Warlander Review: Is It The New Happy Wars?

David Mickov
10 Min Read

DISCLOSURE: This game was reviewed on the following platform: PC – Check out our Review Policy page for more information.

Warlander is an exciting game which combines the elements of MOBA and Action Hack & Slash RPGs. It played from the third-person perspective, with a distinctive aesthetic that combines a medieval-inspired world with fantastical items and powers…. and… Strong Robots! It has a lot of features that will make a multiplayer experience one of a kind. Or can it?

Warlander has been awaited for quite some time now and the hype is real. With time and the many announcements as well as upgrades the game has gotten have made it stand out. Now that it is finally out we will be giving it our piece of mind and reviewing it. We will split the review into Pros and Cons section so that you will know what it has good for it and what’s the bad. Lets’ get started.

Is It The New Happy Wars? – Warlander Review

Pros

Like in every review that we do, we shall start off from the positive side of things.

Gameplay

Warlander has a very unique gameplay element that will make you feel like both a very powerful leader and as an individual warrior killing many on the battlefield. These two things combined for a very fun gameplay that will have you going on for hours upon end.

The combat and the in-game battle and warfare are extremely fun if you are a fan of melee combats combined with a semi-positional strategy of pushing and losing ground. You and the enemy team will have an army and you will be fighting for land on very interesting maps. These fights start out simple but with time you’ll end up seeing rockets, magick, and even robots giving them big versatility.

The game is based on a deck system with you having choices to create 5 characters that you’ll play with. There are 3 F2P classes which are all different and you can choose them while in-game depending on what type of attack or defense you need to do.

You are going to upgrade your characters as you go by using the Valor (in-game currency) to get better characters throughout your battle. This is a nice system that basically rewards you for doing good plays in the game. The good thing is that it resets back to 0 every match so it is important to have a weak character to be able to make some money with.

Customization

Being a Free to Play game means you would know from the very start that there are cosmetics in it. Well if you wanted to have a big option of choices on how you can create to customize your knights or sorcerers, you are in luck. There are plenty of choices to go through and basically, you can change every single thing about your troops.

Tutorial

The first time you enter Warlander it doesn’t just throw you into everything and hopes that you learn it as you go. Instead, it gives you a very welldesigned tutorial that will basically teach you the whole strategy and how the game works. It is an excellent way of welcoming people into a free-to-play game that many others should do the same.

The tutorial is actually made unique and has a special charm so don’t go skipping out on it!

Free To Play

Simply being a F2P game makes it a big Pro. Another thing that is very well done is that it has a Battle Pass that actually rewards the free-to-play players by a lot. There are 2 currencies – Silver and Gold, which are basically the same as in every F2P game out there.

Visuals

The visuals although not that special, are suited perfectly for this style of game. The contrast in color that you will be seeing makes it very fun and alive. All the animations are done also very well with each being slightly different than the rest.

The big effects, especially meteor strikes, are especially well done considering that you’ll be getting a lot of enemies flying all over the place. The whole brightness of the game in general might make it seem as if the game is a bit washed out but it is nothing that will affect you in the long run.

Sound Design

Everything feels like it has weight due to the sound design attached to the movements such as swinging your sword and completing different attack combos, skills, and alerts that pop up on your screen. Our point being is that the devs clearly put a lot of care into the sound design and it shows.

Cons

Although it is a new game and many of these issues can be fixed in the future to come, they cannot be left unsaid.

Lack Of Maps

There are not a lot of maps that you can play through in Warlander. We know for a certainty that this will be improved upon in the future, but as it is right now there are a couple of modes to play but 1 to 2 maps. Although this might be the same thing as a MOBA game where there’s only one map so that players can learn it much better.

Anti Cheat Issue & Cheaters

The anticheat it installs is bad for your computer because it stays active even when you aren’t playing the game and launches every time you boot up your computer. Inactivation is not an option. For some unknown reason, it will transfer packets to Japan that can be used to collect information about your computer and your online behavior.

Although it might help out with finding cheaters in-game, we definitely do not like having something that will run in the background without us knowing while sending out data.

This is really something that the game needs to work on since it can put off many players that want to try out the game. It isn’t anything serious that takes off from the game, but simply having something like this is a problem for many gamers.

Also even with this anti-cheat system working in the background and opening and closing constantly, there are still some cheaters in the game that can run to the core (the game’s end goal point) and destroy it even at the beginning of the match.

Performance Issues

Although this might just be in the beginning, since the game is fresh and fairly new, there are some performance issues that cannot be left unsaid. The game could be better optimized and no matter what type of rig you have you will be getting some lag spikes or the game slowing down when there are a lot of things going on especially big AoE skills.

The servers do have a lag from time to time and it might take a while for you to enter a game. This is also something that will get fixed in the future and still, as they are right now they still run better than For Honor so that says something. There are also bugs throughout the game that hopefully will get worked upon in the time to come.

No Voice Chat & Balance Issues

Warlander does not feature a Voice Chat system which makes it a very big Con especially when you wanted to basically plan your attacks out. Other than that, you are going to be seeing some balance issues as seeing plenty of bots in your gamers.

There is no matchmaking system so every time you enter a game you might end up with a versus bunch of veterans that will wipe you from the face of the earth. It isn’t that beginner friendly and some players even say that some classes are stronger than others.

Warlander Review

David Mickov

Gameplay
Visuals
Content & Replayability
Performance Issues

Summary

It goes without saying that Warlander is a very fun Free to Play game. From the moment you first enter it you will be experiencing quite the joy and getting your first win is so rewarding. However, as time progresses and you delve further into the game beyond the surface, you will quickly become aware of its many shortcomings. This is the right game for you if you enjoy pushing and defending in multiplayer games that have the feel of a medieval MOBA. If not, you can wait for a while until the game gets polished out a bit.

2.9

ALSO READ: Forspoken Review: What Was All The Hype Really About?

TAGGED:
This bearded looking fellow on our left is David and he is a 26 year old passionate gamer. He has been an active member of the gaming community from a very young age, specifically from 2003 when he first played Warcraft 3 and discovered tachycardia from how enjoyable and relaxing it was. Gaming for him has been, and still is a way of life style. He loves delving deep into whatever it is he is playing, losing himself into countless of hours discovering everything there is that created that video game. He learns about the backstories, about the development, the creators, fan theories and boy oh boy he's open for discussions about what makes a game great and what doesn't. He can play everything from small Indie games , to big triple A titles. His theory about games is this : small details make big games. So that is why whatever it is that he is playing, he is the guy who discovers 99% of the maps with every little side quest or trophy to be found. That is why his favourite genre is RPG. Having the big explorable created world at your fingertips, where everything from a scary bloodsucking demon to a friendly talking goat can be found and interacted with, as well as immersing yourself into the roleplay game you are playing, is fascinating for him. He is a laid back type of gamer, after a rich history of getting his ass kicked in competitive games. He is very passionate about writing blogs and articles about games, as it is soothing and meditating for him.
2 Comments