Warman

TLDR: This is combat prototype being sold as a full game "Warman is a pure hack-and-slash game, focusing not on lore and stories, but what action-adventure RPGs do best: Combat, stats, and loot... Instead, there's plenty of action, endless possibilities of developing your character through a freeform class system and random item generation, and, of course, monsters to explore and dungeons to defeat!" The idea, as presented, is that Warman is a simplified version of more complex games, distilling those games down to what makes them fun. Except Warman completely misses what makes those games fun, and instead is simply missing features required to fully flesh out the game. Story is a motivator, not a hindrance. No one cares about loot if the loot isn't meaningful. When you advertise stats, that usually means you can influence those stats. Combat has to be both intuitive and engaging, with repetitive, grindy, basic, unbalanced combat being a turnoff. Free-form classes are nice, but that actually becomes a crutch removing meaningful customization. [b]Story:[/b] A story, even a basic one, gives context for the game, and can help build motivation and investment. This is especially important if the player hits a roadblock. Otherwise, they're much more likely to turn off the game and never play again. A basic story is also a very useful way to build in a tutorial. Oh, that should be mentioned, the "tutorial" is a few signs with super basic information as you walk to the hub area. This was a red flag for me, but what was worse was that super basic information really was all you needed. There really is not much game here, it's more of a combat prototype. [b]Loot:[/b] Oh... the loot. Getting loot is grindy, especially in the first area where you have to kill the TANKIEST beehives in order to get loot (there are also a couple chests to be found). And what do you get? Highly random loot pieces with even more random stats. You can get stats on weapons (which define your class) that are not used by that class. Overall the loot is not meaningful, and is so random that it kills game flow. [b]Stats:[/b] This is a short one, but you have a ton of stats in your stats page... but you don't gain any sort of options when leveling up. How do you customize those stats? That's right, with that extremely random loot. [b]Classes:[/b] First, how does leveling work? You have an character level and class levels. Character level gives you a boost to general stats, but it's your class that really matters. As you master a class, you unlock abilities, improvements to those abilities, and passives. One of the big issues here, is that things automatically scale to your character level. "Did you try out every class before picking which one[s] to focus on? Lol, now the game's scaled so far beyond you." This doesn't reward trying classes, but effectively punishes it. You HAVE to focus on getting loot and raising a main class, or else even the starting zone will punish you, making it EVEN HARDER TO GET LOOT. The idea of free-form classes is neat, but needs to be placed on top of a more fleshed out system. One last thing to note is you don't pick skills, you get 4 for each class... that's it. [b]Combat:[/b] Again, it feels like this is a combat prototype, not a full game (or even a beta). Combat does not feel smooth or fun, there is not real flow, and things are generally damage sponges. What makes this worse, is the leveling system auto-scaling things. Back to combat flow, some abilities trigger as soon as you press the button, others pull up a targeting indicator, but it seems arbitrary which ones do which. Sword slash in an arc? Targeted. Sword slash in a 360? Single press. Oh, and you cannot changes this behavior. I want to specifically mention one thing to show off combat imbalance and lack of flow: If you equip a sword, what do you think your basic attack would be? That's wrong, it's an overhand chop with a very narrow hitbox. Since attacks are not targeted, this means you will miss... a lot, especially on ranged enemies that try to run. Ugh. What's the solution? GIVE YOU A RANGED SWORD ATTACK AS AN ABILITY! Why? Just make it easier to close the gap and a basic attack that's easier to hit. Don't give me a slash that sends out a wave of... force? Again, it reemphasizes that "combat prototype" feeling, where you slap on abilities that compensate for lack of refinement as you test what works and doesn't. Combat is a slog.

The positive reviews for this beggar belief. This is extremely bare-bones, ugly, unbalanced, dull, unresponsive, glitchy, repetitive, and boring as all get-out. Also the retail price is $20, which is completely ridiculous considering you could get real actual games for that amount of money. There is no way people paid twenty bucks for this, played it, and reviewed it positively without some kind of shenanigans going on. Paid accounts? Bots? I don't know for sure, but it definitively reeks.

no controller support

Was excited for a silly little game, skills were looking basic but interesting enough, equipment had that "just strong enough to make you feel powerful" vibe, was really getting into it. Went back to town, saw there was no easy portal back, so walked out front gate and figured since I'd gained so many levels it'd be a cakewalk and I could rush back to where I was. Then I died in 2 hits while not paying close attention and saw that the game force-leveled the enemies to stronger than I was, and to the point I had no hope of getting equipment to keep up with them with how I was playing casually. What an utter disappointment that could've been easily avoided.

