Wartales Review Summary

Beautiful turn-based combat with endless content but marred by frequent crashes, memory leaks, and broken co-op, despite value in overpriced DLCs.

Game is highly enjoyable: Reviewers consistently describe the core game as fun, addictive, and captivating. The high frequency of this praise makes it a top highlight.

Excellent turn-based combat: The turn-based combat is frequently praised as simple yet deep, tactical, and rewarding. Many reviews compare it positively to chess or hex-based strategy games.

Base game is worthwhile: The base game is considered good, fun, and worth the price on its own, offering dozens of hours of content even without DLCs.

DLCs add value and variety: Players find the DLCs unique, interesting, and worth the cost. They add distinct flavors and value to the base experience.

Countless hours of content: Players report many hours of gameplay, often exceeding 100 hours, with high replayability and addictive qualities. The game offers long-term engagement.

DLCs are overpriced and excessive: Players are upset about the high number of paid DLCs released for the game, many of which cost as much or nearly as much as the base game. The total cost of all DLCs is seen as excessive compared to the playable content they provide.

Co-op mode is broken: The co-operative multiplayer mode is frequently reported as broken, with users encountering infinite loading screens and connection errors. Attempts to fix it using VPNs or disabling DLC have not resolved the issues.

Memory leaks cause crashes: The game suffers from memory leaks that cause crashes every 30 minutes to a few hours of playtime. Frequent crashing also occurs during co-op sessions, leading to lost progress.

Greedy DLC monetization: Developers are accused of aggressive monetization, leaving hooks in the game for over $100 of DLC. The community feels that the DLC policies exploit the player base.

Bugs persist for years: Many bugs from the game's launch have remained unresolved for years, with some issues persisting for over two years without a patch. Players express frustration at the lack of long-term fixes.

Turn-based tactical combat: Players consistently highlight the game's tactical turn-based combat system, which includes squad management, class specializations, and strategic resource management, forming the core gameplay loop in a medieval setting.

Mercenary management core: Mercenary company management is a recurring theme, involving resource tracking such as food, gold, and morale, with squad-based mechanics for hiring, equipping, and maintaining troops.

Open world exploration: An open world with multiple regions, real-time map exploration, and free movement is frequently mentioned, allowing players to explore diverse landscapes and encounter varied events.

Crafting with mini-games: Crafting is supported by a skill system and various professions, often involving mini-games like slide puzzles or rhythm games, adding depth to equipment and item creation.

Difficulty scaling options: Difficulty scaling is a notable topic, with adaptive modes that adjust enemy power or count based on party size, as well as region-locked difficulty, offering player choice in challenge.

Frequent crashes reported: Players report frequent crashes across various scenarios, including general gameplay, multiplayer, and after updates. Some crashes occur every 20 minutes or become more frequent over time, with specific triggers like memory overflow or animal escape events.

Frequent freezes and hangs: The game frequently freezes or hangs during menus, loading screens, and gameplay, with intervals as short as 5-15 seconds. Freezes also affect Steam Deck, multiplayer, and trigger after extended play sessions.

Lag and stuttering frequent: Players experience significant lag, stuttering, FPS drops (to as low as 1 FPS), and 20-30 second delays during gameplay, animations, combat, and DLC areas. Performance worsens with larger parties.

Poor optimization causes issues: Poor optimization results in severe performance issues, including low FPS even on low graphics settings, overheating, and unplayable stuttering. The game is described as extremely unstable with massive performance drops.

Memory leaks degrade performance: Memory leaks cause the game to progressively consume RAM, leading to crashes, freezes, and sluggish performance after extended play. Players report the game eats all RAM or triggers out-of-memory errors on reload.

Strongly recommended for strategy fans: Many reviews recommend this game to fans of tactical turn-based combat, mercenary management, and strategy RPGs. They highlight its depth and similarities to games like Battle Brothers, XCOM, and Final Fantasy Tactics.

