Wartales Reviews
Don't be fooled by its drab exterior, Wartales is a deep and richly rewarding exercise in party creation.
This grungy medieval low fantasy tactical RPG isn't just a sandbox, but a quick-sandbox, capable of sucking you right in with emergent stories and moments equally thrilling and silly. The trade off here is it can lack a bit of momentum, but if you stay curious, you'll end up well rewarded by its layered and considered world and systems.
A sandbox tactical/RPG hybrid with gritty, low fantasy charm, Wartales is systemically ambitious, but sturdy and clever enough to hold its own.
Wartales is an intelligent and brutal video game, capable of exalting through excellent game design and mind-boggling contexts and secondary missions. It is impossible to read a very graceful and alive story in a modern way, and the work can be seen in the classic role-playing game as well as it can still be seen. It absolutely is there.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Wartales surprised me. It is a rare game that lets you play without getting in the way. Within minutes you will be out in the world, building your party and writing your story. That is something to be cherished in a world full of games that hold your hand to a painful degree or RPGs that take ten to twenty hours just to get to the meat of things. Wartales knows how to let players explore and have fun and doesn’t actively try to stop you from doing so, which is, unfortunately, all too rare these days. If you want a game that respects your time, look no further than Wartales.
Wartales is an excellent sandbox RPG that gives you total freedom on the path to experience.
Review in French | Read full review
Any potential Wartales displays as an outlaw fantasy RPG is negated by frequent crashes. There's fun to be had with party management and a robust turn-based combat system, but until the stability issues are addressed, the game's not worth the frequent backtracking previous save points.
A creative merge of survival simulation, turn-based combat and tactical RPG.
undefined.Wartales is a game that I very much want to like, and suspect I would, were I playing it on PC or presumably a more powerful console. I have plenty of positive things to say about it but at the end of the day, it just doesn't run well on Switch. Wartales is a very interesting game, but between poor tutorialization and awful performance on Switch, it may be buried a bit too deep to be worth playing on this platform.
Wartales is the perfect game for those who love turn-based action and min-maxing their characters. The progression system is well-thought to keep you engaged while you explore each map. Combat and crafting are two other complementary systems that add extra layers of strategy.
A GOTY Contender Crippled by Technical Issues
Although Wartales isn't perfect, the many small details that are slowly presented to the player make for a very enjoyable experience. You can play the game in many different ways and the game promotes a lot of experimentation. The game is simple in presentation, but it manages to add enough charm. In particular, the fact that each location looks different ensures that you will not get bored quickly. The new regions and the gameplay change little to the core of the game and the challenge lies mainly in exploring, balancing and expanding your group of mercenaries. Do I have enough food? Do I have enough food to feed everyone? Do I have enough resources and medicines to survive a surprise attack? This is a game where your loyal mercenaries and the journey are what matter most, not the final destination.
Review in Dutch | Read full review
Wartales provides a compelling power fantasy despite its lack of magic or fantastical creatures.
The more you play Wartales, the more you’ll find that many of the mechanics get deeper and deeper. The game is enjoyable as a whole. RPG-style strategy games are always more fun when played with a large group of people, and Wartales delivers on that front. It’s not a heavy RPG by any means—the story and dialogue are pretty sparse—but the turn-based combat is where it shines.
In conclusion: Wartales is a mix of great ideas tempered by some questionable design decisions. I really want to love this game, and there is plenty of fun to be had, but I can’t help but feel like there was a missed opportunity to make a good game a true great. For fans of the genre I do recommend picking it up and giving it a go, but I really hope that the game gets expanded upon in the future to let it live up to its full potential.
Wartales is unlike anything else I’ve played this year, as it boasts a massive landscape of near-emergent gameplay where you are not the hero of the story, but you do have a crucial role to play in it. It’s a grim, dark world to take part in, but it’s utterly fascinating at the events that take place, and how you can help shape or unmake it. The dynamicism in which things unfold makes replayability high, and the inclusion of multiplayer co-op is the perfect kind of game night with friends. Shiro Games have crafted something special here, and Wartales excels for letting you make your own successes or failures through the choices you make along the way.
Manage a band of companions and explore the vast world of Wartales. Recruit different mercenaries from different regions and create the best roster of fighters and become a well-known force to be reckoned with. Be an ambitious adventurer or a most wanted outlaw. This is an RPG sandbox game that every medieval strategist has ever dreamed of playing.