The roadmap on here is wrong. There is no multiplayer. The game has zero chance of launching this summer. The devs didn't communicate the issues and sold this game for months knowing that the roadmap was a lie. I found this out after seeing posts from a dev explaining the game's hopeless state on their personal twitter of all things. These pieces of crucial information should be explained publicly to customers on the steam/GoG page. Your roadmap is borderline false advertisement. I don't feel good writing this review because I like what 1C/3D Realms are trying to achieve, but shady crap like this needs to be put on blast. I regret purchasing this game on steam and potential customers DESERVE to know about what's going on with the development.
Constantly feel like I need to hoard the stupid save tokens. Classic games didn't do this, modern FPS don't do this. Please change it. At least as a seperate option or something maybe, idk. Literally the rest of the game is good.
If you ever felt dissappointed that Quake never got a proper sequel that followed the original game's motifs of hellish horror, WRATH: Aeon of Ruin in many ways feels like what a Quake sequel could have been like. Yet, it also manages to find it's own identity and bring some non-linearity to the retro FPS trend: Think Quake's gameplay meets Hexen hub system with a sliver of System Shock 2/Bioshock styled respawn points througout levels.
The look and feel in this game is superb; the atmosphere is less nightmarish than Quake, with a bigger emphasis on death and necromancy... crypts, tombs and graves adorn the landscapes while the undead roam about in this game. But it also has fantasy and wonder, with some environments looking gorgeous, robust and full of detail, making great use of the Quake 1/DarkPlaces engine.
So what's the content available so far? There's the main hub, two levels, five weapons and four artifacts (items) that you can use. The levels are fairly large and will take you about an hour to complete each. So right now, consider this a type of demo more than anything resembling a full game.
This early access release shows promise, but as with any similar title, there are issues present and some things are in need of polishing. The AI, for instance, I find that often gets stuck on walls and doorways; most of the alternate fires for the weapons are lackluster; the item pickup radius is too small and imprecise; reload animations, particularly the shotgun one, can take too long and won't allow you to switch to other weapons until they are complete. There are a few more quirks here and there that need to improve, but the point I'm making is... there's still a long way ahead for this game. And yet, the foundation laid out so far is really solid. If the devs play their cards right, the game can only get better from here.
Just finished the Early Access/Preview on Normal Difficulty
Wrath takes the similar route of DUSK with a true throwback to classic mid 90s FPS with great homages to older titles while keeping its own look and feel. Enemy inspiration reminds me of Quake meets Doom 64 and of course Heretic/Hexen style hubworld. Environments look and feel amazing, texture quality is fine-tooth pixel greatness running on the Darkplaces source port. Definitely set your resolution to your native monitor and crank up the mouse sensitivity and acceleration accordingly
Currently(early access) there are about 5 weapons available with about 4 to 5 artifacts you can use all being very useful. The present enemy roster has bout 8 enemies all with their own well animated movements and well timed telegraphed attacks, but don't let some of their familiarity fool you, they each present their own difficulty if ignored. The 2 worlds in the current hub are both fantastic with a snowy grave site tomb, while the other offers a type of harsh wetlands forest with the tunnels and more stone/metal structures. Overall a near perfect presentation
Out of all the weapons, the shotgun has a underwhelming alt-fire of bouncing projectiles that is weak and worthless compared to the standard fire. I would rather see this being turned into the two shells being turned into a charge of slug attack that takes of 4 rounds. The mouse feel and control greatly needs you to ramp up the sensitivity and acceleration, it needs more refinement as solid as DUSK or gzDoom
I would suggest adding an automap to your journal(as if he is drawing it), an inventory system along with artifacts, the ability to change altfires for weapons, more variety to each enemy in textures or more attacks or models, more animations for enemies, maybe some RPG elements with upgrades/ and stats, armor body placement(Hexen/Elder Scrolls), add gold/treasure, more interactivity with the world around you and more info in the journal. More than less
There's enough of nice things in Wrath to make it a great game. Thing is, I am no longer sure that devs are able to.
It is stuck in development hell. Roadmap have nothing to do with reality, delays are frustrating. I mean, just look how many great retro shooters came out since this has been annouced. When it comes to Wrath, we are fed bi-weekly updates like "added some detail to map X". It is pretty obvious that development is super slow and possibly a side-gig for the team which cannot commit to it full time.
When it comes to gameplay, I do know that it isn't really possible to come up with 100% fresh ideas, but this barely feels like having identity of its own. Enemies and guns function and look like reskins of Quake and Doom ones (with a bit of Unreal thrown into mix, hello bio rifle). Everything could use balancing. Sounds are pretty bad imo and world lack any meaningful ambient noise which would add to atmosphere.
Level design is ok, but thing is, I have played plenty of community made maps and mods for Quake 1 which had more interesting layouts, better visuals and flowed better in terms of gameplay. And oh boy - if you compare it to Dimension of the Machine episode from Quake Remastered (if you haven't played it, go buy remaster and do, it's great) it's not even close.
Out of all retro stylised shooters annouced in past years, Wrath was the one I was looking forward the most, considering that it is using Quake engine and done by people from Quake community. But my patience has run out and there are so many great games in this genre right now, that Wrath is extremely hard to recommend. Buy it in early access if you've played most of what is available out there and crave some more Quake-like games, otherwise wait for 1.0 release and see how it will turn out.
