The production of Chaosbane is the responsibility of Eko Software studio, so far creating niche games, the only one I know is the How to Survive series , which is a pretty good survival horror about zombies. Their latest work is an isometric hack’n’slash, a genre that seems to fit into the Warhammer universe like a glove, which was also confirmed by the games from the Vermintide series . Although the studio was very good friends from the isometric perspective, the lack of experience in designing chop and slash games definitely makes itself felt during the gameplay in Chaosbane. In my opinion, the producers failed to cope with the essence of hack’n’slash as a genre, and as a result their production is terrible. I decided that in this review I will not consider the strengths and weaknesses of the game, but comparing it to other representatives of this genre, I will try to answer why it is so unsuccessful.
The Lord will sit down and click, we’ll do the rest
The first thing the game offers us is the choice of characters from among four predefined classes that have a predefined gender, race, skill set and role. In this matter, you can probably see some disadvantages, after all, we all love to create our own characters and adjust them to each other, starting with the appearance. However, ready-made heroes are nothing new in this genre; Looking at the iconic Diablo III , for example , we notice that there, at the beginning, we also had a choice of five ready-made characters, also with a clearly defined appearance and role. It is true that Chaosbane looks pale at this point , because Blizzard’s production offered players one more character, as well as the option to choose her gender. It is even worse if we add another leading brand on the market, i.e.Path of Exile . In this free production, at the moment we get seven character classes, all of which except one have three subclasses. Already at this point, the hack’n’slash from the world of Warhammer does not look very good, and further problems emerge from the darkness covering the Old World.
One of them is the automatic adding of skills. Along with reaching the next levels of experience, our character gets the next top-down abilities intended for him. The process takes so long that you have the impression that there is almost no influence on your character’s development. Combined with the type of gameplay that the hack’n’slash genre offers, the player only has to press the next buttons, trying to defeat the advancing enemies. Sometimes I even did not notice that I was operating with another skill. For comparison, in Diablo III, at the beginning it looks a bit similar, but after a while the player has a choice which of them will be used at the moment or in what combination. As a result, we can start matching the character of a given class to the style that suits us best from the very beginning.
What? You again? Haven’t I killed you before?
Another nuisance for Warhammer: Chaosbane is its repetition. It is difficult to say whether it was the laziness of the creators or the lack of time that made this title look like a skeleton of the game in one of the initial stages of production in several ways. Regardless of which location I was traversing, I still found the same, not very interesting opponents. In each of the four acts, up to five types of enemies stood in my way, and over the course of subsequent stages they could only differ from each other in color. It is very rare to find a monster with a specific attack that would force me to change the way I fight. And even when I dealt with one, it was so similar to the rest that for a long time I couldn’t guess which one it was.
I can see the darkness
The shortcomings of the creators can also be noticed in other areas. Although, paradoxically, they are not visible. It is hard to see them because the programmers from Eko Software simply forgot to include them in the game. We are talking here about markings of NPCs with whom we can interact, such as the shopkeeper. There are not many NPCs around the locations, but even fewer of them play any role in this world, so it would be worthwhile to tell the player what at least some of them have to offer him. It is also poor with the locations themselves. They are tiny, cramped and lead straight to the goal of the mission without in any way encouraging their exploration. Not that there was anything to explore in total. The levels, although nice, are almost empty, and the only loot boxes are located directly on our way.
You have my sword and my bow, and… that’s enough
What made me happy about the Eko Software slash is the presence of the cooperation mode, because before setting off on a journey, you need to assemble a team. Online or by sharing the screen, we have the opportunity to face the evil threatening Empire together. However, there is also a problem here. One of the many problems of this production is the inadequate difficulty level proposed to players by the creators. When facing hordes of enemies, you can feel boredom alone and you should quickly change the gameplay options to derive any satisfaction from chopping down enemies. When at least one companion comes to our rescue, it turns out that even the highest available difficulty level ceases to be any challenge and the conversation becomes the most interesting activity.
In theory it is not bad, in practice it is bad
Promising Warhammer: Chaosbane turned out to be a game of indie titles in the early stages of production. A pretty good combat system with nice graphics has been pushed into an almost empty game world that looks as if it is still waiting to be filled with content. The pretext story, not very diverse opponents and poorly designed locations make Chaosbane a tragic game. The shortcomings of this production are especially visible when we combine it with, for example, the free Path of Exile . Developers from Eko Software still have a lot to learn before they are able to present us a successful hack’n’slash game.
We would like to thank CDP for making a copy of the game available for review.
