What's under the hood in terms of mechanics - combat, troop management, and map exploration are fun. Everything that ties it together, however, is such an unnecessary bore. A studio that has made so much money with a good concept, then refusing to uplift its base game is incredibly disappointing, There's no plot, the writing is mediocre at best, and there's little "emergent narrative" from the game mechanics to justify having it set up this way. Really a shame considering all the ingredients are there, just not brought to the next level. Everything is so sluggish, so time consuming.. All that combined with their constant push for DLC content makes my skin crawl.

I'm posting this review over a specific gripe. If this gripe doesn't bother you, then go for it. The game is difficult, which is great. The designers clearly also wanted to make choices difficult in the game, which is also great, but they did so in a lazy and stupid manner, which is not great. Example, You are attacked by a group of ruffians. You beat the ruffians and then are presented with a choice... The leader, now wounded, begs for mercy and explains that they don't actually want to hurt anyone, but they have no way of escaping the problems of the region except by paying for the border crossing. So they resorted to robbery, even though they knew it was wrong. You have the choice to A) execute them, or b) give them basically all your money. (which at the beginning cripples your party). You can't simple walk away. This is a stupid and lazy way of forcing difficult moral choices. The choice presented makes no logical sense at all. There is no game reason why sho...

The vanilla game is barebones and repetitive and almost all of the DLC feels like things that should have been in the base game or were removed and resold. I liked this game when i first played it but it got old when i relaized how little content there was on release. Every area was basically copy and pasted,half assed set of story mssion for that region, go to the next one. No real end game even on a conceptual level. Then The DLCs started coming out and i just lost interest in the game. DLC for fighting pits, DLC for hunitng beast contracts, DLC for using boats and having pirates. They did one for owning a tavern and ill tip my hat to that being a cool idea, but it just functions as a money pit. The other ones all feel like things that should be in a mercenary game. I could live with them trying to sell DLC but the core game is like 1/3 of a video game. I just can't reccomend it on the grounds that you just get such bad value for the amount they want you to spend.

If you like: • Management simulations • The ability to tailor difficulty of combat and food/survival elements • Elements like animal taming and prisoner taking (and perhaps recruitment) • Making mission specific decisions that at least mildly shape the regions you're in • Trading and improving commerce to the land • Tomb raiding and learning about an ancient culture • DLC that allows you do further some aspects of the simulation depending on purchase choices Then you'll enjoy this game! I initially played this game after looking at the early images and previews. Something about the initial offer looked like a good approximation of a dream for a video games I had a as a child. I would play Final Fantasy Tactics Advance on a white Gameboy Advance, no backlight technology or anything yet. Even then I wanted a game where you had more control over your little guild and a little less story focus someday. Cut to Wartales and that feeling is achieved. Your little ...

Despite being a gritty, tactical, low-fantasy RPG, Wartales surprisingly shares a lot with cozy games, something unexpected but definitely welcome. You can have pets and customize your mercenary camp, but instead of cute furniture, you get to install pillories and meat racks. In multiplayer, we had loads of fun debating how to treat slaves, how to manage resources, and which quests to tackle next. Too bad the game is riddled with bugs, be sure to save as often as possible to avoid losing progress. It can also feel quite repetitive at times, especially given how slow the progression is. On sale and with friends, I’d totally recommend it. It gave me strong board-game-night vibes, and I live for that.

The game is too simple. Over and over it's the exact same fight. It is also infuriating that all the units are so far apart. With more people involved, the battle becomes a dumb 5vs5 in small pockets of the map everywhere, instead of one massive battle. It becomes pure tedium.

It's good and if you enjoyed Battle Brothers as well as Mount and Blade (Original - 2) you will likely love this It's a Sandbox game with set stories per regions and with it being a sandbox it all depends on how you wanna play and make your own fun, so bring friends (i know gamers having friends?). In short though It's a Mercenary sandbox sim where the monetization is based off the Paradox model of A SH!T TON OF DLC. You can also be a raving band of 'hobos' (refugees) who raid and gaslight other hobos and rich people into joining your pitchfork mob of Democratic Reformists so you can get One guy'd by a boss (it's a very funny strat)

I gave this a bit of a go, but ultimately had to drop it after getting to the second region. While the combat section is decent, and the knowledge and skill trees are good, it suffers from bugs, crashes and frequent stutters. The final straw was a bug after camp where one of the companions wanted to talk - but then the dialog didn't appear. Because the game was waiting for input, I couldn't progress - and this was right after a battle that took about 30 minutes to complete. The setting was pretty cool, but the story and dialog itself was more than a bit meh. There was ultimately not enough there to keep me going through the bugs.

after 113hrs it has become very repetitive and little to strategize

Enjoy the game, have dozens of desktop hour but crashes frequently on Steam Deck. Overall poor steam deck performance. Update: Set everything to lowest settings. Still crashing, one crash rebooted the steam deck. It seems like exiting locations to the world map is related. Its a shame, given how long battles can take its really demoralizing to have to redo battles and interactions. This should not be Steam Deck Verified.