This game is riddled with bugs, has a terrible UI and game design flaws which make the whole experience way more irritating than rewarding:
In no particular order of frustration:
- If not installed on an SSD, loading a New Game can take up to 8-10 REAL-LIFE MINUTES. Unbearable in 2026.
- If your computer has dual screens, regardless of your Graphics setting (full screen, borderless, windowed...) the game will almost always launch in a weird, off-centered windowed-like shape across both screens despite having been previously set to display only on one screen, forcing you to go back to the graphics menu and reselect your display options anew.
- Game can crash in loading screens. The latter can also display a stroboscopic effect throughout the whole loading process.
- Victory screen at the end of battles regularly stops being interacted with, preventing you from collecting your hard-earned loot.
- Same goes for battles themselves. Sometimes the game will randomly decide to forbid one (or more) of your characters from using their combat skills, won't show hit markers & prompts, or conversely will suggest that you can cross a piece of terrain that your character can't actually physically cross.
- Zoom level on the map & in battle is debatably too high and can't be zoomed in enough.
- Clicking on different elements and props in the world (chests, resources, roaming merchants & caravans...) needs to be pixel-perfect or else simply doesn't register.
- The game does overall very little explanation of different systems & mechanics, and also provides no information on many different crafting costs. Wanna know what resources that new crafting recipe will require? Buy it and figure out by yourself, only to find out that it requires resources you have no means of getting until much later in the campaign.
- Despite its very linear structure hidden beneath a pseudo-open world skin, this game is grindy as hell. You will need LOTS of resources to get anywhere but good luck finding good farming spots for some of those as the game never tells you where to find them. For instance you'll never be able to see a single piece of Sandstone for the first dozen (or couple dozen) hours until you randomy find a trincket that will give you a chance to get some Sandstone each time you mine any other ore.
- Even on Easy, hiring costs, weekly wages & market goods are expensive, income sources are scarce (mostly boiling down to contracts) and, as soon as you level up enough to face stronger enemy parties, you'll burn through your food, armor repair kits and health potions so fast that you can seriously face bankruptcy 20+ hours into the game if you don't plan all of your expenses & savings carefully since the very first minute. Generally speaking, unlike most games which are designed to become easier with time, progress and better gear, Wartales seems to be designed backwards with an economy model set to become increasingly more difficult the better you get. Awkward feeling.
All in all, this game has the potential to be great and immersive, but its appalling technical state (some bugs haven't been tackled since 2024 hinting that there's no technical monitoring whatsoever) as well as a number of weird & debatable game design choices hold it back as an average mixed bag. In the same genre, a game like Battle Brothers seems way more polished & accessible despite being notoriously more challenging.
