Warlander Preview | The Upcoming Meat Slicing RPG
Warlander is an adventure RPG and a roguelike-narrative-driven game that takes place on a procedurally generated fantasy World where you slice your way through your enemies seeking revenge for your people who were annihilated by a false god named Morven and his soldiers, and you Bruce were killed with them too but lucky for you you have been summoned and resurrected by the Eternal god of the Forest then he made you an offer to turn you into a vengeance weapon, at first you refuse… but then you accept and he gives you a sentient Sword named ferguson and a shield that grows out of your body.
the game heavily relies on its combat system rather than exploration, but also revolves around its story that you can learn through the conversations between you and your Sword Ferguson. like in the surge you target weak body parts, in warlander you target unshielded/unprotected body parts and slice them, cut limbs off. chop heads, and split enemies in half vertically or horizontally. Now in dark souls and the other games that came after it, you don't care about which mouse buttons to use, so you can spam the Hell out of that left button. but in warlander you're gonna have to think twice before you press any mouse buttons because the left mouse button means left attack and right button means right attack and middle button means heavy attack. all of this comes handy when you face enemies with different body armors, some of them have their armored parts on the right and others have them on the left, others in the middle. so you'll need to spot the exposed part, target it and slice it. the game borrows a little of this slicing and dicing from metal gear rising and the combat feels slow and clumsy at first but when you get the hang of it you'll feel a tremendous satisfaction with every dismemberment you can also block enemies attacks using your shield but some attacks can't be blocked so dodging them is the only way. of course that'll use a bit of stamina but it's better than taking damage.
you can also break enemies shields with your attacks to expose their body parts then cut them off but I don't really recommend that as it takes more time and uses more stamina so the best option here is to aim at their already exposed body parts directly and save your stamina for other nearby enemies. instead you use your throwable stake to destroy enemies shields. and unlike other games, in warlander you can throw your sword at enemies but don't be afraid of losing it cause it comes back. and don't expect to break enemies guards by spamming attacks cause your sword will just bounce off, however you can break their guard with a kick when it's prompted. as for your health bar you can refill it by breaking the jars you find around the arenas.
the skill tree in warlander is an actual tree, to use this tree you'll need to feed it the flesh and blood of the enemies you killed. you can unlock two main skills which are Vines and stakes, while Vines are used to grip your enemies and throw them from edges or pick up explosives and throw them at those Technos which reminds me of the darkness 2. stakes allows you to shoot Stakes-like projectiles at them, you can upgrade those skills to make them even deadlier and more effective. the games graphics are nothing fancy but they're good enough and have a wonderful art style that kinda remind me of darksiders 3.
the game has an interactive environment that you can use to your advantage so it's like an extra weapon in your possession whether its shooting explosives in your enemies way or shooting weak barriers to bury them under heavy rocks, grab them and throw them off a cliff , pick explosives and toss them in their faces. you can also find chests in the environment that contain small upgrades such as movement speed and health.
playing this game I realized that the gameplay is kinda not repetitive, with various enemies , different attacks that you can perform, different locations, using the environment to your advantage, boss fights. there's never a dull moment. well except when you die and lose your progress and experience and have to repeat all of that again. but that's not a bad thing. and just to say the games difficulty starts to raise as you progress so if you're a fan of dark souls this game offers you the challenging combat you need and it's definitely worth checking out.
