A part of any fantasy-lovers childhood was the imaginative battles between magic and might. Be it soldiers with swords, spears, and shields or wizards with tomes, staffs, and power, the imaginations could run wild with how these battles between classes would go down. But now, we have a free-to-play game that makes this match-up between forces a reality!

Toylogic Inc. and PLAION have released Warlander, a big-battle-focused title that allows users to pick their warrior class and head onto the battlefield. It’s the scenario many have dreamed to see played out and the setup we always saw it going down in! But, does it actually have the follow-through to drive the experience we hoped for?

Gameplay

Starting out, you will go through a basic tutorial that shows you the controls. It is fairly simple as you have your base attack, powers, blocking, jumping, and other movements. After the tutorial, you be taken to the character creation to make your first fighter. While here, I suggest setting up one of each class as you can change your character choice in the middle of a battle.

Something they don’t tell you right away is that by giving your fighter a title, they have a longer wait time before they can respawn after death. Plus, before they can even be used in the battle for the first time, you have to earn a certain amount of points to unlock them, meaning you have to accomplish a bit in the current match to use the characters with titles. The higher the title, the harder they are to unlock. This is because having a bigger title means they can pack on better equipment.

Equipment all has its own rating based on how powerful and/or useful it is. Characters can’t wear gear that is currently in use by another character, but they also have a limit to how powerful their gear score can ultimately be. That’s where having a higher title comes in handy. Even so, base equipment with a decent weapon, shield, and power set (because your power options also fall under the equipment score - which means start there for wizards) can be equipped on even the base characters.

They do a good job making each of the three classes useful in their own way. Knights or Warriors are great for melee combat and storming the opponent’s. Wizards are great for ranged combat and base defense. Clerics are great as support characters where they provide buffs and healing to the other players. I was surprised to see that there are only three classes in the game, but at least they work well together.

Matches are set up in the style of army combat. You will always be a part of an army of 20 players and you will either face off against one single army or a five-army battle. In short, it is either a 40-player or a 100-player battle. The goal of every match is the same; defend your castle’s core while trying to invade and destroy your opponent’s core. If no damage is done to either core when time is up, the match is a draw. For the five-army battles, if two castles have a core that has been untouched when time is up, the match is a draw. The only way to win is for all of your opponent’s cores to have received more damage than your core.

Some options you have in battle, aside from just straight invading the opponent’s castle, include building equipment for the battle. For defense, you can make arrow launchers and catapults. For offense, you can build a battering ram to destroy the opponent’s front gate and ladders to climb over their walls. Everything is already placed where it can be built, so once you reach it you can try to build it but you can easily be attacked while building as well. Once you build some items, like the battering ram, you will have to work as a team to move it forward to the actual gates and then use it multiple times to break down the gate. Build objects can be destroyed, the same as small side gates for the castles. While the big main gate can’t be rebuilt, all other items and side gates can be rebuilt once destroyed. Even if your main gate is destroyed, the game isn’t over until your core is destroyed.

Audio and Visual

They did a fairly decent job making the game truly sound like a battleground full of fantasy warriors. I would have thought there would be more sounds of metal clashing as the majority of players do take on the warrior role, but at least the sounds of battle are definitely prevalent. The music they incorporate for the game is pretty fitting as well, but it does its job best as background filler since it never really stands out.

Aesthetically, they definitely went with the best choice for this game. It has that CGI-style look to it where it doesn’t exactly look like a cartoon but it has that unrealistically clean and colorful texture that many have come to compare the whole fantasy genre with.

Replayability

It is an online-based title which means that it does have replayability to it. As long as you are having fun unlocking more gear and fighting this fantastical war, then you can always load up into your next battle. However, if you enjoy the five-army battle, there is a bit of a wait to load up into those matches every so often as the server only opens for another group of players about twice an hour. You will see a timer on the game mode when you go to pick it.

What It Could Have Done Better

This is a fantasy-based all-out war game and there are only three classes. That just seems so limiting! While they do balance each other out, where are the others? I was expecting to see a full list, including characters like amazons or archers, druids, and a variety of fighters like barbarians, knights, and rogues.

I didn’t care for the five-army matches being considered a draw because two castle cores haven’t been touched. Should the winner be the army that did the most damage to the other three castles? I was in multiple matches where our team was the root cause of taking down two castles, but we ran out of time before getting to all five and so we draw. Just doesn’t seem like a fair result.

There weren’t a large variety of maps if any at all. it seems they didn’t expect players to play their game a lot or they thought having a variety of battle maps wasn’t important. When the only two game modes are battle or bigger battle, a variety of character types and maps is pretty much necessary.

Verdict

Warlander has such a great premise and concept, but it feels like it falls short on the actual design. After playing through multiple matches, powering up all my classes, finding my own strategy, and ending with more draws than wins or losses combined, I have to say that it’s a fun game that feels like it is still in its beta stages. Unfortunately, this is their finished version and so it falls short of being the match-up I was looking forward to when it launched. I would recommend at least trying the game out as it has its entertainment value, but I wouldn’t expect it to be a long-lasting title.

Warlander is free-to-play now on PC via Steam.