Fun only begins after 4 hours of playing, at least for my character. Overall there is so much of backtracking and walking - pretty boring. But overall core mechanics and world is pretty interesting
This is a review of my first experience with the game. this does not cover endgame as of yet.
let's start with the good here: local coop was not a feature I expected, but it's there, the game runs well, supports mouse and keyboard as well as controller, melee combat feels good, the ability selection system is pretty interesting and...that's all the nice things, so far.
Now for the bad and the ugly: the camera is a piece of crap. you can't zoom in and out, nor does it change height when you do (at least in a few places). It also has the fairly annoying habit of snapping to what I can only assume are supposed to be points of interests when you get too close,
The controls and the interface are clearly meant for controllers. you will bump into so much stuff when trying to use the mouse., and that's when the camera's doing it's job.
The models look kinda...bland. I thought Warhammer was supposed to look cool.
The sketch-like cutscenes look like crap. I don't mind the sketch look itself, especially to save budget for what really matters, but when I hold my old TTRPG rulebook or look at modern warhammer art, I can't help but think that they had all the reference necessary to do a lot better.
The first few quests are basically a back and forth between the sewers and the same NPC.
The map isn't completely accurate, don't follow it too closely and mind the invisible walls.
Drops are not immediately highlighted when they drop, and are easy to miss in general.
So far,it's different, I'll give the game that. And I got it at a hefty discount, so no regrets.
The game is okay-ish. You'll be running through the same environment multiple times in each act, which is quite tiresome.
There's a lot of systems to play with that gives some decent build variety, but the most annoying thing is the broken balance. Everything is so easy that I immediately jumped from very hard (can't start higher unless you finish the game first) to Chaos 4 for the DLCs. Even on Chaos 3/4 you can go through 98% of the content with just the energy builder skill, only using a consumer for bosses and maybe elites, which are also the only situations I ever used Bloodlust in. The game encourages you to use it, but you virtually never need it and it also builds up much to slowly to be used regularly (which is disappointing).
The very vew bosses are absolute damage sponges on higher levels, though, and are thus totally disconnected from the rest of the game.
All in all it's just a 'meh'. It could have beed good, but sadly, it doesn't hit the mark.
Pros - the graphics is decent.
- maybe you are a fan of Warhammer, and you want to waste time in something „Warhammer” (if you can call this a „pro”)
Cons - no character attributes
- each character has one (or two) weapons they begin with. Those are the only ones you will ever use throughout the game. You dreamt of being a soldier and using a blunderbuss? Na-ah. A witchhunter wielding a Zweihander? Nope. Slayer using a two-handed axe? Or a giant club? KEEP DREAMING.
- full scaling. If you try a zone at level 20, every mob is level 20. Level 40? Every mob is level 40.
- little dialogue.
- no cinematics between acts.
- you cannot see enemies' names. They are just shapes with a small health bar.
Truly, unless you buy this game 90% off, or, better yet, you are PAID to play it, don't bother.
I played it through with the slayer during 2 free weekends on steam.
Although it was funny at the beginning (the hit feedback was very good), it became much too repetitve very fast. More or less every level looked the same.
Character customisation is also not really needed, I played though the campain with only using the first 2 skills you got as slayer. Itemisation is also meh, as you neither see any special properties on the items nor need to have a critical look at them. Just use the item that gives more damage and its good.
The good thing is, I enjoyed the story.
In short: highly repetitive, uninteresting skills and items but a more or less funny story. Don't buy! Especially not at full price. I think 10€ or $ would be ok for some people, but not for me.