thief, being benovolent (as possible), falling in love (or hate), exploring tombs, you name it; the world is your oyster. I just love watching my mercs grow and develop relationships! The story itself is not too deep, but the choices you do have can no less give you pause, which regardless of the complexity of a given story can add depth to a playthrough. Even still, the story is nevertheless interesting to experience. We needn't be Tolkien to have a great story! Bugs aside, I do absolutely recommend WT and have faith Shiro will continue to polish this stunning title.

Great game, appreciate the cross-platform coop with the steam release, but it's kind oif ruined by the fact that the developers roll out releases to the gog version much later than steam, with no communication on why. Not the platform to get this if you can.