Buy base game, avoid DLCs: Multiple reviews praise the base game but recommend avoiding the DLCs due to poor value or monetization concerns. They advise buying only the base game.

Worth buying only on sale: Reviews suggest that the game and its DLCs are worthwhile only when purchased on sale. Some players found value in discounted purchases.

Better to play Battle Brothers: Some reviewers compare the game unfavorably to Battle Brothers, suggesting fans should play that instead. This implies the game may not meet expectations set by similar titles.

Co-op experience is not recommended: Several reviews warn against purchasing the game for co-op play, reporting that the co-op experience is poor. Solo play is deemed acceptable with caution.

Community fair range: $10.00 - $20.00.

Game completion: 200.0h.

Story completion: 120.0h.

Session length: 8.0h.

Wartales delivers strong immediate fun through its core progression and tactical combat, but the experience quickly turns repetitive and tedious after the first few hours, with bugs and grind undermining long-term enjoyment.

Reported time to anchor: 2h.

Friction: Repetitive battles and missions in mid-to-late game; Co-op bugs and instability; Slow progression and grind; Poor tutorial and explanation of mechanics; Performance issues and crashes; Unbalanced difficulty scaling.

Co-op Frustrated Player: Multiplayer co-op focused; expects stable online experience with friends; frustrated by persistent bugs, crashes, and desync issues that break progression. Motivation: Social play and shared adventuring with friends. Stance: no buy.

Tactical Strategy Veteran: Min-maxes party builds, seeks tactical challenge, enjoys high difficulty and permadeath stakes; criticizes repetition and balance issues in later stages. Motivation: Tactical depth, strategic optimization, and meaningful challenge. Stance: sale.

Sandbox Roleplayer: Immersive role-playing; focuses on emergent narrative, exploration, management of resources and mercenaries; enjoys sandbox freedom over a linear story. Motivation: Immersion, storytelling autonomy, and simulation of the mercenary life. Stance: sale.

The game suffers from widespread performance issues across all hardware cohorts, including crashes, memory leaks, freezes, and bugs. Higher-end Windows systems (12-15GB VRAM and 16GB+ VRAM) show mixed results with some players tolerating issues, but lower VRAM and Linux cohorts are overwhelmingly negative. Optimization is poor and stability is unreliable.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: mixed. Many players report crashes, bugs, and unbalanced fights, but some have no crashes or only minor stutters. Performance is inconsistent, with both positive and negative feedback.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: negative. All snippets report severe performance issues: bugs, VRAM leaks, crashes, and forced framerate limits. Game is unplayable for many.

Windows <8GB VRAM / 16-31GB RAM: negative. All snippets report constant crashes, freezes, and game-breaking bugs. Technical state is unacceptable.

Steam Deck: The game suffers from severe stability and performance issues on Steam Deck, including frequent crashes, misleading 'Verified' status, low framerates, controller input problems, and memory leaks during longer sessions. Several critical barriers prevent smooth gameplay despite deck verification.

Linux and Proton: The game runs well on Linux with Proton GE and OpenGL, but the default Vulkan renderer under Valve Proton causes significant performance and graphical issues. Users must manually switch to OpenGL and often use Proton GE. Minor loading issues and memory leaks are reported, but the game is playable with these tweaks.

Monetization: Wartales has a base game that is considered incomplete by many players, with essential mechanics locked behind paid DLCs. The game aggressively advertises these DLCs through in-game pop-ups and interactable objects, breaking immersion. The DLCs are widely criticized as overpriced for the content they provide, leading to a perception of greed and a fragmented full experience.

External guides: The primary user feedback indicates a significant need for external wiki or guide references to understand game mechanics, quest consequences, and progression. However, a subset of players finds the lack of guidance enjoyable and prefers self-discovery.

Turkish patch available online: Players mention that the game has a Turkish language patch available online, often in the context of localization requests or technical discussions.