Warhammer: Chaosbane, the Diablo-style action RPG developed by Eko Software based in the Warhammer world, has now been released on PS4, Xbox One and Steam PC. We have got hold of the PS4 version, so armed ourselves and jumped right in, ready to take on the vast hordes of Chaos.
Playing Warhammer: Chaosbane is not too dissimilar from other action RPG’s of its type (Diablo, Torchlight etc.) You choose one of four heroes (Human soldier, Dwarf Slayer, Wood Elf Ranger and High Elf Mage) and then you delve into dark and foreboding dungeons, and continue to battle every evil creature that lurks within, until none of them are breathing.
The gameplay is simple, there’s not too much to think about except which button to press and keeping your health topped up. Not to belittle anything, but its fun is not in complex strategy it is swinging your axe, sword or spells into large amounts of enemies, and in this Chaosbane is very successful.
As you
fight and gain experience your hero gains levels and with these levels, he or
she gains access to new skills both active combat skills and passive skills,
and your skill point reserves increase as well. Your hero has a number of Skill
Points you use to equip skills, the better the skill the more points it costs, so
ensure you regularly tweak your heroes skills to make the best use of them.
You will
also come across your fair share of equipment as well, ranging from common to
legendary. As with skills, make sure you regularly check your inventory and keep
all the best equipment equipped. Any equipment you don’t want can be donated to
a chap in the market for gold.
Enemies
also drop fragments, which depending on their type can be used to bless
equipment or gain God Skill tree passives. Which after being unlocked at level
16, can be used to provide stat bonuses or skills to your heroes.
There are bits lacking, things that really should have been included to pad out the gameplay. Firstly, there is no crafting system. You can’t break down your old gear into parts and there is no way to sell unwanted equipment, all you can do is donate for rep. Of course, even If I could sell my gear, I haven’t found any real use for gold yet either. It drops from plenty of enemies, I’ve just never needed to use it, although this does become more useful in the end game.
As you progress, more things are unlocked in the game, either skills, gameplay functions or modes, however there is little to no explanation of what these actually are, leaving you often not trying things out. Ultimately, it still feels a lot like an Early Access game, and that I’m waiting for them to implement the rest of it.
The variation
of the four heroes is fine, there’s a good mix between tanks, DPS, melee and
long range, yet there’s still further scope for the further addition of more
Warhammer classes and races if they want.
Multiplayer works reasonably well, but at lower levels the enemies are too few and too easy to kill, so our party never really felt like they had to work at it. It was a meat-grinder with very little skill involved. If the party was fighting many more or much tougher opponents, this may have aided in the enjoyment of the multiplayer.
Each hero has a different back story, yet when the game starts every hero is put in the same place. Accused of killing the Magus and being saved by Teclis and then sent to destroy the Chaos hordes whoare dwelling underneath. It’s an ok storyline, though admittedly story here is not really why you play games like this. But it does at least give you enough reason as to how and why you’re here.
Taking a look at how Chaosbane looks, graphically it looks nice enough, the animation is smooth and the monsters you fight from the smallest Nurgling to the largest demon are well drawn. However, the more you play the more you see just how little variation there is, not just in the sprites but in the levels themselves. In the first act nearly all of the game was spent going through very similar looking sewers. There was the odd mission that was set on the ramparts outside, but generally it was sewers all the way.
The gear
you can find doesn’t greatly vary either, though there are different sets of
gear to collect, they are not as fantastical as I would hope for them to
become. Though, this does get better in the end game.
Warhammer: Chaosbane has a number of difficulty levels you can choose from, which is good but the standard difficulty (normal) is just a little too easy, with no prior experience with the game I had played for many hours before I even needed to chug a health potion. Although, the other difficulty levels do rectify this.
The control
system is very easy to get to grips with. With simple button pushes and a very
responsive stick, everything you need is easily done with the joypad. I can’t
think of any way they could improve this aspect.
Whether or
not you’re going to play Chaosbane over and over is a bit of a 50/50. On the
one hand there are four different heroes to choose from, each with their own
playstyle, and a large number of different builds you can try out on these
multiple playthroughs. There is also the multiplayer mode which adds to the
replayability. Graphically though, everything is rather samey, and with the
shortcomings in the gameplay it might not be an overly enjoyable experience to
do the seemingly similar levels over and over.
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Jim Franklin
Jim Franklin is a freelance writer, living in Derby UK with his wife and his player 3. When time allows he likes nothing more than losing himself in a multi-hour gaming session. He likes most games and will play anything but prefers MMO's, and sandbox RPG's.