Good little dungeon crawl. Its like a stew of Heroes of hammerwatch (controls, random layout) Diablo (random loot) and Victor vran (special attacks by weapon) The only thing I might add is controller support, but it's good with KB & Mouse. I can't wait to see how things turn out after early access

I purchased Warman since its EA time, back then it goes floor by floor, you jump into dungeon, get loots, push limit a bit by bit, then carry junks back to town. But in this full release edition, everything changed, I am stupefied. - Now the game wants to be like Diablo, you start in town, walk out to fields, beat enemies, teleport back to town anytime. Sounds like ordinary Diablo experience right? No, the weirdness starts from here. - The choice of choosing wasp as starting enemy in the first zone is very weird, (compare to Diablo which it uses zombies, or other conventional RPG use slimes) wasp shoots needle at you while your feet are locked in place on attacking, when you hit it it never get stun locked and will retreat away, result in tag game before you finally beat one. The nightmare is realized right when you step out to the first map, there will be 5 wasps VS you. and it got worse (up to 10 vs you) in later map. Not to mention the wasp spawner that will outpace your killing speed. - The strategy is you need to find the OP/broken skill that you can beat the system. fighting with them head to head will only result in your agony. I can sort of see where the game is driving to, for example wind mage, at the beginning they are very suck, their left click attack hits only 1 target, trading with wasp's needle is almost lose-lose, the key to win in an unexpected way is to aggro all wasps in the map, group them up, walk to the middle of the group then spam skill No.3, later the skill will have 3 charges to spam, item to increase projectile penetration or projectile count. You get the idea, left click and kite will get you nowhere. - Not to mention their LV scales with you (even Diablo did not do that), why put anti-grinding mechanism into the game that requires you to grind? It does not make any sense. And they all respawn every time you get back into the map, so most of the time you can just run past them to your objective. - I managed to win a boss of prison, the shadow archer, while I'm only LV.8 by harassing him around the pillars, spam wind mage totem skill, you cant fight him directly head to head bc he kill you in 2-3 hit. At least game have mercy that if you died boss will not heal back to full. So in summary, Warman starts with weird progression, weird enemy choice, and most of time you need to be cunning player, outsmart the game by finding OP/broken way to win, you cannot play it straightforward you will only lose. I dont know why dev decision turned out like this. So for the review, the game turned out to be different game than when I bought it in EA, and with this all weird progression, I regrettably have to thumb down.

I played through all available content with the caveat of not spending too much time in the endless dungeons and I don't feel like it was worth my time. Pros: - Mastery system is decent for allowing some customization of your character. - Being able to upgrade items and swap out a single attribute to the one you want (random but you can replace it indefinitely) is an appreciated feature. Cons: - Some features in the mastery system do not make sense. One skill under archer gives a stacking damage bonus for physical and magical damage up to 100%. All bow attacks are physical damage. This might make you think you can do further customization by crossing skills on the tree but it is only active while you have the bow equipped. I guess you can get the stacks, switch to one of the magic weapons and keep it until all the stacks tick down but changing weapons causes all your active abilities to go on cooldown so you would just have your autoattack. - Your character level is absolutely pointless due to level scaling. You get some more damage and health but so do all the enemies, only your mastery level for a weapon allows you to select additional passive skills. Once I realized this, I just ran past all enemies unless I was forced to fight just to see if there was anything new further on. - Related to character level, I had no reason to look forward to new items most of the time. Items do not have any base stats like defense or damage that are tied to the item level. Outside of some standard stats like shields having block chance or quivers adding an extra projectile, the items just have the random attributes like additional health, increased exp, cooldown reduction and so on. Item color determines how many attributes it will have and item level will just increase the cap of those attributes. If I swapped out my level 10 red bow I used the whole game with a level 35 item all I would potentially get is an increase of attack speed from 16% to 18%, or an increase of physical damage percent from 64% to 74%. Sure, the increase would be nice but if you are trading down in item rarity, the cost would be fewer total attributes.

Imagine a game where you get the most basic tutorial ever built, you venture out with a weapon that does 10-20 damage, and once you've made it to the plains biome, everything either has 50, or 600 health.

As a fan of dungeon crawling loot-based games, I found Warman very disappointing. The lack of a story is fine, but the gameplay is dull. Enemies all feel the same, the loot is uninteresting, the classes are irrelevant, the maps feel empty, the bosses are uninspired, and there are no achievements. It's okay for a couple of hours before it dawns on you that this is pretty much the entire game. There's no sense of reward for doing anything. More than anything it feels incomplete and unpolished, like an alpha build of something meant to be released much later. The developer is still actively working on Warman. Based on their update log, they seem keen on adding more biomes and classes, but my advice would be to stop spreading the world so thin and work on providing more depth. Variety of weapons, enemies, random events, and assets would add much more value than additional empty maps with the same unsatisfying gear. I'm surprised that this has a $20 price tag. I'm not sure what bundle I grabbed this in, but I'd be hard-pressed to recommend it at even $5.

Not bad at all. Leveling and gear make this more fun for me than the typical rogue-lite genre. You do lose some experience when you die, but keep your gear. I like the blacksmith for changing a stat and improving gear. Helps a lot. Gameplay is great. Love the abilities based on weapon, the run and shoot controls, and the skill based combat. I wish there were boss fights and a tad more variety. The twin stick RPG (as I'm gonna call it) is getting closer to perfection. What would be great is to have an open world to explore with quests, but dungeons to enter from the world. Then it could feel like a complete progression. This game is nice though, since you feel a solid accomplishment by completing a floor. Tip: Go back to town after each floor. Easier to sort through gear, equip better items, sell what you don't need. Inventory space is limited.