The Waylanders
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Critic Reviews for The Waylanders
The Waylanders tries to follow on BioWare's footsteps but Gato Studio's game lacks all the qualities that made Dragon Age: Origins stands out.
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Waylanders is an interesting concept let down by poor dialogue and inconsistent challenge, but it's not without its charm.
With its unique setting and interesting story mechanics powered by time-traveling, great sense of scale, and nice visuals, The Waylanders had the potential to be a remarkable role-playing game. The uneven pacing of the story, writing with wild quality shifts, the rather run-of-the-mill combat, the clunky interface, and a general lack of polish, however, make the game often frustrating to play, preventing it from reaching the heights it could have achieved.
I’m not sure if more time in the oven is the answer to The Waylanders’ problems, but it couldn’t hurt. I really liked the setting and core story, but I’m afraid that the game’s bland combat and awkward controls are baked in by now. It has character, charm and style to spare but swings and misses in the execution. The Waylanders is a collection of really good ideas, almost none of which are allowed to shine without compromise.
Everything about my experience points to GATO Studio either running out of time or money (or both) before they could complete The Waylanders. A story that starts off in a fresh setting and filled with interesting characters, nice visuals and outstanding voice acting is quickly derailed by technical flaws and an ever-growing list of bugs. I rarely complain about too many side missions or additional features like romantic endeavors being added to a game, but this is a perfect example where cutting out unnecessary features would have allowed GATO Studios to focus on the things that really mattered. Sometimes, less can be more, and that appears to be the case here.
As such it is hard to recommend The Waylanders in its current form. Although it is charming and enthusiastic, its slapdash quality seriously hampers the overall quality of the experience. A middling narrative and minor bugs are easy to overlook if the overall game is enjoyable - which The Waylanders is - but potentially game-breaking issues will erode any good will the title may have gained.
The Waylanders is an old style RPG with a good setting, but it is penalized by bugs, errors and full of awfull dialogues
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Waylanders tries to imitate a variety of mechanics from leaders of the RPG genre, but fails to implement any of them effectively, while offering nothing original apart from the astonishingly poor dialogue.
