Hands on with the Warhammer Chaosbane beta (Playstation 4)

Rating: 0
Author: Jim Smale

by Jim Smale · March 12, 2019

In a world ravaged by war and dominated by magic, you must rise up to face the Chaos hordes. Playing solo or with up to four players in local or online co-op, choose a hero from four character classes and prepare for epic battles wielding some of the most powerful artifacts of the Old World.

Pros:

Warhammer: Chaosbane has fantastic graphics, helps bring the Warhammer to life but still keep its dark edge.
5.07gb download size.
Four characters- Imperial soldier, high elf mage, slayer and wood elf scout.
10 difficulties- very easy, easy, normal, hard, very hard, then chaos levels 1 to 5.
Powerful soundtrack.
Online game search.
Diablo-like gameplay so an ARPG loot em up.
Main hub- your room with a stash case, shop where you can donate unwanted items in return for ranking them up for rewards and getting missions.
Earn EXP, level up and unlock abilities and upgrades on the huge skill tree.
Loot drops happen and are done in variety distinguished by color.
Loot uses a red/green text for quick comparisons.
Fully voiced characters.
Tutorial pop-ups.
Blessing- longer you stay alive the better the chance at better loot drops.
Controls are the same as Diablo. Face buttons each have an attack/spell attached to them.
UI is again like diablo going for a flower petal arrangement for quick selections.
Decent hud showing health, mana, and exp earned.
Impressive on-screen enemy count.
Runs smoothly.
God skill tree can be unlocked. Another layer of upgrade choices, here it’s more extra damage/health or new abilities. The difference is you collect colored fragments to use the tree.
Death- can be revived or pay gold to respawn.
Unlocks of new abilities and game mechanics happen at a solid pace.
Minimap and enlarge map with opacity setting.
Plays well.
Big boss fight.
Expedition- free roam with random events popping.
2-4 online Co-op support.
You see only your loot.
Can drop items for other players.

Cons:

Got stuck on waiting for players a fair few times with me having to restart the game to fix it.
Can’t see player info like health/name.
Lots of loading screens. Everything has one.
Tutorial felt like a dice roll of it would pop.
Other players can rush on ahead and skip cutscenes.
Missions just end and no real satisfaction end screen.
Underwhelming loot.
Network error loop happens.
No noise loud enough to show a legendary item dropped.
Expedition doesn’t always respawn enemies or random missions.

Summary

If I treat this Warhammer: Chaosbane more as a beta to just test out the engine and network features it feels better. Not because the game is bad, far from it, it’s just what is in the game at the moment is underwhelming. It takes so much from Diablo that it sets you up, you will get disappointed. But let’s be fair it’s a fucking alpha beta so you cannot expect a lot and going with that notion. Warhammer: Chaosbane is shaping up to be a real contender. It has many good points, the UI really shining through, yep it was taken from Diablo but it works! The story missions are drab and boring but once you get better abilities it’s not that bad. The art and level design is incredible and so dark and grimy. I played it all the way through act 1 and hit max 20 level. Whacking the difficulty up then opened the game up into what I want. Hard enemies, screen full of enemies and bright colourful magic attacks and loot dropping everywhere. As a first play, I generally found Warhammer: Chaosbane to be a lot of fun and with the right additions, could be a definitive looter contender.